(8/21/22)
A well known pastor has been known by many for his use of a phrase:
A well known pastor has been known by many for his use of a phrase:
“The Spirit of Jesus in me greets the Spirit of Jesus in you and brings us together in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.”
This week I was listening to one of the podcasts he hosts and he used a different opening, “The love of Jesus in me greets the love of Jesus in you…..”
The change up was obvious and I wondered why.
I am curious……. wondering if “Spirit of Jesus” is offensive to some?
One person who knows this individual said, “No. He’s just getting to the age where he mixes and jumbles things up at times. That’s all.”
It has been the insistence of some on reducing “love” to a human emotion and using the human kindness of Jesus as synonymous, often disregarding both the divine mandate for obedience to the Word and the divine nature of Jesus that are, in part, at the heart of a current denominational mess. So an accommodation to the “love of Jesus” over the Spirit of Jesus or the Spirit of Jesus Christ seems to be intentional in the particular podcast….
I’m not sure why it unsettles me… but it does. Maybe I’m more Pentecostal and Fundamentalist than I have known…. or just among the wounded previously burned by the left’s slick reasoning and wordsmithing, and therefore cautious.
I thought that might be the case, so I went back and listened to all the recent podcasts hosted by him. He’s using “love of Jesus” in all of them instead of Spirit of Jesus.
It is a concern. There certainly is a difference between the two. And we do need to be careful with such casual exchanges.