Tolerance of Jesus by Today's Standards
Transcribed from the video above, John Cartwright discusses the tolerance of Jesus relative to today's defintion and standard:
Tolerance is a funny word. We have now defined tolerance in a way that the Bible never defines it. Tolerance is, you cannot call anything bad. The Bible has a different word. It's unconditional love. It's long suffering, and I can love you despite the wrong choices that you made. When the woman caught in adultery was brought before Jesus and accused, he began to write in the sand. We don't know what he wrote, but what we do know is one at a time, his ... Her accusers left, and he said, "Where are your accusers?" And she said, "They're gone." And he said, "Neither do I accuse you." But he said, "Go and sin no more."
He didn't tolerate her sin. For us to understand that God has provided a way for us to be saved from ourselves, from our sin, we have to recognize that we are, in fact, sinners. Imagine if a cancer ... A doctor that deals with cancer took a tolerance approach and tiptoed around the issue of cancer, never getting to the pronouncement of your prognosis. You never actually find out that you have cancer because he's just too concerned about your feelings. No, if I have cancer, I want to know now. I want to know right away, so that we can get on to a cure.
We're so concerned about what other people think that we've now completely avoided the truth of our real condition. We just have to read the news. We know how messed up our world is, and we're desperately in need of salvation. But as Jesus said, he didn't come to heal well people. He came to heal sick people. The reality is, though, we're all sick. We're all in need of that salvation.
