When Spiritual Offerings Are Contemptuous

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.

--Jesus

Therefore, if in the days of Jesus, the Jew was to drop the lamb that was about to be sacrificed on an altar and, first, go deal with an offended brother, how much more so is a Christian to walk away even from the Lord’s Supper to do the same?

Therefore, if we know an individual has something against us and we still go ahead and make our offering to God, without any attempt to be reconciled, our offering will be held in divine contempt.

Therefore, “But I didn’t do anything wrong,” is a non-starter. How can you know for sure, if you don’t have a conversation about his offense with you? Even the most mature can be deceived. If you are correct, however, you will have an opportunity to help your brother grow in wisdom and maturity  … that is, as long as you don’t approach the conversation in a spirit of self-righteousness.

Therefore, our spiritual exercises and offerings are never to be used as a kind of religious excuse for not dealing with an offended brother or sister, a la, “I can’t deal with that right now, I am busy serving Jesus.”

Therefore, we cannot use our spiritual offerings as brownie points to be weighed against broken relationships, whereby, if we get enough points, God will overlook our failures to maintain the laws of love toward others.  

Therefore, if we are to drop everything and go seek reconciliation with someone who has something against us, we are also to do the same if we have an offense with a brother or sister. Sitting around haughtily waiting for the offender to come to us demonstrates a severe lack of love for and commitment to the *alleged offender’s welfare.

Therefore,

If you love me, keep my commandments.

-- Jesus

* “Alleged.” Did I break the laws of love toward you or not? Simply because you are offended, does not make me “wrong.” Your feelings are not God’s objective standards for Right Behavior. Maybe you are overly sensitive or overreacted or simply misunderstood. If this is the case, your hurt still matters but it is on a different plane than my having “sinned” against you.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2015