2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

Exodus 3:15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Christians carry the name of Christ because we recognize Him as the Lord. At the time those passages above were written there was no clear understanding of how to pronounce God’s name. When God changed Jacob’s name to Israel all future generations were called Israelites which labeled them as being God’s people at that time.

In these present days we label people, justly or not, to communicate our understanding of what those groups believe.

When we buy a product, the containers, boxed, canned or bottled, have labels that identify the contents. Granted the print is small and often contains scientific names we do not understand. US law states they must exist, nothing was said about making them understandable.

This is one of the problems with labeling people because they do not come with warning labels that identify what is in their hearts and minds. We can only gauge their actions which we cannot do until after they have acted and that becomes our label for everyone in that group.

Are all people alike? As Christians we know we are many different parts that make up the whole body. Using labels destroys the individual’s identity and does not see them as individuals.

Matthew 13:30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

Bundles, more than one, an undetermined number of labels, all of which are grouped together to be burned. This is where we are today in assigning labels, bundling groups together to be judged. They are not wheat, which is food for life.

Matthew 7

Judging Others

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?

Jesus is Lord. Obey Him. Think about our use of labels and which ones are appropriate.

Acts 20:27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.

When I did a word search for “whole counsel” I expected more than one usage. I was wrong. My expectation was that the whole counsel of God is an important issue and many things important in the scriptures are repeated more than once.

Teach and urge these things.  If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. Ref 1 Timothy 6 ESV

Just as we added Romans 8 to yesterday’s post on 1 Corinthians 13, we need to consider that all of His Words work together to explain how God’s will is to be known. Rarely does just one line of scripture stand alone. Words can inspire us to act just as Paul’s words to the elders in Ephesus in Acts 20. Without those examples we might not discover them by only reading his letter to the Ephesians.

Imagine ourselves only reading the synoptic gospels. We would miss out on some of the most precious words simply because we insist that the gospel needs to be uniform in content.

Imagine what would be missing if Theophilus kept his private letters from Luke to himself and did not share them. We would be missing out on so much if we restricted ourselves to only certain books.

We are neither Samaritans nor Sadducees that read and believe according to only the first five books of the bible. Those books are foundational, but like any good foundation what is built upon them is what is seen and used.

In the past a teacher asked his students to quote their favorite scriptures. The first five all said John 3:16 possibly because it was burnt into their memory. The sixth child answered this way; “It changes daily as my favorite scripture is the last one God spoke to me through His Word.”

I love that answer.