No Middle Ground, Luke 11:23

"He that is not with Me is against Me: and he that gathereth not with Me scattereth."

     Jesus said in Revelation 3:15-17 to the church of Laodicea, "I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot. So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth." In Luke 11 He warns, "He who is not for Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters". There is no middle ground with Jesus. It is all or nothing.
     We cannot claim to know Jesus and yet only involve Him in our lives for an hour or two on Sundays. We can't say that we are the children of God and say "Amen!" along with the pastor at church and then go home and live the way we want to-- completely disregarding God's will, God's plans, and God's existence and presence in our lives. This is just plain hypocrisy, which Jesus condemned time and again in the Pharisees and religious leaders of His day.
     It is true, we are all hypocritical to some extent, because none of us are perfect. But to be outwardly righteous and inwardly wicked, as the Pharisees were, or to call yourself a Christian (which means, "little Christ", implying a similarity to Christ) and live life as if God didn't even exist except for a few hours a week-- this is blatant and foolish hypocrisy, which God outright despises. He would rather we be totally against Him, as we see in Revelation 3, than to be wishy-washy and passive, not taking a stand and backing down all the time. He would rather we reject Him than claim to commit our lives to Him and then not follow through. Such a person who claims to know Christ and yet does not walk in the Spirit, abiding in Christ, is prone to becoming deceived, thinking he has salvation and that he is doing well, when in actuality his very soul is in jeopardy.

     There can be no middle ground with Christ. Some will say, when faced with the decision of whether or not to accept Jesus, that they don't accept Him, but that they don't necessarily reject Him-- They just haven't made up their minds yet. But to not accept Him is to reject Him. To take it one step further, there may be those who claim to have accepted Him, but yet are living for themselves and doing their own thing. They will tell you that they may not be living all for Christ as they know they should, but that they aren't on the enemy's side, that they aren't "scattering"-- That is, Christ is gathering people into the kingdom of God, and those who are not working to bring others into the kingdom are not just passively sitting along the side lines, but they are working (whether they realize it or not) to keep people out of the kingdom of God. They are scattering, undoing the work that Christ is working to accomplish.