From: "Castillo, Jaime W." <jwcastil@utmb.edu>

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 09:35:24

To: "'WalterMartin@mail.serve.com '" <WalterMartin@mail.serve.com>

Subject: WM: RE: Word Faith teaching

Thank you for such honesty. Are you aware of what the Bible says about that? It says before you can take the mote out of your brothers eye, take the beam out of your own eye first so that you can see clearly. So maybe, you should not criticize people of what you are also guilty of. Please don't take this wrong. I'm saying this out of the love of God. Matthew 7:1-5

It's unbiblical to attempt to correct someone if you have the same problem. At least that's what I understand Matthew 7:1-5 is saying. --Dave

Dave,

I agree with you here. But the mere fact that I realize my sin, and I am moving forward to doing something about it, is the process of taking out the beam. Am I just saying this? If all of us have to wait UNTIL we are perfectly HOLY before we can make RIGHTEOUS judgement, then we will never get there. Jesus was stressing SELF-EXAMINATION and actually DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT (removing the beam). Can you say that you can judge hypocrisy or false pride now Dave, because you are 100% honest and true and humble in all aspects of your life, thought, and actions? If you say you are, you are going against 1 John 1:10, "If we say that we have not sinned, we call Him a liar, and His word is not in us." But if you say you still commit the sin of hypocrisy or pride from time to time--then are you saying you cannot point out that another person is obviously being a hypocrite or falsely proud? If you cannot point it out, then there is no point for you to be in this forum, to help us your brethren in fighting deception. And this is because you may feel you cannot call the cults having the sin of pride, ignorance, hypocrisy, or deception---since you may claim to have sins of your own.

Do you see what I am getting at? Jesus meant that we should examine ourselves first, and surely we see abundance of sin in our hearts. By His grace, we work towards taking care of those sins. Do we prevent ourselves from perceiving deception and false attitudes from other people while we do it--of course not. The Scriptures are replete in examples on how we should discern and correct false apostles, and wayward brethren. And this is a responsibility for all of us IMPERFECT Christians. Look at the forum list, Dave--can you say that there is one in the forum who is not a hypocrite AT ALL, at any point in time, or will certainly NOT commit the sin of hypocrisy? If you then say that we all will sin (not just hypocrisy), should we then stop in identifying sinful untruths?

What Jesus hates is SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS, us correcting others without doing something about our own faults. But in no way does He stop us from identifying untruths, and people who propagate them in their words and actions.

Love in Christ,

Jaime