joi, 28 februarie 2013

BRINGING BACK THE LOST

"[4] It is easy to love good and honest people and to get on with them; but to go to the sinners and bring them to the correct path; that is a task which demands much self-denial.
[5] For if you walk in the street with a whore and an adulteress, people will point their fingers at you and do things to you which will not honor you before the world; but if you bring the whore and the adulteress back to the correct path, you will be given a great reward from God, and the smallest part of this is of more value than a whole world full of the most shining honor.
[6] Whoever brings a lost person back to Me will receive more reward than one who has guarded well a hundred lambs on a safe pasture. For it is a very easy task to keep an honest person honorable and virtuous; but to lift someone who is despised by everyone up to honor again and to make a virtuous hero out of an arch-sinner says significantly more! And only that is seen favorably to Me – but the former is only work of a lazy fellow!
[7] I am the all-highest, if you will accept that, and I seek and take only the despised and lost in the eyes of the world. For the healthy certainly do not need a doctor!
[8] If you accordingly want to completely be My true disciples and servants, you must also be what I am in all things.
[9] If you see a blind man strolling on the street and also see that the path he is treading is a highly dangerous one particularly for a blind person, will you not immediately take the blind walker by the arm and say to him: Listen, friend, the path that you are now walking is very dangerous; let me lead you so that you do not fall off a precipice! And if he then trusts your word, will you be ashamed to lead a blind man? Certainly none of you all!
[10] But a sinner is often much blinder spiritually than the physically blind; therefore who can be ashamed to take a blind man by the arm?!
[11] Therefore in the future let no sinner be too great for you so that you are ashamed to be a leader for him!" (The Great Gospel of John, chap. 49)

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