2002-12-31
Good Morning Dear Ones,
I am led to continue discussing the guidelines we find in EPH 4: 1-3 for being worthy of the blessings we receive from God, including being given the power that God used to raise Christ from death to life to wage spiritual warfare with the devil. It is especially true that new believers who are told they have important blessings, including even their own salvation, have a hard time believing it. They are short on experiencing God, which is done through obeying His commands, and seeing His interactions in the lives of the faithful. Many believers have been raised to think of themselves as unworthy by well-meaning but misguided parents. There is also the truth of the conflict between the body and Spirit that begins when one first comes to faith and continues until one’s sanctification is complete. It’s described in RO 7: 14-25. Our loving Abba understands this predicament exactly, so He gives us many clear directions for how we can be worthy in the Scriptures. For review, let’s look at EPH 4: 1-3, “I urge you then-I who am a prisoner because I serve the Lord: live a life that measures up to the standard God set when He called you. Be always humble, gentle, and patient. Show your love by being tolerant with one another. Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace that binds you together.” Yesterday, we looked at the first directive about measuring up to the standard God set. Today, let’s look at the second one about being humble, gentle, patient, and showing our love by being tolerant.
I must say that my own experience growing up lacked training in the areas of the second directive here. Not being raised in a Christian home might be a partial explanation for that, but there is more to it than that. The fact is that children from elementary school through the beginning of college can be downright mean to each other. There is sibling rivalry, bullying in school, reaction to pressure to compete, and a host of other worldly reasons for this. The beauty of being brought up in a home where Christ leads is that faithful obedience being taught is the only really effective counter to the reality of worldly behavior and motives. There are some features of Christ’s own life that demonstrate this well. I love the story of a twelve year old Jesus Christ sitting with the Jewish teachers in the temple in Jerusalem while his parents were looking for Him in LK 2: 41-48. There was no evil intent or arrogance on Christ’s part in this story. With all His characteristic kindness at the time of his parents’ question about where He had been once they found Him, Christ answered [LK 2: 49-50], “Why did you have to look for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” When Joseph and Mary didn’t understand Christ’s answer, He obediently left the others on Solomon’s porch and went home with His earthly parents.
It’s important to talk about Christ in dealing with the issues of gentleness, humility, patience, and tolerance, because it is His example that we should follow. Even what had to be a very painful incident in His own home town of Nazareth, depicted in LK 4: 16-30, didn’t turn our Lord into a sour, bitter, mean-spirited man. By this time Christ was an adult and had already successfully walked over the hot coals of His temptation in the wilderness. He went to Nazareth and began teaching in the synagogue there about the widow of Zarephath [1 K 17: 8-16] and the healing of Naaman [2 K 5: 1-14]. This made the people very angry, and they threw Him out of town. They meant to throw Him over a cliff, but He walked through the middle of the crowd and went His way [LK 4: 29-30]. In (24), Christ commented, “A prophet is never welcomed in His home town.”
The issue of tolerance hits close to home with me. Because I am a Messianic Jew, I’ve personally known what it is like to face persecution. A portion of my family perished in the Holocaust because of it. Personally, I encountered it in school too. It is why the story of Christ’s encounter with the Samaritan women at the well is so precious to me [JN 4: 1-40]. Christ demonstrated in this story that it is the condition of person’s heart-attitude that mattered more than his genetic heritage. Samaritans were only half Jewish, and thus the Jews of Christ’s time wanted nothing to do with them. Christ broke through this social barrier by even speaking to the woman, much less taking the time to teach her the truth. Even more amazing is Christ’s revelation of His true identity to her in JN 4: 25-26. “The woman said to Him, ‘I know that the Messiah will come, and when He comes, He will tell us everything.’ Jesus answered, ‘I am He, I Who am talking with you.’” Paul really highlighted this teaching in RO 2: 28-29 at the end of his expose of the hypocrisy of the traditional Jews of his time. “After all, who is a real Jew, truly circumcised? It is not the man who is a Jew on the outside, whose circumcision is a physical thing. Rather, the real Jew is a the person who is a Jew on the inside, that is, whose heart has been circumcised, and this is the work of God’s Spirit, not of the written Law. Such a person receives his praise from God, not from man.” We should never forget the God-inspired words uttered by Rev. Martin Luther King, “A man should be judged not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.”
The example set by Christ and the truths that his followers have passed on to us should never be ignored. Christ showed us what real humility is. He never set Himself above God, nor ever treated any other person in an evil way. That is the example we should follow.
PRAYER: O Lord, every person of faith has made that decision to come to Christ with the intent of seeking more happiness than he ever had before doing so. You have promised us provision and abundance in our lives, if we will only obey Your commands, carry on in our spiritual warfare with Satan using the tools You have given us, and refuse to give into the pain, suffering, and loss that Satan brings us. When we please You, You give us “the peace that goes beyond human understanding” [PHIL 4: 7] as a sign that we are on the right track. This can sometimes even happen against all kinds of odds. We need only look at the challenges to Christ’s faith and that of the faithful prophets and writers of the Scriptures to see that. Even David so long ago understood the need for gentleness, patience, humility, and tolerance in his life. This is reflected in PS 37: 11, “But all who humble themselves before the Lord shall be given every blessing, and shall have wonderful peace.” His continuing goodness toward Saul, even when Saul was persecuting him, shows this. The same can be said for David’s relationship with Saul’s son, Jonathan, for whom he showed no unkindness or prejudice, even through Saul was persecuting him. David was by no means perfect in the way Christ is, but he was willing to humble himself before God and ask for His guidance, as he did in PS 25: 4-5, Show me Thy ways, O Lord; teach me Thy paths. Lead me in Thy truth, and teach me: for Thou art the God of my salvation; on Thee do I wait all the day.” These same words could have been uttered by the Samaritan woman at the well to Christ, because of the attitude of her heart. Your Son is the example we pledge to follow. Dearest Abba, we come before You today in humility to confess our sins, to express our willingness to seek You out for guidance, and to offer You our adoration, worship, loyalty, diligence, honor, glory, trust, obedience, thanksgiving, and praise. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, we will look at the last directive in EPH 4: 1-3, “Do your best to preserve the unity which the Spirit gives by means of the peace that binds you together.” When one considers the alternative to a life lived in Christ, it is unthinkable. We are truly a blessed people who have been given clear direction on how to be worthy of what God is giving us. Our lives are complicated by human agendas, challenges that come to us by the world’s values, and by Satan’s continuing attempts to cause us despair. But, praise to the Lord Who loves each of us so much, that He gives us the power, direction, encouragement, and patience to come against all of this evil in the name of Jesus Christ, our Yeshua HaMashiah Adonai [Hebrew for Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior]. God loves each of you, and so do Peter and I.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn