Greetings Matter: Holy Affection and Gospel Unity

Why am I pointing all of these kisses out? Because aside from between a husband and wife, between two spouses, kissing was not sexual or romantic. Kissing, depending on the context, was to communicate honor and respect. It was to communicate restoration and reconciliation, and it was to communicate this healthy relational affection. And that healthy bet. And that is what our greetings within the body of Christ should communicate. If we are one body, if we are one family, then we should treat each other like that. Ephesians two nineteen puts it this way. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are all fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. [00:41:19] (44 seconds)  #GreetLikeFamily

Sometimes in the American church and even here at REACH, we choose to be among the body of Christ. We choose to be in the same church. We choose to listen to the same exact sermons. We choose to be challenged in the same areas, and yet we choose not to stop and acknowledge one another. We choose not to see one another, and we also choose not to let ourselves be seen by each other. In the first century church in the first century, the church was where the believers actually experienced true family. It's where they experienced genuine love and pure affection, and the holy kiss was the visible expression of the one another lifestyle they were all called to live as siblings. And the same is supposed to be true for us today. [00:38:22] (42 seconds)  #OneAnotherLifestyle

Here we see a woman using kisses to seduce someone into having sex with her. This kiss is a bait to seduce someone into sin. So sometimes our affections, we can pervert them if we are trying to get someone to dishonor God in our interactions and in our relationships with them. That's not right. Proverbs twenty seven six says, faithful are the wounds of a friend. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. And then when you go over to Luke 22, you see that Judas betrayed Jesus with what? A kiss. Right? So so this is a kiss that an enemy uses to deceive and to betray somebody. [00:48:39] (38 seconds)  #DeceptiveAffection

Why? Because they both were in the same battle, because they both fought in the same war, and they both made it to the other side of that. So now they're embracing because they're just glad that they can see each other and they made it over. The reality is we are all in the body of Christ fighting some kind of spiritual battle. When we see one another, our greeting should reflect that same kind of struggle that that no matter what I went through outside of the church, no matter what I went through this week, no matter how much the world beat me up, no matter how hard it was to die to my flesh, no matter what was going on in my life, that when I see my brother and sister, I should just be so happy that, yo, we both made it to today, that we made it to this side. There was people who didn't make it from last Sunday to this Sunday, but we did. [00:44:10] (47 seconds)  #WeMadeItTogether

The king set up golden calf idols for worship, and people would kiss these idols in an act of devotion, allegiance, and submission to those gods. It was like they were declaring that the idol was in fact their god and not they were not honoring the one true god. And so this was an idolatrous kiss where they directed their affection towards the wrong things. And we pervert this when in the body of Christ, we divert our affections towards the wrong people and the wrong things. It is when we place people over God. It is when we elevate our leaders over God, when we elevate our spouses over God, our friendships over God, that is an idolatrous kiss. Y'all get what I'm saying? [00:49:47] (44 seconds)  #AffectionForGodFirst

The reality is they perverted something that should have been seen as good. And today, we do the same thing. We pervert our affections toward our brothers and sisters in Christ through impurity, insincerity, favoritism, isolation, and division. We do it through impurity when boundaries are crossed and when the physical touching isn't wholesome but is, in fact, flirtatious, when relationships become suggestive and our affections shift from holy to really sensual, when we aren't just calling our brother or sister in Christ because we're trying to see how they're doing, but we're calling them because we bored, and we ain't got nobody to talk to or date. Right? [00:51:58] (39 seconds)  #KeepAffectionPure

We pervert it when we're married and we're with somebody, but we're annoyed with our spouse so we get our needs met through our relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Right? See, anytime our motives are about meeting the needs of our flesh, then our interactions are perverted. Does that make sense? When I'm saying in sincerity, I'm talking about the kiss we were talking about in Proverbs 27. It's when we smile in people's face, but we talk about them behind their back. That's insincerity. Right? It's when we greet people on Sunday, but we intentionally avoid them during the week. It's when we're fake or inauthentic in our relationships. That is a perversion of what God intended. [00:52:37] (39 seconds)  #AuthenticChurchRelationships

It's when we allow ourselves to be easily offended, and we refuse to bear with one another. Remember the father embraced the prodigal son and then gave him a kiss? That showed restoration and reconciliation. See, we can't have pure greetings if we got divisive hearts towards each other. Right? So so we gotta deal with that. In the body of Christ, we gotta protect one another by not perverting our affections and our interactions. If we look at first Timothy five one through two, it says, do not rebuke an older man, but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, and all purity. [00:54:25] (40 seconds)  #RestoreAndReconcile