The Bread of Life
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Today's Devotional

Slanderers Will Not Inherit the Kingdom of God (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1Corinthians 6:9-10.)

One of the most dangerous yet most common and accepted sin within Christian culture, is the sin of slander. To slander means to speak against someone, to make an accusation of sin or wrongdoing about someone with incomplete information, almost always without the other’s knowledge, in order to bring the person down a bit in the eyes of others. It literally means speaking evil against someone.  This sin the devil has used to great success to bring a fair amount of pain, hurt, and division into our families, relationships, and churches. It is a serious sin that again is so often neglected and dismissed because it just seems so common, and it doesn’t rise to the level of those bigger sins. We, the children of God, must have our eyes opened to the severity of this common and accepted sin. We have to be aware of its presence in our own speech, or when we hear people around us gossip or slander that we should now treat it with all of the seriousness as having a snake in our house or church. St. Paul is pointing at the severity of this sin by saying that whoever will slander will not inherit the kingdom of God. St. James also commanded us in his epistle, chapter four, saying,”Do not slander one another, brothers. He who slanders a brother or judges his brother, slanders the law and judges the law.”(James 4:11.) 

He wants to snap us out of the complacency that we might have been tempted to have towards this devastating sin. So every time we slander someone and every time we hear slander taking place, we distort our law, the law of Spirit, the Spirit of God. A Slanderer has actually removed himself from the community of believers that sits together in submission under the law of God, that is to say, under the word of God, and he has now placed himself over the law as judge. A slanderer puts himself on the seat of Jesus, the Son of God, and judge people falsely, because it is impossible to engage in slander without showing contempt and disregard for the word of God and even demoting it to below himself. Jesus is the only One who will judge people it is not we who judge. 

The point that St. James is making is that it is not merely that you have made yourself a corrupt judge over your brother, but also In slandering or judging your brother, you have slandered and judged the word of God itself. St. Paul in his second epistle to the Corinthians, had listed the things he was concerned he might find in the Corinthian church. He said in chapter twelve, “For I am afraid that perhaps when I come, I may find you to be not what I wish, and may be found by you to be not what you wish, that perhaps there will be strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, slanders, gossip, arrogance, disturbances.” 

Unfortunately some slanderers might even convince themselves that they are doing a service to others by warning them about someone that they heard about. But by spreading things they know it might not be true, they are not really serving anyone, and certainly not serving the truth. And others might also not even realize they are spreading half truths or lies. They are just trusting what they heard from someone else. They are just not being careful, wise, discerning as they share what was shared with them. So this command, this understanding about what slander is, should cause each one of us to be extremely careful every time we open our mouths to speak about another person and be aware of the danger of this sin cause we do not want to loose our eternity and the kingdom of heaven. 

Amen.

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