About the squabbles among Christians

I am with you all the way on the rituals of the "holy". The thief on the cross, in his last hour, believed and was granted paradise.

I am no saint but I do understand what you say.

   I agree, to be a Christian is to be Christ like which is to love our neighbor as ourselves. People squabble because they have not first cleaned up their own house. (Matthew 7:3-4) says: "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt say to thy brother, let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?."  If we would first clean our own house we would not have time to find fault with someone else.  Minding our own business gives us more time to test all that we see and hear with the Holy Word the Bible as they did in the Apostle Paul's time (Acts 17:10-11) " And the brethern immediately sent away Paul, and Silas by night unto Berea; who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessaaalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so."  Searching the Holy scriptures will show us that "Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, (the name of Jesus), whereby we must be saved." (Acts 4:12). And then in (Ephesians 2: 8-9) " For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast."  If " we love Him because He first loved us". ( I John 4: 19) we will want to do what makes Him happy.  Our Lord does not give us the spirit of trouble, or fighting that is not love one for the other.(II Timothy 1: 7), says," For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but, of power, and of love, and a sound mind. Only then can we walk humbly with our God, ( Micah 6:8A), "and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" But first, and formost we must know Him as Savior, and Lord of our lives. Only then will there be peace.

While it is true that God is love, He also is holy and hates sin -- that's why it was necessary that there be a propitiation for sin -- in the Old Testament it was commanded that the blood of the sacrificial animal be shed, but in the New Testament it was of course the blood of the Lamb of God -- Jesus, the Son of God.  What I am driving at is this -- there is no perfect love where there is a disregard for all of God's commandments.  We must follow Christ "in the way" according to the precepts in the Bible.  If we do this, we will be filled with the love of Christ and love our neighbor as ourselves. 

But there is also at times a need to admonish one another (in love) and so on.  If we are truly Christians (in spirit and in truth), we will understand that sin is the destroyer -- not someone who warns me to turn from it.

Love is the bottom line to being a Christian. There are too many Christians who do so many things except love others. I do believe God still loves them as confused as they may be. It would be better if they loved and forgave more than critisized and gossiped about others. We all fall short in spite of tryng to do our best to follow Christ's teachings. There is no perfect Christian. The one who thinks he is perfect is the most imperfect. Paul says that salvation is a gift of God lest any man should boast. It is sad that many actually boast that they are so Christlike when the rest of their neighbors know better--only they don't see it in themselves. God is so loving and kind and merciful. However, if you love God and follow Jeus and the Christian way, one should take His teachings seriously and make some attempt to let your life reflect His teachings. Don't drive yourself nuts trying to be perfect; just love God and your neighbor as yourself and trust His love to accept.

Jesus came to save us; read John 3:17 He doesn't want to condemn us. We can all stand some correction. Better to let God guide us  than for other Christians to tell how wrong we are all the time. Be careful about taking the mote out of your brothers eye.

love iz good, praze iz good, Faith without works iz ded. have a nice day

The 1808 words after the question you posed in the first sentence of your post seem not to ask for any further data.

Jesus said something along these lines. In the sermon on the mount, he stated this, which I post here from the paraphrase presented in the CEV, "You must obey God's commands (this means all of those found in the Tanach) better than the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law obey them. If you don't, I promise you that you will never get into the kingdom of heaven."

The italicized parenthetical sentence in the above quote in my addition.

This, of course, spoke of the impossibility of following GOD's rule perfectly. But I am quite certain that this is not what you are inquiring about.

Those who would say anything to this effect today, while they may be good intentioned, are simply not in line with the message delivered by an incarnate GOD; and that message is the Gospel.

Jay

P.P. If a person is not sure of what the Holy Bible says, a person who verbalized this opinion (as stated above) will be all too eager to explain it. And if a person does know what the Bible says but his understanding does not coincide with the opinion of the speaker, again the speaker will be all too willing to correct this failure to interpret Scripture correctly. (I hope there are not too many pronouns in here.)

Love never fails  

There is no way that an earthly person can follow all the scriptures in the Bible.  We cannot even get close to following the 10 commandments.  Jesus left us only two to follow, "Love your brother as yourself, and to have no other gods before Him.  Squables among Christians is disrespectful to our Lord.  But it happens, and God for sure knows it happens.  I will take no part in it.  I have actually heard of physical fighting going on in the churches.  How very critical is that  We ought to love one another regardless of religion, skin color or distance apart.  Our brother is not just our natural brother; it is all mankind.  Wonderful Scriptures you selected.  God bless, and go in peace.