Matthew 5:22 (NKJV) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, \u2018Raca!\u2019 shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, \u2018You fool!\u2019 shall be in danger of hell fire.\u201d<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus was making a comparison between the sin of murder, and other so-called lesser sins, for example, anger or use of abusive words. The common understanding had been that murder was the capital offense requiring capital punishment, but Jesus made a striking rebuttal of that by saying, \u201cyou have heard that it was said to those of old\u2026but I say to you\u2026\u201d In the old system, there was an apparent dichotomy between the big sins and the small sins, but Jesus came to prove that all sin is evil and worthy of God\u2019s judgment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Anger without a cause and the use of abusive words against your brother, has no place and no acceptance in the spiritual walk. I cannot say that I am walking with Jesus and yet keep malice against my brother. That\u2019s why Jesus goes ahead to say that, even if you know your brother is angry at you for something, leave all you\u2019re doing for God and go and make amends (v23-24). God is not interested in the work of the ministry as much as the life of the minister. If we must acceptably serve God, we must do away with the dichotomy of big and small sins. We must ensure that our relationships are in good stead. We must be vigilant on how we speak to one another. Let\u2019s depart from the old understanding and practice the New Wine of Jesus, where everything matters, whether big or small, and relationships come before ministry. \u201cLord, even by Your Holy Spirit, make me vigilant in how I talk to people and how I relate to all men. I cannot afford to be brash and harsh with my fellow man and expect to be in right relationship with You. Help me to be quick in making peace with my fellow man, even when I may not be the person at fault. Deliver me from seeing some small sins as acceptable for I know that You abhor all sin and consider all evil as wickedness. Make me more sensitive to these things, in Jesus name. Amen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Matthew 5:22 (NKJV) \u201cBut I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. And whoever says to his brother, \u2018Raca!\u2019 shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, \u2018You fool!\u2019 shall be in danger of hell fire.\u201d Jesus was making a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-reflections-from-matthew"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Reflections-from-Matthew.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3579,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3577\/revisions\/3579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/restlesspilgrim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}