As I passed a church yesterday, I saw these words on their portable sign: "We catch 'em and God cleans 'em!" It was something close to that, though I may not have the exact working.
"We catch 'em..."
No, we work in the power of the Holy Spirit to love people and share truth with them, but God draws them and saves them. Yes, He allows us to sow seeds of the Gospel and to love those who do not know Christ, but truly He "catches 'em" with us as His co-fisherman, if you will. I know Jesus called His disciples to become "fishers of men", but we don't catch 'em all by ourselves.
"God cleans 'em..."
Not really-well, sorta'! If God cleans 'em, what does that say about Paul's admonition to "teach faithful men who will teach others also" or Jesus' command to "go into all the world and make disciples...teaching them all things I (Jesus) have commanded you"? Doesn't that communicate that God doesn't clean 'em by Himself.
Loving people and speaking truth go hand in hand. In fact, to site Dietrich Bonhoeffer's statement about faith and works: "If you have one, you have neither. But if you have both, you have everything and more." I believe God's power and personal presence are at work in "catching 'em" and in "cleaning 'em". I also believe in most cases Abba allows us as Followers of Jesus to assist in both the catching and the cleaning.
Maybe it is better stated that He draws people to His Son and we get to be there to speak the truth in love and to love them into the family of God. Then after a person is born again, we get to love them into a deeper relationship with God and our forever family of Christ-followers. So, God's love and our love are joined with God's work and our work in a powerful union that cooperates in the catching and the cleaning.
By the way we don't clean 'em in the sense of scraping off all the scaly stuff and gutting them. The process of becoming like Jesus is more a transformation that a "cleaning". Wouldn't you say?
Could it be that the religious philosophy that says all we have to do is "catch 'em" then God will "clean 'em" may be a part of the image of the modern church as distant and unloving, that so many in our country hold.
As I read in Dr. David Ferguson's book-Great Commandment Principle, instead of saying "you need God" the church should be communicating that "we need God and each other". That seems to get the command of Jesus a lot more accurately when He said in John 13:34-35:
"34A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Let's lovingly speak the truth and live God's love so powerfully that all men will know that we are His disciples whether we are "catching 'em" or "cleaning 'em".
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