Yesterday, as most church groups met together online instead of at "church buildings", I thought a lot about being
- "rules driven" versus "relationship driven"
- "law driven" versus "love driven".
How beautiful it was to have JESUS followers meet online, around the globe, because
- we did not want to forsake meeting together
- we did not want to risk spreading this deadly disease further
Bottom line for JESUS was loving GOD, loving others, and making sure we don't sin, since sin separates us from GOD. That's why JESUS led a sin free life!
In life we encounter people driven by different goals. We see it here in John 5:
John 5:1-15
1- Some time later, JESUS went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.
2- Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades.
3- Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed-and they waited for the moving of the waters.
4- From time to time an angel of the LORD would come down and stir the waters. The first one into the pool after each such disturbance would be cured of whatever disease they had.
5- One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
6- When JESUS saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, HE asked him, “Do you want to get well?”
7- “SIR,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”
8- Then JESUS said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
9- At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked.
The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,
10- and so the Jewish leaders said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat.”
11- But he replied, “THE MAN who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’ ”
12- So they asked him, “Who is this FELLOW who told you to pick it up and walk?”
13- The man who was healed had no idea WHO it was, for JESUS had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14- Later JESUS found him at the temple and said to him, “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.”
15-The man went away and told the Jewish leaders that it was JESUS who had made him well.
