Author: Real Christianity development

The thing which Paul prohibited in 1 Corinthians 6 was civil litigation against fellow Christians. He wasn’t speaking about how we should deal with criminal offences i.e. where a Christian has committed a crime and another Christian is a witness or the injured party.  This …

As we saw earlier, apostle Paul made a powerful statement about this in his first letter to the Corinthians.  On the face of it, what he says seems quite clear and conclusive: 1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare …

After the futile experience of trying to address issues within the first church, both my wife and I were traumatized, and far more so than we realised at the time.  Moreover, the sense of violation and trauma lasted for at least three years, and probably …

A wronged believer might seek to carry out Jesus’ commands, but he will not get very far.  The structure of most churches will not allow him to do what Jesus said.  Even if he tried it, he would be thwarted by the system itself and …

This is Jesus speaking of how a dispute should be dealt with, as between two genuine Christians, not between two unbelievers, or even a Christian and an unbeliever.  So, the first problem, before we even get to examining the problems caused by unbiblical church structure, …

What we have been looking at has mainly been about disputes with unbelievers.  But what if the wrongdoer is a Christian, or claims to be?  Apostle Paul tells us not to bring law suits against fellow Christians but, instead, to seek to resolve matters via …

Sometimes there is no human court that we can go to.   The wrong done to us may not even be a crime.  Thus it may be something that the police cannot help us with.  If so, we may need to just hand the situation over …

One day Jesus will judge all of us, either at the Judgment Seat of Christ or at the Great White Throne.  However, He will also judge wrongdoers in various other preliminary ways, long before those final Judgments occur.  God uses human governments to judge wrongdoers …

Another very helpful thing to do is to ask God to reveal to us what our own faults and sins are.  All of us tend to under-estimate our own sinfulness.  We don’t realise the degree to which, and the ways in which, we have, ourselves, …

Many people struggle and get confused because they don’t realise, or they keep forgetting, that forgiveness is primarily something we do, not something we feel.  To a very large extent, feelings follow actions.  Thus, merely by the physical act of speaking the words of forgiveness …