Did you notice anything surprising about the last verse of the four cited in yesterday’s post?<\/p>\n\n\n
That would be Hebrews 5:14 – “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”<\/p>\n\n\n
Here is what I find curious: the author of Hebrews says that one thing which marks spiritual maturity is being able to “distinguish good from evil” … after a whole lot of practice and “training”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But isn’t the difference between good and evil so very obvious that even an extremely immature believer can figure out the difference? (In fact, can’t even most non-believers do it?)<\/p>\n\n\n
I mean, murder is evil. Going to church is good. Drunkenness is evil. Being nice to people is good. Greed is evil. Giving is good.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
That’s not difficult. Right?<\/p>\n\n\n
But Jesus comes along and says,\u00a0\u201cYou have heard that it was said to the people long ago, \u2018You shall not murder,\u00a0and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.\u2019\u00a0<\/span>But I tell you that anyone who is angry<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>with a brother or sister<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>will be subject to judgment.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, \u2018Raca,\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>is answerable to the court.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>And anyone who says, \u2018You fool!\u2019 will be in danger of the fire of hell.” (Matthew 5:21-22)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n But hold on a minute. Getting angry with a fellow believer subjects me to judgment? But (I protest) my anger is always righteous!<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n Calling someone stupid and inferior (“raca”) or a fool puts my soul in danger? But what if they are stupid and inferior?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n And there is Jesus patiently reminding us that perhaps our God has a more comprehensive understanding of good and evil. And higher standards of holiness.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n This might take some training …<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did you notice anything surprising about the last verse of the four cited in yesterday’s post? That would be Hebrews 5:14 – “But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.” Here is what I find curious: the author of Hebrews says that one thing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6473,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6472\/revisions\/6473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}