Thank you for your comment. Reconciliation should always be the goal of the Christian message. The problem is when people believe that the Bible is the Absolute Word of God, there is no basis for reconciliation, even with other Christians because they usually understand the Absolute Truth in a very narrow way.
That is why it is necessary to understand the Word/Logos of God as the Living Word Jesus Christ Who is much larger than our narrow interests. That is exactly what we need today. I really do not understand how some “evangelical” leaders can still support the President.
@mitchellmckain, thank you for the scripture.
John 5:36-40 (NIV2011)
37 And the Father Who sent Me has Himself testified concerning Me. You have never heard His voice nor seen His Form,
38 nor does His Word dwell in you, for you do not believe the One He sent.
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about Me,
40 yet you refuse to come to Me to have Life.
John 5:16-18 (NIV2011)
16 So, because Jesus was doing these things on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders began to persecute Him.
17 In His defense Jesus said to them, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I too am working.”
18 For this reason they tried all the more to kill Him; not only was He breaking the Sabbath, but He was even calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.
I trust you are familiar with this pericope from the same passage where Jesus challenges the statement that God rested on the Seventh day.
Orthographic conventions have meaning. The capitalization of the Word of God in John 1:1 indicates that Jesus is God, which we also know from the context. When evangelicals capitalize the Word of God meaning the Bible, they indicate that they consider the Bible divine because they give divine attributes such as infallibility and final authority.
The Bible is not God’s Word, it is not Jesus Christ. Jesus is without sin. The Bible is not inerrant.
As @mitchellmckain pointed out through the scripture Jesus criticized the Pharisees because they were Legalists who put their faith in the Torah, rather than God. Jesus told us that we must put our faith Him and Him alone, sola Jesus.
Those who put their faith in the Bible as the Word of God are following the path of the Pharisees and could end up in the same place. I am not here to judge anyone, but to proclaim the goodness that repentance and faith in Jesus Christ saves. Good works do not save, nor does theology save. Only Jesus saves and only Jesus judges who is right with God, not me or anyone else.
Jesus is the Alpha and Omega of our faith. When we make the Bible our Standard as the Word of God, then we place a God between us and the Father. Also we know Living God directly through the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while the Bible interpreted by human tradition is a product of the dead past.