WICKED MAN
By Rick Mathes
1 Corinthians 5:13 (NASB77) 13 But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.
No one needs to teach a young child to be bad. We are born inclined to evil rather than virtue because of Adam’s fall and the original sin passed on to us. That little “bundle of joy” is soon exposed as a troublemaker; ask any parent.
Unfortunately, some never grow up but rather devote their lives to be decisive in every social gathering including Sunday morning services. The most difficult for a pastor to deal with is a fornicator especially if his hunting grounds are the church fellowship. This predator can really get just below the radar and the church Elders become quite paralyzed by lack of evidence to confront.
Others become covetous of this sinner, secretly wishing they could have an affair that would not be discovered or uncovered. They make an idol of this “alley cat” and humor him instead of rebuking him and restoring him to the foot of the cross for correction and forgiveness.
This life style is usually accompanied with an abuse of liquid levity or drugs. Both anesthetize the conscience and help remove any desire to change or rehabilitate. As a former drunk I know that over indulging gives birth to a unique form of extortion. We grasp that most besetting sin of a loved one and use it to deny or shield our abuse of alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. When they rebuke us in our moral filth we remind them of their own faults: the plank in their eye.
As our wickedness is exposed, the hate within us begins to swell into a quest to drag others into our denial of God, to essentially recruit others of like habits to be unbelievers like us. We gather every backslider we can locate to join up with our lifestyle of lying and faithlessness to our family, employer and counterfeit friends.
As a teacher of falsehood we extol our heresies as doctrine so that others that are equally unrepentant will slip into denial and shameful rejection of all objective truth.
PRESS ON!
Rick Mathes 