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Daily Bible thoughts 761: Wednesday 3rd December 2014:

 Ephesians 1:15-23

It is a remarkable thought that Jesus has been made to be ‘’head over everything for the church.’’ (Underlining mine.) He has been put in that topmost position for our sakes, and this has application to prayer.

Many years ago, when I was a pastor at ‘Bridge Street Church’ in Leeds, I arrived early one evening for a men’s meeting. I found the door to the cellar open, and there was a light on. So I made my way down the steps to see who might be there. But before I set eyes on anyone, I heard the voice of the church’s head usher. He was a lovely, practical man, whose heart was in serving the Lord. What came to my ears was the sound of someone pouring out his heart to His Saviour. I beat a hasty retreat. I felt I was trespassing on sacred ground. I probably learned more about him in those moments than at any other time. When you overhear someone praying, you feel their heartbeat. What’s that saying? ‘’What a man is on his knees before God, that he is and nothing more.’’

In today’s reading we stumble across Paul on his knees, and we get to take his pulse. I find it challenging to think how persistent Paul was in both praise and prayer (16, 17: ‘’I have not stopped giving thanks…I keep asking…’’ ) Paul saw positive qualities in the believers he was writing to (or, rather he had ‘’heard’’ about these characteristics) and He thanked the triune God who was shaping their lives and prayed for yet more of His transforming activity. Do you remember what I said yesterday about the Trinitarian format? Well, here it is again. The Son, the Father and the Spirit are mentioned in (16, 17). So what did Paul ask?

  • That they would know God better (17): He knew that this could only happen by virtue of ‘’wisdom and revelation’’ imparted by the Spirit;
  • That they would have insight into the future God has prepared for them (18a): He prays for heart knowledge of this ‘’hope’’;
  • That they would know how rich they are because of God (18b – OR, how rich God is because of them; see Deut.32:9. It is not totally clear whether this ‘’glorious inheritance’’ is ours or His. Of course, both realities are true, regardless of the meaning here.)
  • That they would know the power available to the church (19-23). Remarkably, this ‘’incomparably great power for us who believe’’ is like the power that raised Jesus from the dead and put Him on the throne of the universe. ‘’All this energy issues from Christ: God raised him from death and set him on a throne in deep heaven, in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and no power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything. At the center of all this, Christ rules the church. The church, you see, is not peripheral to the world; the world is peripheral to the church. The church is Christ’s body, in which he speaks and acts, by which he fills everything with his presence.’’ The Message. Remember that God gave Jesus all this power and control ‘’for the church’’.

‘’Thou art coming to a King; large petitions with thee bring. For His grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much.’’

Prayer: Thank you Lord for the stupendous power available to us.

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Daily Bible thoughts 760: Tuesday 2nd December 2014:

 Ephesians 1:3-14

In the Greek language, this is one long sentence, having no punctuation. It moves at breakneck speed, you might say. It’s been likened to a golden chain made up of many links, and to a snowball rolling downhill, picking up pace and volume as it moves. Paul is spouting praise like a fountain, and you can imagine his scribe struggling to keep up with all the words pouring out of him. The apostle is ‘’lost in wonder, love and praise.’’ He stands amazed at so great a salvation.

There is a Trinitarian structure to this opening sentence – something we regularly find in Paul’s writings. We will encounter the format again. What the Father planned in eternity past; whatever God the Son made possible at the cross; that is what the Holy Spirit makes real in our lives. He has been described as the ‘Executor of the Godhead’.

  • God the Father chose us (4, 5): There is a mystery to the doctrine of ‘election’, but it is taught in the Bible, and God has given us ‘’wisdom and understanding’’ (8), even if we can’t dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. ‘’He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ…’’ The Message. It gives enormous security to know that we are God’s wanted, dearly-loved children. His great purpose to save us is all for His glory (6, 12, and 14). The plan of salvation flows from God’s mind and heart and results in His honour. It is also a purpose of ‘’grace’’ (6, 7). In fact this can be called ‘’glorious grace’’ (7) and it has been ‘’lavished’’ on us (8). Our salvation does not depend on any merit in us, but upon God’s free gift. God’s purpose embraces Jews (‘’we’’ 11, 12) and Gentiles (‘’you also’’ 13).
  • God the Son bought us (5-7, 3): Not only is this passage Trinitarian in shape; it is also Christ-centred. Paul emphasises by repetition that all the blessings God wants us to enjoy are ‘’in Christ’’. Imagine taking a child into a toy shop and saying, ‘You can have not just one thing but everything!’ Yet that is nothing compared to what God gives in and through His Son (3). Jesus paid an unimaginable price for us to enjoy this ‘everything’ (7). God’s ultimate purpose is a new creation: a fully Christ-centred universe (9, 10). As David Pawson once said, it will be ‘’a universe in which even the stars are Christians.’’
  • God the Spirit sealed us (13, 14): The Holy Spirit is described by Paul as ‘’a deposit’’. A deposit is not the full amount you are going to pay for something, but it is part of it, and a promise that at the right time you will hand over the rest! How do we know we are going to heaven? We have a little bit of heaven inside us already in the Person of the Holy Spirit. Eternal life is the life of the future already invading the present. We carry around inside our mortal bodies a foretaste of an immortal future. We have ‘heaven on the way to heaven’. In terms of the seal: you might go to market in those days and buy something, but perhaps you couldn’t take it home with you there and then. So you would take your ring, dip it in wax and seal the item. In so doing you were identifying what you had bought as being your own. You were saying, ‘This is mine. I’ve paid for it. I can’t take it home with me just now, but I will come back for it eventually.’

‘’God saves sinners not to solve their problems but to bring glory to Himself (vv.6, 12, 14; 3:21)’’ Warren W. Wiersbe: ‘With the Word’, p.773.    

 Prayer: Lord, what can I say? I want to join Paul in his breathless worship.

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Daily Bible thoughts 759: Monday 1st December 2014:

Ephesians 1:1, 2

One preacher described Paul’s letter to the Ephesians as a ‘pearl’. He pointed out that a pearl is formed when an irritation, a piece of grit, gets into an oyster. The oyster then secretes a substance that becomes a pearl. This Bible teacher described ‘Ephesians’ as a ‘pearl’ formed through the irritation of imprisonment (for Paul).

I see this letter as the ‘Switzerland’ of the New Testament. There is so much (theological) grandeur, majesty and beauty crammed into a relatively small space! We certainly scale doctrinal heights, and yet, at the same time, we walk in practical depths. What we see from the top of the mountain, we have to live out on the valley floor.

You may be aware that this letter divides into two halves. Chapters 1-3 deal with belief and chapters 4-6 are about behaviour. The structure of the book says, ‘Doctrine then duty; creed then conduct; preaching then practice.’ What God has joined together must not be put asunder by man. Eugene Peterson writes wonderfully about this pattern in his introduction to Ephesians in The Message: ‘’What we know about God and what we do for God have a way of getting broken apart in our lives. The moment the organic unity of belief and behaviour is damaged in any way, we are incapable of living out the full humanity for which we were created. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians joins together what has been torn apart in our sin-wrecked world. He begins with an exuberant exploration of what Christians believe about God, and then, like a surgeon skilfully setting a compound fracture, ‘’sets’’ this belief in God into our behaviour before God so that the bones – belief and behaviour – knit together and heal.’’

In the best manuscripts, the words ‘’in Ephesus’’ do not appear in (1). That part is left blank. A popular theory has emerged that Ephesians was originally a ‘circular letter’, and that it was sent to a number of churches in an area in which Ephesus was the chief city. So, over time, the name of Ephesus became associated with it. But as it was taken from church to church, each individual congregation could fill in the blank with their own name. It certainly is true to say that this letter doesn’t seem to have the particularities of other Pauline letters in which he is dealing with specific issues in local churches. (You think for example of the matters addressed and questions answered in 1 Corinthians).

Saul of Tarsus did not expect to become ‘’an apostle of Christ Jesus’’ (1). Nothing was further from his mind that day as he set off for Damascus (Acts 9). His business was eradicating Christianity. He did not intend to speak for Jesus, but to work against Him. But, looking back, he recognised that he had been caught up in the sovereign purpose of ‘’God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’’ (2); an eternal plan he goes on to write about so eloquently in this first chapter. Everything God had done for him in Christ (and has done for us all), stems from ‘’grace’’ (His undeserved favour) and results in ‘’peace’’. We can take heart that God still takes ‘Saul’s’ and turns them into ‘Pauls’. That person you pray for regularly, but they seem the least likely individual in your world to respond positively to Jesus, do not doubt that God can do for them what He did for Saul. Peterson writes about Ephesians that ‘’the energy of reconciliation is the dynamo at the heart of the universe’’ . That ‘’energy’’ had invaded Paul’s life and totally altered his career path! The ‘’will of God’’ is stronger than man’s will, and it radically altered the trajectory of his life.

Prayer: Lord, I bring ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_________ to you today. Please do in them what you did for Saul.

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Daily Bible thoughts 758: Friday 28th November 2014:

Isaiah 54

Another repeated theme in the later chapters of Isaiah is that of great numerical growth (see Isaiah 49:19, 20). It is a growth so significant, indeed so miraculous (‘’barren woman’’), that it takes more than the return from Babylonian exile to account for it. These verses must look toward the coming of the Messiah and the advancement of His Kingdom. Following His suffering and triumph, which we thought about yesterday, we see the outworking of that victory in the world. The Apostle Paul quoted (1) and applied it to the ‘’Jerusalem that is above’’, i.e. the church (Galatians 4:24-28). Let’s not be content with a small vision, but work for, and pray for, and expect the church’s growth.

‘’In Christian terms, the Calvary of ch.53 is followed by the growing church of ch.54 and the gospel call of ch.55.’’ Derek Kidner: ‘New Bible Commentary’, pp.663, 664

Verses 1-3: The little post-exilic community of Jews did grow and spread out to some degree, but these words are now being fulfilled in the expansion of Christ’s Kingdom on earth. ‘’Spread out! Think big!…You’re going to need lots of elbow room for your growing family. You’re going to take over whole nations; you’re going to resettle abandoned cities.’’ The Message.

Verses 4-8: Jerusalem will forget the ‘’shame’’ of her ‘’youth’’ (the slavery in Egypt), and the ‘’reproach’’ of her ‘’widowhood’’ (4 – the exile in Babylon). She has a Husband, her ‘’Maker…the LORD Almighty’’ (5). She was like a ‘’wife deserted’’ (6), but was only ‘’abandoned’’ for a ‘’brief moment’’ for her unfaithfulness. However, God was going to turn things around (7, 8) and bring His wife back into the family home. The separation was never going to be final; it was just with a view to bringing the wayward spouse to her senses; a ‘short, sharp shock’ you might say!

Verses 9, 10: This was a ‘line in the sand’ moment, such as when God promised that He would never destroy the world again by a flood (Genesis 9:11). Here He promises that His ‘’covenant of peace’’ will never be removed (10). He will never stop loving His people. They can count on it.This is the covenant in which the Lord promised to be Israel’s God forever (Genesis 17:7). It includes within it a promise of protection and security – that the spiritual enemies of God’s people will never prevail against them (Matthew 16:18).

Verses 11-15: Here we have a figurative description of Jerusalem following the exile. But it is even more a picture of the ‘’new Jerusalem’’ which will come down from heaven at the culmination of history (Revelation 21:2, 10, 11, 18-21). There is no guarantee that God’s people will not come under attack, but in the midst of that they can know ‘’great…peace’’ (13).

Verses 16, 17: ‘’This is the true strength of God’s city, which is promised not immunity from attack but the unanswerable weapon of truth (17; cf. Lk.21:15).’’ Derek Kidner: ‘New Bible Commentary’, p.664.

Prayer: I thank you Lord Jesus for the working out of your triumph in the world, and for allowing me to be part of it.

 

 

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Daily Bible thoughts 757: Thursday 27th November 2014:

Isaiah 52:13-53:12

‘’Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought GOD’s saving power would look like this? The Message.

This is truly one of the most remarkable passages in that most amazing of all Books, The Bible. It is the last of the four ‘Servant Songs’ It’s like Isaiah, writing more than 500 years before Jesus was crucified, stood at the foot of the cross and witnessed it all. Here are a number of key points to consider:

  • Glorification following humiliation (52:13; 53:10-12): Elevation following execution. The ultimate victory of the ‘Suffering Servant’ (see Philippians 2:5-11). Acceptance following rejection (53:3). Although Jesus would not have natural children (53:8b), He would have many children (53:10). I am one of them! Are you? Although His death would appear tragic, it would end in triumph.
  • Worldwide impact (52:15);
  • Unimaginable suffering (52:14; 53:3): We may not fully understand our own sufferings or those of other people we know (or hear about), but we can affirm that Jesus has suffered more than anyone. His was also totally innocent suffering (5). He was the only morally flawless Man in history: ‘’We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him – our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed.’’ The Message. It was also silent suffering (7); and it was unjust suffering (8a). The corruption surrounding His trial is alluded to here.
  • Christ’s lack of natural physical attractiveness (53:2): ‘’There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.’’ The Message.
  • His substitutionary death (53:4-6, 8b): Jesus took our place, bearing our punishment. It was all part of God’s plan (10a): ‘’We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And GOD has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.’’ The Message.
  • Other circumstances surrounding His death and burial (53:9) which are borne out in the gospels.

‘’Still, it’s what GOD had in mind all along, to crush him with pain. The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he’d see life come from it – life, life, and more life. And GOD’s plan will deeply prosper through him.’’ The Message.

‘’Consider the pictures of the Saviour: a beaten servant (52:13-14), a root (53:2), an innocent lamb (53:7), an offering for sin (53:10), a woman in travail giving birth to spiritual ‘’seed’’ (53:10-11), and a victorious general (53:12). Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’’ Warren W. Wiersbe: ‘With the Word’, p.485. Who can plumb the depths of this truly awesome passage? We are on holy ground and must remove our

Prayer: Thank you Jesus that all my sin and its condemnation were piled on you. Because of your loving sacrifice I am free. ‘Mine is the sin, but yours the righteousness; mine is the guilt, but yours the cleansing blood.’

 

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Daily Bible thoughts 756: Wednesday 26th November 2014:

 Isaiah 52:1-12

The proclamation of ‘’good tidings’’ at the core of this passage, is an announcement of freedom for the captives in Babylon. It is important to always remember that Isaiah wrote these words more than a century before the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians. During Isaiah’s lifetime, Assyria was Judah’s main enemy. But years in advance, the prophet was enabled to see not only Jerusalem’s fall to Babylon, but also the ultimate fall of the Babylonian empire. So we hear the good news that God is reigning, and the captives will be returning (7-10). Again, there is going to be a second exodus (4). God will lead them home (11, 12). God would not have to pay Babylon in order to retrieve His people; they never stopped belonging to Him (45:13).Although these verses primarily apply to the return from Babylon, they must have a greater relevance to the good news of worldwide salvation to come in the Messiah, Jesus (see Romans 10:15). The deliverance from Babylon was nothing in comparison with this. As so often in the prophetic writings, there are layers of meaning. It is fitting that this prophecy of Jerusalem’s redemption should be followed by the one about the suffering Servant. Through Jesus’ sacrificial death, worldwide deliverance was going to be made possible.

God’s punishment of His people, namely their exile in Babylon, provided a reason for the ungodly nations to ‘’mock’’ Him. They were saying, ‘’God can’t save His own people.’’ But God was going to take steps to reverse that opinion and glorify His Name before all peoples (4-6). ‘’…incessantly, my reputation blackened. Now it’s time that my people know who I am, what I’m made of…’’ The Message. In (7-10) Isaiah envisages messengers running across the ‘’mountains’’ towards Jerusalem, to bring the good news of the returning exiles. This return will silence the mockers (5).

In (11, 12) there is a final call to the captives to ‘’depart’’ from Babylon and its ungodliness. They should not defile themselves by touching any ‘’unclean’’ thing or engaging in any unclean act. This exhortation was particularly relevant to the priests and Levites in their company, who were charged with carrying back the sacred temple articles to Jerusalem (Ezra 1:7-11). In the New Testament era, we still need to heed this call to holiness (2 Corinthians 6:17). God has made it possible for us to ‘’Come out’’ from ‘Babylon’ and its pervasive influence. We don’t have to be controlled and dominated by it (Revelation 18:4).

By the way, Ezra, who led back the first group of exiles, must have taken this promise to heart (12; see Ezra 8:22, 23).

‘’In verse 2, Isaiah calls on the Daughter of Zion – Jerusalem and its people – to rise up. God has freed them; therefore, let them act like free people. This is a message for Christians today: we have been freed through Christ, yet too many of us live as if we were still in bondage to weakness, fear and sin. We need to ‘’rise up’’ and claim our freedom to live as free men and women (John 8:31-32, 36; Romans 8:2; Galatians 5:1).’’ Tom Hale: ‘The Applied Old Testament Commentary’, p.1053

Prayer: Lord God, please give us beautiful feet, to carry your good news everywhere. Thank you for the greater freedom Jesus brings. Help us to fully live in it, and declare it to everyone we can.

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Daily Bible thoughts 755: Tuesday 25th November 2014:

Isaiah 51:17-23

This is the second of three ‘’Awake, awake!’’ references that come in the space of two chapters (51, 52). The first one was a prayer, asking God to do something (51:9). But in the next two references God responds by telling Jerusalem to do something (51:9, 52:1). In a sense, a prayer for revival is one in which we ask God to ‘wake up His power’. Of course God’s power is never sleeping, but, at times, it can feel like it is. So we ask God to show His muscular ‘’arm’’. Then, in revival, God wakes up His church. Only once in these two chapters does the church ask God to wake up, but twice, God tells His church to wake up. God doesn’t need waking up. It just seems to us that He does. But His church does require an awakening. We are so often like Peter and John on the Mount of Transfiguration: ‘’very sleepy’’. Only when we become ‘’fully awake’’ will we see Jesus’ ‘’glory’’ (Luke 9:32). What kind of impact would a fully awakened church have on this nation; indeed on this world? May God have mercy on us for being so dopey!

God tells Jerusalem and its people to wake up because it’s a new day. They had ‘’drunk from…the cup…’’ of God’s ‘’wrath’’ (17). This is like a cup of strong wine that overwhelms the drinker and makes him ‘’stagger’’. However, all that was in the past. Their enemies would now be made to drink from that bitter cup (22, 23).

‘’You’ve drunk the cup GOD handed you, the strong drink of his anger. You drank it down to the last drop, staggered and collapsed, dead-drunk. And nobody to help you home, no one among your friends or children to take you by the hand and put you in bed. You’ve been hit with a double dose of trouble – does anyone care? Assault and battery, hunger and death – will anyone comfort? Your sons and daughters have passed out, strewn in the streets like stunned rabbits, Sleeping off the strong drink of GOD’s anger. The rage of your God. Therefore listen, please, you with splitting headaches, You who are nursing the hangovers that didn’t come from drinking wine. Your Master, your GOD, has something to say, your God has taken up his people’s case: ‘’Look, I’ve taken back the drink that sent you reeling. No more drinking from that jug of my anger! I’ve passed it over to your abusers to drink, those who ordered you, ‘Down on the ground so we can walk all over you!’ And you had to do it. Flat on the ground, you were the dirt under their feet.’’ The Message.

It is a wonderful gospel truth that no-one in the world need fear drinking the cup of God’s anger, if they put their trust in Jesus who drank it to its dregs for them upon the cross (Matthew 26:39). This passage says that with God there can be a new day and a second chance. Ultimately, all new beginnings in the gospel stem from the cross.

Prayer: I may not know, I cannot tell, what pains He had to bear; but I believe it was for us, He hung and suffered there. Thank you Jesus.

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Daily Bible thoughts 754: Monday 24th November 2014:

Galatians 6:11-18

Some people think the illness that brought Paul into the orbit of the Galatians (4:13) was an eye condition. Here is one reason why (11; see 4:15) Paul suffered unimaginably for the gospel (2 Corinthians 11:21-33), yet he gives this fact only a cursory mention in (17). There is something profoundly touching and sad about his words. Paul was ‘’persecuted’’ (12; see 4:29) because he was cross-centred (12-15). One reason why the message of the cross leads to a backlash is because it crucifies pride. It gives you no ground for boasting about yourself and your achievements. You can’t say, ‘I’m in the Kingdom of God because of my efforts; my religious activity. I’m here because of my own merits, because I was circumcised (or some other religious thing.)’ The cross gives you nothing to ‘’boast’’ about except ‘’the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’’ (14). Simply through faith in ‘’Christ crucified’’ (1 Corinthians 1:23, 24) people are born again and made anew by the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 5:17). We could argue that (15) sums up the entire letter to the Galatians. It is about ‘’grace’’ , ‘’mercy’’ and ‘’peace’’ (18, 16). We don’t earn anything; we don’t deserve anything because of some religious thing we do. We receive forgiveness of sins and a right standing with God through trust in Christ and His finished work on the cross. He puts His Spirit into us and makes us brand new people. ‘’When I survey the wondrous cross, on which the Prince of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss, and pour contempt on all my pride.’’ The cross of Jesus gives you nothing to brag about, and that is one reason why it gets its preachers into so much trouble. Paul knew that the very people who insisted on the need for circumcision/keeping the law, in fact did not keep the whole law themselves. They were highly selective in what they did (13)

Bill Hybels, the senior pastor of ‘Willow Creek Community Church’ ,Chicago, was attending a party on a boat one night. Just as he was stepping onto the ladder to leave, one of the guests shouted to him, ‘’Hey Bill, What’s the difference between religion and Christianity?’’ He knew that he only had a moment or two in which to answer, but this is what he said: ‘’Well, I spell religion ‘D.O.’ because it’s about all the things that people do to try to get right with God. But I spell Christianity ‘D.O.N.E.’ because it’s about what Jesus has done on the cross to make it possible for us to come to God. We just have to receive this as a gift.’’ We could say that the message of ‘Galatians’ can be summed up in terms of ‘do versus done’. The Judaizers were saying, ‘Do’. They said there are things you have to do to be saved, in addition to believing in Jesus. Notably, they argued, ‘You have to be circumcised’. Paul, however, resisted that notion. ‘It’s all been done for you on the cross by Jesus,’ he retorted.’ You simply have to receive this gift.’ In every generation of the church, people will come along who in some way pervert the truth of the gospel. They will re-shape it in their own image. The error may take on a subtle form, or it may be glaringly obvious. However it appears; whatever shape it takes, ‘Galatians’ shows that Christians must stand for the truth standing on the truth. I don’t believe we should get obsessed with erroneous teaching. Some Christians do, it seems to me, and I don’t believe it is healthy. They become spiritual ‘bloodhounds’, with their noses perpetually to the ground, sniffing out heresy wherever they can find it. They end up finding it where it isn’t! Nevertheless we need to be always on the alert, and ready to put the ‘gloves’ on for the sake of truth.

Well, we can do no better than leave the final word with Paul: ‘’May what our Master Jesus Christ gives freely be deeply and personally yours, my friends. Oh, yes! The Message.

Prayer: Thank you Father God for your amazing grace!

 

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Daily Bible thoughts 753: Friday 21st November 2014:

Galatians 6:1-10

At the heart of this passage you find a statement that encapsulates a truth found all through the Bible (7), namely that what you ‘’sow’’ you will also ‘’reap’’. If you plant corn, you don’t expect to harvest potatoes! ‘’What a person plants, he will harvest.’’ In everything we do or say we are ‘sowing’, either to ‘’please’’ the ‘’sinful nature’’ or ‘’the Spirit’’ (8). Actions have consequences, for good or bad. It depends on the nature of the ‘seed’ we are scattering. (I remember a well-known Christian author/preacher saying that we cannot keep sowing to ‘the flesh’ and expect to grow spiritually. It doesn’t work like that.) We have seen, in this letter that you don’t do good in order to become a Christian. It doesn’t work like that. But as a Christ-follower, indwelt by His Spirit, you are set free to do good (see Ephesians 2:10). This is not in order to become something, but because of what you are in Christ. So we are to sow seeds of goodness everywhere (9). Whether appreciation is shown or not; whether it seems to have any impact or not; whether we benefit from it or not, realise the results are in God’s Hands. We can trust Him with the harvest. Faithful seed sowing must lead to a crop. God will give us what we have worked for. ‘’Right now, therefore, every time we get the chance, let us work for the benefit of all, starting with the people closest to us in the community of faith.’’ (10).The Message. At times, we may feel that those around us don’t show the consideration we might like to receive from them. But the issue is not how others are behaving. We can’t control that. We can, however, do something about our own behaviour. We can walk out into each new day, determined to sow goodness seeds everywhere, and as many as possible. Being and doing good today, by the power of the Holy Spirit, are within reach of all true believers in Christ. How many opportunities to do good did we miss yesterday? Today is a new opportunity. Let us ‘seize the day’.

Here are some ways we can show this goodness to others:

  • By gentleness (6a; compare with 5:15, 26): ‘’If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself. You might be needing forgiveness before the day’s out.’’ The Message. Our aim should be to lift people up where possible, not pull them down.
  • By humility (1b, 3; see Romans 12:3): Recognise your own weakness, vulnerability to temptation, and proneness to fall.
  • By giving mutual support (2; see 1 Corinthians 12:26).
  • By not comparing or competing with our brothers and sisters (4, 5). It is sadly possible to feel good (or better) about yourself by thinking ill of others. But the gospel tells us it is not our job to judge anyone. Conversely, we can look at other people and feel inferior. The message is, ‘Just be yourself in Christ.’ With God’s help; with the power of His Spirit in you, be the best version of who He made you to be that you can be. The only person you can legitimately compare yourself with is Jesus. Doing this will keep you humble. ‘’Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.’’ The Message. The ‘’load’’ in (5) is different from the ‘’burdens’’ in (2). It is about doing your duty; fulfilling your own God-given responsibility; being who God has made you to be.
  • By generosity (6). In this particular case the point relates to looking after those who teach the Word. Prayer: Thank you Lord that this day will be crammed with opportunities to do good. Help me to see, and to seize, each one, for your glory.

 

 

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