No compromise

If we look at the book of Deuteronomy 20:15–20 (NKJV), we will see that the Lord was adamant that the children of Israel had nothing to do with the unbeliever, and was very ruthless about it in fact. There was to be no compromise with God’s people and the people in the land that they conquered. Jesus said in Matthew 12:30 (NKJV), “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters abroad.”

There can be no lowering of standards, not even for the sake of peace (which by the way will never last).

No participating in things which are against God’s standards in order to hopefully win over those who are lost. The reason being, because the chances are very good unfortunately, that your conscience will eventually become seared and you will backslide and even capitulate. I looked up the word ‘capitulate’ in the Oxford Dictionary. it means to cease to resist an opponent and basically to surrender. This is not a time for you and I to lower our Christian standards in order to try and win someone over for Jesus, it never works. For example, going into business with an unbeliever hoping you will win him across; the chances are he will cause you to backslide. Or getting married to an unbeliever and hoping that through your marriage he or she will come to Christ, it doesn’t work that way. The sad fact of the matter is that often the unbeliever will win you back into the system of the world. 

We cannot lower our standards and that is mainly for the sake of those who are lost in the systems of this corrupt world. They must have something to look up to, something to emulate, because they are desperately searching for the truth (Jesus). I remember myself, in the days before I met the Lord, looking for someone or something that I could respect or look up to. 

My brother in law was a young student from Rhodes University when we were living in central Africa and I was playing active rugby at the time and I was very much one of the boys. He would always sit apart, not because he thought he was anything special, but he was not one of the drinking boys. I used to watch him, sitting out on the veranda of the club house enjoying his coke while we were drinking it up in the pub. Even though I used to shout at him, ‘come in and join the boys’, he would smile and just say that he is fine where he is, secretly I was hoping that he would never ever come in. Isn’t that amazing, a real paradox. We’ve got to be different for the sake of the lost. We’ve got to have something that they want and that won’t in any way lower our standards. 

Remember, we are His ambassadors, 2 Corinthians 5:20 (NKJV), “Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.”  And so my prayer today for each one of us is that we have the strength not to bend under the peer pressure and the standards of a deceptive world (which will try everything to win us back to the systems of the devil), but we rejoice in this fact that 1 John 4:4 (NKJV) says “…because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

Have a wonderful week of standing tall for Jesus.

Angus and Jill Buchan