It's OK Not To Be OK, It's Just Not OK To Stay There

One should be careful not to confuse the parable of the wedding feast found in Matthew 22 with Luke 14:16–24. Both parables invite strangers to attend because the invited guests have rejected the invitation. Luke's account judges the people who rejected the invitation to the feast. But Matthew's account goes beyond that by judging one of the strangers--at first it seems harshly--for not wearing the proper attire. 

"When the king came in to look over the dinner guests, he saw a man there who was not dressed in wedding clothes, and he said to him, 'Friend how did you come here without wedding clothes?; And the man was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."

If you are like me, your first reaction to this may have been, "That doesn't seem fair. The stranger wasn't expecting an invitation. Why would he be thrown out? Where's the love in that?" But once I got past my preprogrammed cultural bias I was able to see the truth that Jesus was teaching.

God is gracious but not without justice. Our culture--Church culture--which has come to believe that in His grace God accepts people who act contrary to his will, is simply not true. The invitation to be in relationship with God is universal (that's grace), but the acceptance is based on or proven through the evidence of a transformed heart that seeks to obey God. 

We stumble in many ways (James 3:2) and that does not disqualify us from the wedding feast of the lamb--the celebration of Jesus being united with His bride (the Church). However, when a person intentionally trips up by doing something they know is contrary to the desire of God, they are in danger of being thrown out.

The adage that we hear often at Kapahulu Bible Church explains this teaching well, "It's OK not to be OK, it's just not OK to stay there."