Save People from their Sins

I met with my core group again today for our first “official” discussion of the Gospels. Of the seven people that came last week, there were only four of us today, myself, one of the Christians, and the two Rastafarians. But that’s okay. We are not about attendance or numbers. If others want to be part of what we’re doing-great. If not, that’s fine too.

After we drank some coffee and chatted a bit, we decided that we would begin with the Gospel of Matthew. And though I was personally quite skeptical that we would get anything out of Matthew 1 (it’s mostly a genealogy), we read and discussed the first chapter for almost an hour. It was great! I wish I had a transcript to post.

I tried to stay out of the discussion as much as possible, because I didn’t want to guide the discussion into what my Bible College, Seminary, and years of pastoral experience had taught me. I didn’t want to come across as the “expert” (since I’m not). I simply wanted to trust the Holy Spirit to work in guiding our discussion of the text. There was some minor disagreement with what Matthew was saying about Mary being a virgin, and what it meant for Joseph to “put her away quietly,” but we kept a spirit of peace and unity, and kept ourselves from getting sidetracked by such debates.

After reading, we summarized what Jesus did in the chapter, and how we might be able to do it too. Truthfully, He didn’t do much of anything except get conceived in Mary. But the group focused on the statement by the angel that Jesus would save his people from their sins.

We agreed that this week we would try to do this too. We are going to save people from their sins. Does this sound heretical? It isn’t.

We are going to look for friends and family members who are headed down a path that will lead to arguments or personal harm, and try to speak words of wisdom and encouragement to them to change their course of action. If we are successful, we have “saved them from their sin,” that is, we will have helped keep them from committing sin and harming their life and the lives of others. This is something that most people try to do anyway, but it is now something we are trying to in imitation of Jesus, and that provides a whole new perspective and motivation.