"I've decided to have a week off church because you don't need to go to church to be a Christian so there is no obligation for me to go"
Ever heard anything like that? There are other variations on it: "I don't need to read my Bible every day because there is no command that tells me to in the Bible." and so on and so forth.
Ben (Assistant Pastor at BABC) was preaching on Jesus' words about divorce on Sunday night and came out with something quite excellent. He said that with divorce the wrong question to ask is "is it allowed" because that's basically being legalistic about it. The issue then becomes what can I get away with because LAW is the way to view things.
He applied it more broadly and said if we say "There is no command to go to church so I wont" is being legalistic about it (albeit inverted legalism). I live my life by what is permitted and what is commanded seems to be a million miles away from the kind of relational priorities that Jesus had.
Better questions are:
How will this affect my relationship with Christ?
How will this affect my relationship with others?
I bet you've never heard some one who doesn't read their Bible and doesn't go to church a legalist eh?
It's amazing how deceitful sin is.
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