Jimmy Carter: Disharmony Among Christians ‘Like a Cancer’

In a story posted at www.Christianpost.com, former president Jimmy Carter, speaking Saturday at the Southeast regional gathering of the New Baptist Covenant, stated that Christians should unite and that divisive issues should be put aside, in favor of unity.  Mr. Carter equated the disunity as “like a cancer metastasizing in the body of Christ.”  He went on to say, “We’re saved by the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ. That’s a fundamental in which I believe. And I think for Christians that’s basically adequate,” the former president said to the more than 800 attendants gathered at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. “If you believe in that, no matter how you feel about homosexuality or the death penalty or church and state being separated … we should put those things aside.”

He makes a good point, we are saved by the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ and that’s where his good point ends.  It doesn’t matter if someone calls themselves Baptist or Methodist, or even Christian, if they compromise the beliefs of the Bible then why would a biblically founded believer unite with them?  As I posted last week regarding Miss California, the Bible is very specific on homosexuality and it should be a point of dissention if people are not willing to see God’s will in scripture.  If we start to bend and flex on 1 part of the Bible, then we’ve devalued the whole thing.  The article goes on to say that the New Baptist Covenant was formed with the hope of overcoming division over such issues as, “the role of women in ministry and marriage, abortion, civil rights for gays, and Scripture, among many others.” 

The Bible is not a quid pro quo negotiation and it is not to be compromised.  The Word of God is divisive as Jesus said in Matthew 10:34-36, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law- a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”  The meaning behind this passage is clear, Jesus knows that he will be a point of division amongst families, friends, coworkers, etc. and I believe this also applies to those “Christians” that would compromise their beliefs for the sake harmony with the secular world.  It’s for this reason we are given Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is-his good, pleasing and perfect will.”

 

Matthew 7:21-23, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!'”

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Christian saved by grace through faith.

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