I can see you. This is what Jesus is saying to the church in Thyatira. His fiery penetrating eyes upon the impure heart are what invoke the burning agony of shame. Though there was much in their faith that was commendable, many of the Thyatirans had taken advantage of an excuse to indulge in sexual sin. This excuse was given to them by a false teacher in the church who seems to have made allowances for the Christians to indulge in pagan sex cults, probably to deflect hostility from the pagan Greeks in that city. There is always a part of us that will jump up and seize an excuse if it is presented. We’ll convince ourselves that ‘it’s not that bad’, that ‘we’re not hurting anyone’, ‘that ‘it’s just this once’ and so on. Excuses are the bolt cutters that open the doors that God has locked for our safety. Your conscience acts like a barrier to such compromise, but if you break through this barrier, you break a vital part of yourself. It may not seem that much harm is done at first but, when you break that lock and open that door, you open yourself to ever increasing damage. Jesus comes down harshly on this false teacher who was opening these doors for the Thyatiran Christians. But let’s keep in mind that the excuses we seize upon don’t usually come from without but from within. In most cases we provide our own excuses for sin and we should be warned by Jesus’ solemn rebuke here.
Let Jesus search your heart and mind and extract the compromise and the excuses.
Read Revelation 2:18-29
