Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore, let us go forth to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach. For we have no continuing city here, but we seek one to come.
Select a thought to read by choosing a collection, the month, and then the day:
There have been many poor, elderly, mothers who, praying for far-off sons, have said things like, "Lord, don't let nothing bad happen to my boy." Grammatically, such a prayer means, "Let something bad happen to my boy." But that is not the intent of such a mother's heart. Her heart is pleading for protection for her son, even though her words are asking God to send him trouble. It is good that God listens to our heart's cry rather than to what sometimes comes out of our mouths.
It is the intent of the heart that always matters to God. He is not as "picky" as men often are, not cold and harsh when errors are made by honest people who do not know better, not cruel as are some people concerning technicalities and proper form. God is understanding, patient, and kind. "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are but dust."
A lie, too, is a matter of the intent of the heart, not the mouth. If you attempt to deceive me by saying that someone named Bill is coming in, when you really believe Bill is not coming, and then Bill unexpectedly walks through the door, technically you have told the truth because Bill did come in. But your intent was to deceive, and so you still are guilty of a lie. On the other hand, if you thought you saw Bill coming toward the door and said, "Here comes Bill", but then it proved to be Jim coming in, you are wrong, but you have not lied. Your intent was pure, even though your facts were incorrect.
Often, throughout man's history, people have been made to suffer unjustly for honest errors, while others, full of evil intent, have often been honored. Humans cannot judge rightly because we cannot see the intent of another's heart. God judges only by the intent of the heart, and only He knows it.
Before he led the famed thousand-ship armada against Troy, the ancient King Agamemnon spent some time hunting. Unfortunately for one of his young daughters, during the hunt he killed a deer that, unknown to him, was sacred to Artemis, the goddess of hunting. Artemis was very angry, and Agamemnon was condemned by the goddess just as if he had intentionally done evil. In order to escape her fierce wrath, Agamemnon was commanded by one of Artemis' priests to sacrifice his young daughter, Iphegenia, which he did. This gruesome tale of deceit and death was part of an ancient myth, as much of The Iliad certainly was, but it accurately reflects the ancient world's poor understanding of justice. There are many examples in ancient stories of people who purely by accident harm another, but then were condemned and treated as base criminals. The true God is never like that. He knows that "time and chance happen to all".
Men never have been able to judge rightly without God's help. The Roman centurion, Cornelius, was judged by the Jews to be unworthy of receiving God's holy Spirit, not because he was an evil-doer but because he was physically uncircumcised. Cornelius was, in fact, a very good man, and the Jews in that area readily admitted that. But he was a Gentile, and so, by their standards, he was disqualified from being baptized into God's Family by the holy Ghost. But God judged him by a different standard, not considering Cornelius' uncircumcised body, and when God filled that humble Gentile with the holy Ghost, even the believing Jews were stunned. It took the Jewish Saints years to understand the new standard by which God judges men in this New Testament; sadly, some Jewish believers refused to accept this newly revealed truth at all and condemned Paul for teaching it.
But that Jewish unbelief did not prevail against the work of God, and millions upon millions of Gentiles since the time of Cornelius have been filled with the Spirit of Promise because they conducted themselves as Cornelius, who "was a devout man, one that feared God with all his house." This Roman was a good man who "worked righteousness" and prayed to God always, and, as Peter said to Cornelius, "God is no respecter of persons."
To be godly means, in part, that we judge as God judges. A godly man does not judge by what he sees or hears because he knows that good people make mistakes and can appear to be evil when they are not and that dishonest people sometimes know how to make themselves appear to be trustworthy. To judge as God judges, our thoughts must be guided by God's Spirit. One of the most famous prophecies about Jesus was that he would not judge men as men normally do, but that he would trust his heavenly Father to tell him what to think about the people and situations he met. In Isaiah (11:1-3) we read, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him . . . and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears."
Jesus commanded us not to judge by the appearance but to judge righteous judgment (Jn. 7:24). There is no way that humans, being unrighteous by nature, can keep that commandment on their own. "With men", as Jesus once pointed out, "it is impossible. But with God all things are possible!" A man can judge righteous judgment only when he is made righteous by the Spirit that God gives to all who love Jesus. Until then, it is unwise, and can be dangerous, for a man to judge anything.