Loving Fellowship (02/28/25-03/01/25)

There is so much here that needs attention, needs to receive real focus, and I have to confess that in the state of mind in which I found myself by day’s end yesterday, it’s hard to come back to the passage at all.  The if clause with which we begin feels far more indeterminate than it should.  I would love to be able to simply write off my mood to too many early mornings, but there’s something more there, and I shall have need of addressing it as God enables me to do so.  Perhaps, as I begin to reengage with these verses today, I shall find aid in that very necessary activity.

Well, let’s look at what we’ve got.  As noted, we begin with an extended if clause, a protasis in four parts.  And it is well to note that, regardless my mood, these conditionals do not intend to suggest doubt.  Not at all!  Rather, they are building an assumed foundation from which to build the subsequent exhortation.  Or, if you will, they are pointing out the energy source by which to power our response.  There is encouragement in Christ.  There is consolation of love.  There is fellowship of the Spirit.  There is affection and compassion.  These are not questions.  These are givens.  You, Christian, are in possession of these things.  The degree to which you employ them may vary depending on your progress in sanctification, or depending on your attentiveness to deteriorating circumstances.  But, beloved (and yes, I am speaking to myself at this juncture), you are not constrained by your circumstances.  You are not a victim of your troubles.  You are a child of God, and these things by which Paul describes his compatriots in Macedonia apply to you as well, whether you’re feeling them at the moment or not.

Pause.  If they feel rather far from me at present, what shall I say to this?  What is to be done?  Is there value in listing out the various justifications I might make for that distance?  There might be, insofar as it gives indication of problems that need to be addressed, or perhaps prevents me from wallowing in useless self-accusations where weariness and stress really are more or less the basis.  But then, I must proceed the next step and ask how we go about reducing these underlying conditions.  For they don’t remove responsibility from me, only serve to point to those places which may need attention so that we aren’t back here again a week from now, a month from now.  But there is more.  There is a need to pray.  And in this instance, a need to just stop what I’m doing and attend to the issue with my Father.

Now, there is something to the flow of thought in this first verse which had escaped me.  The JFB describes it as an alternating between source and principle.  Seen that way, the verse becomes an interlocked pair of two conditions.  The encouragement of Christ, to stick with the NASB translation, is the ‘objective source,’ by which we live out the ‘subjective principle’ of consoling love as we seek to live out our Christian life.  The fellowship of the Spirit is the ‘objective source,’ by which we live out the ‘subjective principle’ of affection and compassion.  This is powerful, if we can but lay hold of it.  It rather answers the question in my spirit.  If I am weak in these principles, what to do?  Seek once more, the objective source!  And know that it is there.  It’s a thought I feel confident we shall return to before I’ve wrapped up my efforts with this passage.  But there it is.  You are receiving the encouragement of Christ, which is to say that He is right alongside, lending strength and counsel.  You are entered into the fellowship of the Spirit, in real communion with Him, enjoying social interaction with Him.

Let me put it another way.  This is who you are, or how you are.  A bit off track, but I wonder what would happen were we to have these points in mind when somebody asks, “How are you?”  I think of our dear departed sister who would know exactly how to respond.  “I’m blessed by the Best.”  But how about, “I’m encouraged in Christ in the fellowship of the Spirit.”  That’s not bad.  It may not have quite the same pizzazz, but it’s certainly got scriptural basis!  And to remind yourself of this, even as you recite the point to another is indeed of great value.  These truths are never so powerful as when we move from merely knowing them to actually believing them.  However I may be feeling at the moment, I am encouraged in Christ, I am yet in fellowship with the Spirit.  Perhaps, if we can get that settled, we can discover more of the subjective principle, more of the natural outworking of that reality in our words and actions.  Perhaps if we will reconnect ourselves to the battery of the objective, we shall discover power flowing through us to the energizing of the subjective.

It needs this:  It needs convincing that we are indeed loved of our Father.  No, He is not directly presented in this verse, but He is present.  As has been observed throughout the last week in my Table Talk readings, where one Person of the Trinity is, all are.  Where One acts, all act.  If Christ is here, so, too, is Father as well as Spirit.  But there are times when we feel it, and times when we don’t.  Does that mean God has withdrawn?  In the extreme case, I suppose that could be so.  But it’s far more likely that the issue is in our perception, not His presence.  This becomes especially the case when we have succumbed to sin.  Rather like Adam and Eve in the garden, we know we’ve done something which will tend to disturb our Father, and so, like the little children we are, we seek to hide it away.  Maybe we’ll just avoid Him until this blows over.  But it won’t blow over, because however much we seek to convince ourselves He didn’t notice, He did.  He does know.  And now, He’s effectively tapping His foot, patiently waiting for us to admit our failure, own up to our mistakes, and come to make it right.  So long as we continue trying to paper it over instead, He continues to watch, shaking His head behind our backs, another Father wondering when His kid is going to grow up.

But observe, returning to the JFB:  Comfort flows from love, which in turn flows from Christ indwelling.  And in like fashion, fellowship flows from the indwelling Holy Spirit.  God is here!  He is present.  He has not abandoned His temple, but we, His temple, stand in need of being persuaded.  He loves us.  He loved us enough to send His only begotten Son to die that we might live.  And I am struck once again with wondering how that plays out in eternal realms.  Where there is no time, does that experience of the Crucifixion continue always, alongside the reality of the Resurrection?  Is the beginning ever-present along with the end?  I don’t know, obviously.  I am not as yet a resident of that realm.  But it gives me pause.  Perhaps at some point I shall perceive how this coordinates with that promise that every pain, every sorrow, every tear will be done away in that day when we come to be with Him.  So, perhaps there is only the end to experience forever, with the beginning, and even the growing pains, left so far behind as to be wholly forgotten in the culmination of all things.

Back to our passage (boy this is going to be a long session!)  This is who we are.  We are a love persuaded, Christ-empowered people, proceeding through life in joint participation with God, in God.  This may not be what we feel just at the moment, but it remains who we are all the same.  Christ is alongside.  God does love.  The Spirit is in union with you.  This is your story.  I can’t seem to get off the bold text today.  Probably because I need to hammer this home to myself.  This is you.  Lay hold of that.  Be persuaded of that.  Let not feelings of inadequacy and failure dissuade you of this most glorious truth.  But move on from just licking your wounds to picking yourself up.  No, wait.  You have no strength to pick yourself up.  Get back to reliance.  Rely on Him who loves you, who stands beside you and indwells you.  Listen to Him.  Take instruction from Him.  Lean on Him.  And then, maybe, seek that you might better demonstrate the reality that is yours.  You can’t show it in these subjective actions if you don’t perceive it in its objective reality.

So then, we have this foundation of loving fellowship which Paul is establishing, and establishing as being our current condition.  Again, it’s not questioned but assumed that these describe our condition.  It’s interesting that in this suppositional portion, the connections remain, as it were on the vertical, at least in their more immediate application.  Our love is in connection with Christ, our fellowship with the Spirit.  Although, the wording is not so much with as in and of.  And yes, as we have seen, it connects with outward actions and expressions, but those are left without an immediate object, at least in this first verse.  And perhaps that’s as it should be.  Our clearest connection is to our triune God.  And here we find encouragement to love, or perhaps we might even say here we find cause to console as we have been consoled, to love as we have been loved.  After all, if there’s one object we can remove from the matter of this consolation of love, it’s Christ who has encouraged us.  He is in no need of consolation.  So, we should have to look elsewhere for our opportunity to console.  Likewise, the Spirit is not in need of our compassion, but fellowship with Him naturally produces or results in that compassion.  But that compassion must find other objects for its endeavors.  So, love and compassion turn outward, along the horizontal, the outflow of that which we find poured into us along the vertical.

Let’s consider these components briefly.  I’ll start with the aspect of fellowship.  We have this fellowship of the Spirit.  The Spirit is here mentioned in the genitive case, the possessive, if you will.  It is His fellowship into which we enter, and His fellowship which leads us to the wider application of fellowship.  But this fellowship, what is it?  Are we just boon companions?  Friends with a few shared interests?  Members of the same club?  No.  It runs deeper, and at the same time wider.  For one, it establishes for us that all of us who are rightly accounted as Christians are in fact ‘mutual partakers’ of the Holy Spirit.  I’m taking that from Clarke, whose thoughts on this particular aspect are quite beneficial, if brief.  But what do I know of brevity?  Anyway…  Fellowship indicates intimate relationship, which I should think we might discern in that mutual partaking.  It’s more than a meal shared, although I might suggest that, outside certain institutional settings, a meal shared is at least an overture towards such intimate relationship, if not an expression of it.  We don’t tend to eat with just anybody.  And I think we might find that for many of us, nothing is more precious, more to be zealously guarded and maintained, than our mealtimes together with those we love.

But this intimate relationship:  It is first and foremost established with God Himself.  We have it observed as particularly with the Spirit, but I am strongly reminded this week that where the Spirit is, so, too, are Father and Son.  God is always One in His actions, even if we tend to emphasize the reflection of one particular Person of God in some particular action.  We have intimate relationship with God!  It’s a point that came up in last week's class, and as then, so now, it fills me with joyous wonder that this can be so.  God has, of His free will, chosen to fellowship with me!  It’s enough to lay one out stunned on the floor, but then, He would not have it so.  Where’s the fellowship in that?

Okay.  That’s the deep aspect.  I can (and should) at any time come into the presence of my God.  Indeed, I do well to remain mindful that I am at any time in the presence of God.  I think of what used to be such a constant refrain in Table Talk, that we live our days corum deo, before the face of God.  And He, in His fellowship with us, a fellowship growing deeper by the day from our perspective, calls us to look around us in our church and recognize that those we are gathered together with are in like fellowship with Him.  At the very least, barring strong evidence to the contrary, we are to assume it to be the case that this is so.  Now, if we each of us separately have this wondrous fellowship with God, there is a necessary conclusion to be made, isn’t there?  We are family.  We are sons and daughters of one Father.  We are together the bride of Christ.  He has no favorite bride.  We are all one to Him even in our individuality.  How does that work?  I don’t know, anymore than I could readily make cogent explanation of how the Trinity works.  But I know it is our condition and our honor that this is so.  We are family.  We are each of us individually in close, intimate relationship with God, and as such, we have every reason to expect and experience a similarly close and intimate relationship with one another.  Now, obviously there are bounds on this.  We’re not looking at some extreme of communal living where all are married to all, or some such nonsense.  No.  But there is love amongst us, earnest cared for one another.  Here, then, is our target for consolation, affection, and compassion.  And here, we have reason to expect that we, in our turn, shall experience consolation, affection, and compassion.

Turning back to Clarke, I would agree with him wholeheartedly that we, being as we are one family, should be seeking that every member of this family feel the fulness of that reality.  We ought to be striving to ensure that each and every member of this family knows the love and fellowship of their brothers and sisters.  Now, we are not all going to love one another equally, though I have no doubt but that we should.  Come the consummation, I expect we shall have achieved that level, but in this present state, no.  Some will be harder to love, and to some, we shall be harder to love.  Those more alike to us in temperament and development will naturally tend to attract more of our attentiveness.  We may be so wise as to seek out those farther along in their development in hopes of deepening fellowship there so as to learn from them.  We may be so generous as to respond to those who come to us with like intentions.  But however it is that the individual strands are woven together, they must be woven together.  For we are family, and our love for the least of our brothers, the newest of our family members ought in no way to lag behind our love for the greatest and longest known.

And how shall fellowship express?  In love, in encouragement.  Oh, how wonderful to meet with a believer possessed of the gift of encouragement!  How it lightens our day, lends strength into our weakness.  How it recharges our spiritual batteries.  As much as I disincline to apply any gift or mission as a requirement placed on every believer, this one comes close.  Here is the ideal painted in the old song, “Home on the Range.”  You know the line.  “Where never is heard a discouraging word.”  Well, let’s paint it in the positive light.  Where ever are heard words of encouragement.  These, I think, are more needful for us in our low points than any murmurings of compassion or pity.  We don’t need commiseration so much as reminding of Whose we are, and who we are because of Him.

So, let’s look at love just a bit, for love is, depending on your angle of perception, the natural result of fellowship or its natural source.  At any rate, the two are close-coupled, inseparable, really.  But what is love?  It’s a topic I know I’ve addressed many times, as it must be addressed many times, because the love we are considering here is a love quite unlike any other.  We likely know by now that what is covered by the one English word love finds expression in four or more Greek words, depending on which sort of love we are talking about.  After all, we would not account our love for some hobby as being the same as our love for our children or parents, nor would we account our love for children or parents as being the same as our love for our spouse.  And then we can add the love we have for friends, which is yet another flavor.  Okay, now add what is much closer to lust, which has its application between spouses, but is by no means the full definition of that love.  Now, we come to a love so distinct, and distinctly unusual, that it required a new word to be coined.  Greek did not have an appropriate term yet.  And thus, we come to agape, that love uniquely ascribed to God and to those He calls His own.  And we must come to recognize that this is as distinct from other loves as lust is from the love between spouses.

This agape love is what we might call interventionist love.  That is not the whole of it, but it is a large component of it.  There is that definition given of agape being the sort of love that is willing to do for love’s object what love’s object may not desire or even appreciate, knowing that what is done is in fact supplying the greatest need of love’s object.  Boy that’s a wordy rendering of the point.  I’ll go back and fetch my rendering of Zhodiates’ description: Such love as will do what is needed even when the one loved does not desire it.  Such love as was displayed by Christ going willingly to the cross on our behalf, dying that we might live, rescuing us while we were yet His enemies.  Such love is a wonder as deep as that of our fellowship with this God Who Saves.  While we were yet His enemies!  We wanted nothing to do with Him, but He wanted us.  We were busily avoiding Him, but He came and found us.  We had not just gone astray, we had run away, like Onesimus from Philemon.  But He came to seek and save the lost.  He sought us and He saved us.  And still, even in that moment, we were rightly accounted His enemies.  But then, all changed.  He had done for us what was most needful, even though we had no desire of it, even when, but for God, we would have rejected it and Him alike.

Love like this gets messy sometimes.  It may call us to address that sin we see in our brother to which he himself appears to be blind.  It may call us to repent before that brother we have wronged in hopes of forgiveness from him.  It may involve tears and runny noses.  It may involve hard conversations.  It may involve costly expenditures of time as we come alongside perhaps even one who is a bit resistant, demonstrating a constancy of fellowship and a persistence of hope.

Then, too, love has its application in fellowship itself.  The two have something of a reciprocal relationship, each feeding the other.  But in the life of the body which is the Church, as we recognize our mutual fellowship with God and with one another, we cannot help but notice distinctions.  We have differing strengths and weaknesses.  We have differing interests and emphases.  We have different functions.  I’ll not belabor the point, but say simply that there’s a reason Paul turns to this analogy repeatedly.  We are members, organs of one body, but not all parts have the same function.  That lies at base of my sense that we ought not to demand or expect any particular gifting or pursuit of every last member of the body.  That’s not the design.  What we can say, though, is that our recognition of shared fellowship should lead us to rejoice in the unique gifts and pursuits of our fellow members, and it ought to guide us in using our own gifts, pursuing our own pursuits in accord with Scripture’s guidance: To the edification of all.  There is our mutual love, our shared encouragement.  There is our affectionate care and concern one for another.  There is the powerful presence of God in our fellowship.

Now, this is something of a segue into the next topic, just as this verse is a segue into the next verse.  But recognize this, even as you attend church today.  Look around you.  All around you are participants in the influence of the Holy Spirit.  Now, their particular experience of that influence may not look quite like yours.  And yes, there are those in any congregation who are not truly believers, and may not even be trying to convince anybody that they are.  But our purpose in this is not to start scanning the crowds to see who’s legit.  No.  Ours is to love, and trusting in our Lord, to believe the best of each and every member of this body.  Assume the positive.  Expect that they are participants in the influence of the Holy Spirit.  If you’ve ever been someplace away from home and encountered a fellow believer, perhaps visiting whatever local church is in the area, perhaps simply meeting them out and about, you know just how true this is.  Even then, there is that in us which recognizes that here is one who is a coparticipant in the influence of the Holy Spirit.  Here, though I’ve never met him before and may never meet him again, is my brother.

But there are times when it really is a challenge for us to recognize what is already true, whether of us, or of a brother.  It’s probably harder in considering out own condition, and it rightly should be.  As will no doubt come up later, we know ourselves too well to think so highly of ourselves.  Others?  Especially if we assume the best, hope all things, then we will tend to think they must be much more advanced in their faith than we are in ours.  Look.  There are times when it’s difficult for me to believe that God is at work in me.  There are those habitual sins, habitual attitudes that keep cropping up, and it’s enough to make one wonder.  There are times when my attitude is must unchristian, and it needs much more effort in those moments to recall Whose I am, and to correct my course.  Yet, that’s what’s needed.  It’s not even the course correction so much as the recalling to mind who I am in Christ.  We see that reaction sometimes, don’t we, when our hero has fallen and done something wholly counter to who we know him to be.  “This is not who you are!  You’re better than this!”  And sometimes, perhaps a lot of times, we are the hero who has fallen as well as the observer shocked by the sight of it.  And it’s hard, in that moment, to believe we are still that hero.  But we are.  Now, don’t get all focused in on the heroic aspect of that.  My point is simply this:  Our failures don’t define us.  Our place in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, encouraged by Christ is what defines us.  Recognize this reality and you will be well on your way to recovery.

So, let me complete this thought that Barnes has stirred.  As mutual participants in the fellowship, the influence of the Holy Spirit, we do share like feelings, like views, like joys.  Now, his attention is turned to this:  These like attitudes are things shared with the Holy Spirit Himself!  Again, it’s hard work to recognize the reality of our condition.  We share in the feelings, the worldview, the joys and sorrows of God!  Can you imagine!  But you don’t have to imagine.  This is your true state, believer.  And again, as Table Talk has been hammering home this last month, where is the one Person of the Triune God, there are all three Persons together.  You share in the fellowship of the Trinity!  My goodness, but this is astounding stuff!  Father, Son, and Spirit, Who have known perfect fellowship in themselves, having no need of anything more, have yet welcomed you and me into that same fellowship.  “I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity” (Jn 17:23a).  This is us.  This is the stunning, unbelievable reality of our privileged position.  And, as Barnes observes, as Paul insists, this ought surely to urge us to pursue a like unity of love and zeal with our brothers and sisters.  And, let me just suggest, that urge for unity ought to be such as will move us beyond the bounds of our particular church or denomination.  I’m not suggesting compromise and a setting aside of doctrines, but in so many cases, while differences in doctrine might advise our worshiping separately so as to preserve a greater harmony, yet they are not so great as to give us leave to denounce one another as heretics.

Well then, let’s move on.  Let’s have a look at this harmonious unity which is our real condition, even if we too often allow it to be disturbed.

Harmonious Unity (03/02/25-03/04/25)

So much to consider!  I’m sorry, I see the notes ahead of me, even in this section, and there is simply so much to unpack here.  But let us make a start.  We are building upon that foundation of verse 1, the reality of our condition as those in fellowship with God Himself, to start considering how that must inform our shared experiences on the horizontal axis, amongst our fellow believers.  We see what is urged, and it is indeed a tall order, isn’t it?  “Be of the same mind, the same love, the same spirit, the same purpose.”  Paul is a bit more varied in his wording, but I feel the need to emphasize that sameness, because honestly, we are not the same, are we?  We hit differences of opinion constantly.  We face those with different agendas, different perspectives.  We each have our priorities, and of course, being as we are well aware of our fellowship with the indwelling Spirit, we conclude we must surely be right, right?  And if we’re right, and you disagree, well, what to conclude?  You must be wrong!  But beloved, this simply isn’t so.  This is, at least generally speaking, nothing but the flesh rising up to corrupt the perfect work of God.

Now, word it that way, and it must become clear just how futile those fleshly works are, right?  God, being perfect in power, knowledge, and wisdom, is hardly going to suffer the corrupting of His perfect work, even were such a thing possible.  Think about it.  Even the entrance of sin into the world He created, and all the sorrows and miseries that has produced throughout the history of man, has failed to so much as put a scratch on His perfect work.  It was part of the deal from the outset, already accounted for, and firmly directed towards its perfect end, culminating not in the cross, though that is so central to the plan, indeed the fulcrum upon which the whole of history pivots, but rather, on the consummation of the kingdom, when our glorious Lord appears to claim His own and to purge His realm of all sin once for all.

Okay, what to do, then?  Do we simply accept that our disagreements are going to be a fact of life, and proceed?  No.  Do we renounce one another over every difference, and gather into our little conclaves of like-mindedness?  No.  As I have observed, there’s a place for separating so as to preserve harmonious unity, much as that sounds contradictory.  But that separateness ought not to be in mutual condemnation, but rather in mutual recognition.  If I look back on the origins of the earliest divisions in Protestantism, it becomes clear that these divisions were not matters of rejection.  They were in fact quite careful to clearly demonstrate their full agreement on most every point of doctrine.  It's just this one point upon which we differ.  It may have been so small a thing as chain of command within the larger organization of the church.  It may have been questions over the proper administration of baptism, more serious certainly, but hardly grounds for charges of heresy.  And what of those denominations that raise foot-washing to the level of sacrament?  Is that cause to dismiss them from the ranks of Christianity?  Hardly.  They remain brothers in Christ.  The differences are not of salvific import.  They are not matters of core beliefs.  They are matters of a secondary sort.

Allow me to stress that this holds even with most of our most heated points of disagreement.  Between Calvinist and Arminian, there is no cause to shout one another down as heretics pursuing doctrines of the devil.  Neither position can rightly be accused of following man-made doctrines rather than those of God.  Both have arrived at their understanding from a true desire for true knowledge of true God.  Both have been led by the Spirit.  Why have the paths diverged so, if God Himself is driving?  I don’t know!  I’d say perhaps you could ask Him on that day we arrive home, but then, Scripture tells us in that day we will have no questions, as we will then fully know as we have been fully known (1Co 13:12).  Isn’t it something that that observation comes as the concluding thought of this most famous chapter on the topic of love?

And what are we considering?  The active expression of love that consists in this purposeful pursuit of harmonious unity.  I was much moved by Matthew Henry’s observation here.  Though it draws in a bit of verse 3 in its scope, I’ll have it speak to this point.  He observes that to act as contradicting our brother is to produce strife, that which Paul tells us by no means to do.  He further observes that to act as advertising or exalting ourself is to act in vanity.  Now, we’re not talking vanity as with the narcissistic tendency for self-promotion.  We’re talking biblical vanity, which is to say, it’s a pointless, empty exercise.  We might even go so far as to apply Shakespeare’s great line to the matter.  Such self-promotion is, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”  Now, in Macbeth, that is being directed at life itself, which is most assuredly several steps too far for us to follow.  But applied to our tendency for bragging and honor-seeking?   Oh, yes.

Okay, so I have begun to scratch this topic in consideration of our denominational differences, and these are, by and large, the least of our concerns.  But they loom large, don’t they?  We have had folks leave the church in a huff because one particular aspect of some secondary doctrine or other has been addressed too strongly for their liking.  Of course, by storming off they have done much the same, if not so eloquently, nor with intent to edify.  But we can also get rather competitive as to the superiority of our chosen branch of the Church, can’t we?  We look a bit askance at the Methodists down the street, and they, no doubt, shake their heads a bit at us.  Now, allow me to suppose, for the sake of argument at least, that in both cases, these congregations hew closer to the roots of their denomination than to the watered-down and polluted norms of so many modern iterations of those same denominations.  Let us suppose that both are still committed to the Gospel truth and nothing but the Gospel truth.  And yet, our views on so many things are so very different. It’s okay!  I can read Clarke and, while certain aspects of his worldview I find necessary to reject rather forcibly, yet I find many occasions where his insight is quite valid and valuable.  As I have said often in teaching how to study, truth remains true regardless of what you think about it.  And I might add, truth remains true regardless the man who is speaking it.

All this to say that we could stand to figure out how to work together across these denominational boundaries.  We can and should uphold one another as family if indeed love permits such a supposition.  We should, as with our inward life in the body, seek to hold our fellow believers in other bodies in the most positive light that knowledge permits.  It seems that article I was reading in January’s Table Talk last night is informing much more of my thoughts than I would have expected, given my exhausted state of mind as I read it.  But observe:  “If I do not have love, I am but a noisy gong, an unpleasantly clanging cymbal…  Love is not jealous… doesn’t seek its own…  Love rejoices with the truth… Love believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never fails” (1Co 13:1,4-8).  That’s the message, and it’s not just between individuals, and it’s not just between the members of one specific body.  Indeed, I’m not sure you can find a limit to its scope.  The quality or intensity of that love might vary, I suppose, to match the circumstance of application, but not the essence of it, not the essentiality of its principles expressed.  Between churches, as between individuals, to act as contradicting one another produces strife, and to exalt ourselves over them is vanity.  Take that to heart.

This will indeed help us to more fully engage with the design of the Church, which is to say, the design of our humanity given fullest realization.  I have said it before, indeed, even in going through these verses before.  We are designed for community.  Even the most introverted among us discovers in themselves some perception of this need for community.  If I think back to those years when I lived on my own, for the most part, I rather liked it that way.  I was in my space, pursuing my pursuits, and none to tell me to do otherwise.  But there would come times when the need to be in company with others was almost overwhelming.  Companionship must be sought.  Fortunately, in that period, I had friends near to hand that I could visit so often as I felt like it.  And at the same time, I could depart their company and resume my monkishness just as readily.  But that was very long ago indeed, though memories remain in some ways fresh.  But even now I remain a relatively private person with my private pursuits.  Perhaps that is a piece of why I find myself preferring these early morning times alone with my Lord.  Perhaps.

Here’s the thing, though, isolation is not the design.  I suppose I must accept and admit that in some degree it is.  I am who I am by God’s design.  But that isolation needs its community of which to be a part.  In youth, I don’t know as we feel that in quite the same way.  Obviously, in our youngest years, we seek out our peers, and seek acceptance by our peers.  We want to be part of the in crowd, as it were.  But there comes that age when independence is far more interesting.  I want to be me, and me without restrictions.  And some, I must accept, never really exit that stage of development.  But when one has, as it were, put down roots, when one has been in one location for sufficient length of time to begin to account it truly home, something shifts.  There is a comfort to the regularity of life.  There is a pleasantness to those regular encounters with this or that neighbor.  For me, that holds especially true if they have a dog or two, but that’s beside the point.  There is a pleasure to knowing this interconnectedness that we speak of as community.  But if we’re honest, I suspect that for most of us our real interactions within the community are somewhat minimal.  We wave.  We stop and ask, “how are you doing?”  But there’s not a lot of real connection there.

Okay, now let’s move into the community of the Church, an organization which Paul in particular speaks of more as an organism.  We are the body of Christ.  This is something rather more significant than, say, the body of the senate, or some committee.  We are being knit together, despite our quite varied backgrounds.  I can think of the class I was teaching yesterday, as to its makeup.  You have, side by side, those who have long served in the leadership of the congregation, and those so freshly come to Christ that even the various aspects of their study Bible are a cause of some wonder and confusion.  You have those firm in the faith alongside those struggling to become established in it.  You have introvert beside extrovert, collegiate alongside blue collar, retiree alongside youth.  Paul, of course, takes the point elsewhere, and it is an elsewhere to which we should follow him.  As a body, we have a significant degree of interdependency.  By design, we each have varied strengths and weaknesses, we each have particular talents and abilities which can be set to use in the service of the body, and we each have certain talents lacking, for which we must rely on others in the body.  Why do we have pastors, after all?  Theirs is a particular gifting, a particular set of talents, that we all rely on, probably more heavily than is entirely right.  But he, in turn, must rely on others for their talents.  A pastor is not, for but the simplest example, de facto qualified to serve as leader of the finance committee, or may not be particularly well suited for any spot on the worship team.  And of course, serving on the worship team likewise does nothing to establish one’s ability to preach or to minister to the spiritual needs of anybody.  Short form:  We need each other, and we need to be the willing supply for one another, and never more so than when we consider matters of spiritual growth.

But let me also observe that this need and this willingness do not stop at the borderline of spirituality.  James is particularly on point in this regard.  “If your brother or sister is lacking clothes or daily, and your response to this stops at, saying, ‘Go in peace.  Be warm.  Be filled.’ What use is that, if you have not supplied what they need?” (Jas 2:15-16).  What use your love, if it’s only happy words, never demonstrated in actions?  What is your fellowship, if it stops with greeting one another, and discussing the weather over coffee?  There needs to be more to it.  I’m not trying to make fellowship a work, but I am accepting that real fellowship takes work. 

Now, what makes this particularly challenging for us is that we each of us, or at least many of us, have some strongly held ideas about this doctrinal position or that, or about what really matters in the life of the church, or how things should be in this piece of the ministry or that one.  Oh, you hold to predestination, but I maintain that free will must deny any such idea.  How are we going to get along?   You want active and constant display of spiritual gifts, and I account them far less consequential to the life of the Church.  What are we to do?  You want choruses and I want hymns.  You prefer red carpets, and I like green.  You want the pulpit lifted on high to demonstrate the primacy of the Word, and I want it grounded among the people to demonstrate our unity and equality.  Now, none of these, not even the question of predestination and free will are matters of salvific import, are they?  Do you suppose you shall risk rejection by Christ on the basis of your opinions on such matters?  Really?  Somehow, it ought to be that we can, as Matthew Henry urges, agree on the ‘great things of God,’ and still maintain unity of the Spirit even when we have these differences on what are, after all, minor points.

What do you mean, these are minor points?  Yeah, I know.  I get the same thing rising up in me, because to me, our understanding of matters like predestination and free will are evidence of our understanding of God’s sovereignty, and perhaps, of an over-inflated sense of self-worth.  But honestly?  No.  They are minor points, points admittedly over which churches have split and denominations formed, but not points so severe as to require that one reject the other as heretics and worse.  This is one of those points where maintaining the unity of the Spirit may in fact require that we maintain a bit of distance between bodies, as paradoxical as that may sound.  But the guidance is sound.  And honestly, Paul is urging something far more than this, though in our fallen state of partial understanding, such distancing may be needful.  And praise God, He has caused various denominations to arise, not as combatants one with another, nor as competitors for the finite pool of believers, but so that these differences in understanding between people of like faith and devotion to knowing God truly can indeed know a peaceful unity, can join together in pursuit of the Lord, can account one another as members of one larger family, even if our perspectives lead us to live in smaller, separate family units.  They’re still kin, and we still love them and respect them.

Of course, there must be boundaries on this, right?  There are those points that do matter, and matter so strongly that to reject them is to reject Christ, or to have set up some idol of one’s own devising and called it Christ when it is not.  Discernment is needful, and a clear perception of which things are non-negotiable.  And then, too, the wisdom to recognize how we are to address such situations, whether they have crossed the line into grievous error, or are simply variances in opinion.  How are we to deal with these things?  First, of course, with prayer.  It’s a prayer we may find needful on myriad occasions. 

God grant me the wisdom to deal rightly, lovingly, truthfully, with differing opinions and priorities among my brothers.  Grant me the backbone to stand firmly for your truth when things move beyond mere opinion to real error.  May I know how to distinguish between good-hearted pursuers of truly knowing You who have simply arrived at different perspectives, and those who have latched onto error, and seek to promote that error over against Your truth.  There is a place for tolerance, a place for loving correction, and a place for firm rebuke.  Grant that I may know which is which, and that I may respond accordingly, for Your glory and Your good purposes.

Understand.  We will have need of such prayerfulness, and we will be called upon to exercise an appropriate response.  We will have need of upholding truth against the onslaught of false claims, and we will have need of lovingly accepting, not just tolerating, accepting, those whose ideas are somewhat at odds with our own.  We are none of us so brilliant as to have every answer correct, every available nuance of sound doctrine so fully pursued and understood as to stand in no need of correction ever again.  No.  However far we may have grown in our faith and understanding, the simple fact remains:  We see but dimly, know but in part.  That being the case, we best recognize our own need for edification, and look gladly to those occasions when a brother in the body to which God has joined us can supply that which edifies.  Rejoice, then, in our uniqueness.  Rejoice in our variety.  Rejoice that where you are weak, you have a brother who is strong.  Rejoice in the reality that by God’s gracious design, you have something to offer into the needs and weaknesses of your brother.

Calvin is perhaps most direct in summing up this passage, at least as I have summed up his summation.  “Cherish harmony.”  In the life of the church, desire it above all things.  And observe well, as I know very well I have considered many a time, that this is harmony we are discussing.  I have described it, in heading this portion of my exercise, as, “Harmonious Unity.”  I suppose, at base, that’s near to being a tautology.  Harmony is, by its very nature, a unity.  But it’s a unity with variety, isn’t it?  It admits of the differences.  You are singing this note, and I am singing that, but they fit together.  We are not singing from different songs, or insisting on a different beat.  We’re on the same page, just playing different parts.  This is the nature of the church, the nature of fellowship within the church.  We each of us have a place where we fit in.  We each of us have something to contribute to the functioning of the whole.  If we’re busy trying to be active in a place we don’t really fit or supply, it's going to be uncomfortable not only for us, but for the body as a whole.  But if we are pursuing those things for which God has equipped us, then indeed, the whole body will profit, and the soul will know somewhat more of its worth.

Cherish harmony.  Don’t demand unison.  Desire unity.  It’s different.  We are called to be of one purpose, and yes, in simple point of fact, the call of this passage drives far closer to unison than might be comfortable.  But let us start here.  Cherish harmony.   It ties with another passage that has been much to me over the last several months, though I had somewhat forgotten it for a period.  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God” (Mt 5:9).  As I was teaching yesterday, what is set before us here is gospel, not law.  It’s good news, not demand.  Of course, the gospel does make demand of us, but not as means to acceptance, rather as outflow of gratitude.  You are a peacemaker, for God has called you son.  This is your status.  Now, the question is how do I demonstrate this reality?  Well, cherish harmony.  Indeed, this whole passage is effectively an answer to what it means to be a peacemaker, what that looks like.  “Maintain the same love.  Pursue the same purpose.”  That doesn’t require us to be in lockstep.  It requires us to be in harmonious agreement.  Our individual notes may differ, but we’re singing the same song.  Our individual gifts and talents will differ, but we’re pursuing the same goal.  And what is that goal?  That Christ may be glorified.  And how shall He be glorified?  By the maturity of His children and by the increase of His kingdom.  And how shall we achieve these good goals?  By many and various means.  Some will be evangelists.  Some will be disciplers.  Some will be charitable.  Some will be administrators.  Some will admonish, others console.  All will be contributing to this same goal of seeing Christ’s glory made manifest.

In this designed-in interdependency, God has both a purpose and an objective.  The objective is full union among believers, and particularly so in the context of the local body.  Full union.  The strength with which that is put forward here is undeniable.  Be of the same mind.  Be of the same love.  Be of one spirit, one souled, all together intently pursuing one purpose.  That’s pretty all encompassing, isn’t it?  We are plenty challenged to get it right with the first piece, being of one mind.  But it is, it must be possible, for God has called us to this state of unity.  It must be possible, though impossible in our own strength.  We won’t get there by main force and gritty determination.  We will get there by the grace of God, in the power of His might. 

Peter may perhaps serve well to point us to the means by which we progress towards this goal.  “His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence” (2Pe 1:3).  If one God, He Who is True, has granted each of us true knowledge of Him, shall this not bring us to be of one mind?  It certainly seems as though it should, doesn’t it?  Objective experience insists that we must recognize limits to this, as our fleshly minds somehow limit our grasp on that true knowledge.  And perhaps in that we might find cause to accept the assessment that we, though redeemed, remain now simultaneously saints and sinners.  If redemption had a complete work in us, there would be no deficiency in our grasp of this true knowledge, and as such, no place for disagreement among the saints.  We have there, as well, that one purpose which binds us together:  God’s glory.  We are in pursuit of God’s glory, manifesting it in our own words and deeds, seeking to live godly, and, as we have just been told, fully equipped by the very power of God to do so.  Fully equipped.

There’s a down side to that, I suppose.  We are without excuse.  God has supplied.  We are capable, in His power, of achieving this full unity of heart, feeling, plan, and purpose.  So, if we don’t, when we don’t, shall we lay the blame at His feet?  By no means!  Shall we play Adam’s card of, “Hey!  You’re the one made me like this.”  Not with any hope of success, we won’t.  We shall have to own up to the fact that we had the power granted us, and were just too headstrong, too foolish, to self-involved, to put it to use.  You know, we have that basic tenet of law, that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  Here, we are dealing with divine law, and honestly, we should have to say that ignorance of the law isn’t even truly feasible.  As Paul points out in Romans, creation itself reveals the invisible attributes of God.  The findings of science, far from disproving the existence of God, demand it.  Deny this to be the case all you want, but the evidence is there.  All creation fairly shouts of God’s existence, of His power, of His wonder.  Don’t blame Him, then, if you’ve been walking around with eyes squeezed shut, fingers in your ears, noisily seeking to drown out any avenue of reception by which you might take notice of what’s before you.

But back to my main objective:  Full union.  What prevents it?  We have touched on the fundamental issue:  We have not availed ourselves of that power set at our disposal by which to walk godly.  What does that look like, should we achieve it?  Two passages came together for me in this regard, drawn from two of Paul’s epistles.  Somehow, heard together, they seem to me to strike with greater force.  “As those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, with all humility and gentleness, patiently showing tolerance for one another in love” (Col 3:12, Eph 4:2).  Do you see the chain of cause and effect in this?  Foundation:  God has chosen you – each and every one of you, individually and collectively.  God has rendered you holy and beloved.  Thus far, gospel.  You are.  This is you in your current condition.  Why?  Because God.  But we don’t just sit on our status.  This current condition must result in current expression.  So, we put on a heart of compassion.  It’s not just going to happen that one day you wake up and are suddenly compassionate for one and all.  There’s effort involved.  You’ve got to take steps.  But then, you’ve the power of God behind you in this, and the Holy Spirit speaking encouragement and direction as you take those steps.  You can, indeed must become a person of kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Oh, but Lord, patience is such a burden sometimes.  There are those who try us so, even if we do account them true brothers.  Face it, even in our earthly families, there are those relatives we would just as soon acknowledge from a distance.  Okay, so anyway, the next step:  What does this new attitude look like?  How does it express?  In showing tolerance for one another in love.  Look, this is something far more than putting up with one another, maintaining some stoic silence until this one goes away to pester somebody else.  It’s something stronger than merely holding your tongue and waiting until you get home to vent.  It comes back to that fundamental component of humility, which is where Paul will be driving us in the second half of our passage.  Humility knows too much about us to let us feel superior to even this one who perhaps tests our patience.  Love must allow that he might very well outstrip us in certain aspects of living godly, and quite possibly in such aspects as matter far more than those we are so proud of in ourselves.  Hmm.

Okay.  So, why do we so often fail of this harmonious unity that results from laying hold of God’s power to have this compassionate, humble heart?  If we have the power of God at our disposal, how is it that the weakness of the flesh so often wins out, at least in the moment?  Let me suggest that one prime cause of failure here is that we too often go running off in nothing but our own power, expecting the power of God to, I don’t know, catch up with us, or catch us up.  And, operating on nothing but our own power, we soon flounder.  We’ve forgotten our own true estate.  “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn 15:5b).  There is none so advanced in the faith as can leave behind that dependency.  So, then, if your efforts to walk godly are hitting a wall, there is the first place to look.  If the Church is suffering from disunity, there is the first place to look.  Have you individually, or the Church in community, been somehow trying to push through to unity without God’s input?  Have we been counting on this program or that to somehow enforce or produce this unity?  It doesn’t work that way.  Unity flows out of who we are, or else it doesn’t flow at all.  We know it to be true in our own lives.  Attempting to live godly without recourse to God is destined to fail.  It’s predetermined to fail.  So, too, the life of the Church.  Its unity cannot be manufactured.  Its harmony cannot be painted on.  It is either there as the natural outworking of God’s power at work in the individual and in the whole, or it’s quite simply not there.

I want to retain focus on the life of the Church, because that’s really where this passage is focused.  But the life of the Church has real dependency on the life of each individual.  My thought here is very much pursuant to something Barnes expresses, and probably better than I can.  So, let me borrow his words.  “The church is one.”  I might emphasize here that the true church is truly one.  It is ever the goal.  As to the reality of it, well, as I have said, we see far too much that is contrary to the simpler statement.  But in its ideal, in its perfected state, yes.  So, perhaps we set this to the account of the church invisible, the true church.  This church, returning to Barnes, is in pursuit of a common objective, which we have identified as the glory of God.  The honor of this church, however, is in the hands of each individual member.  And thus, as Barnes concludes, “The conduct of one member affects the character of all.”

That’s a shocking statement, isn’t it?  I mean, if he had left it as the conduct of one member affecting all, yes, we get that.  When one member falls, we all feel it.  When one departs in a huff, there is injury done to all who remain.  But to affect our character?  It feels too strong a claim, and yet, I fear it has much of truth to it.  We are, after all, one body, and if we simply consider the impact our various bodily components have on the character of the rest, perhaps we’ll see it.  I have no doubt but that you’ve experienced something of this.  Perhaps it’s a small headache at the beginning of the day, or a sore rib, a painful thumb, or whatever the case may be.  But it’s an irritant, isn’t it?  And as the day progresses, it seems that small pain looms larger.  The attitude suffers.  Patience flees the scene.  We become short with everybody, and it seems we are hitting constant need to apologize to this one and that one, at least if we’ve any self-awareness remaining.  Oh, how we long to just withdraw and lick our wounds, but the opportunity does not present.  And so we deteriorate as the day goes on.

Do you suppose it’s any different in this body we call the local Church?  The pain of one spreads to impact all.  The little headache that is this one’s angry retort in a meeting works its way into the fiber of those stung by the retort, and there it festers, producing a reciprocal anger just waiting to flare up.  It may be kept under control in that meeting, but now it’s there, roiling below the surface, biding its time, ready to strike when the moment is right and the flesh is weak.

What comes of this is a higher degree of personal responsibility.  We each of us have responsibility to our brothers, that we would avail ourselves of the strength of the Vine.  We have a responsibility to our brothers, that we would look to our own character, in the strength God provides, tending to our condition, seeking to walk godly in our individual case, in order that we might be on better footing to lend strength to our brother and express that love to which we have been called, and with which we have been filled.

Lord, help me to hold onto the lesson You have been teaching me today.  Let me tend to my character, that my lapses would not become a poison in the life of my brothers.  It seems it’s been decades now, but let this pridefulness be brought once for all to an end.  I have seen – at least I think I’ve seen a growth in humility, but the heart remains deceptively wicked.  If I have been fooling myself, thinking myself farther progressed than I am, then I pray that You might catch my progress up with my opinion.  But if that is not to be, then correct my opinion that I may grow the more.  You have promised a pruning that I might be more fruitful, and if that’s what is needed at present, so be it.  And may I be found compliant to that necessary work.  But I also feel strong need to thank You.  This latest season has been one of fruitfulness, and fruitfulness of a fashion that allows me at least a glimpse of the produce.  God, I stand amazed at what You have chosen to do through me, what You have allowed me to be part of.  These trips to Africa; what You have shown me!  What joy it has been to be thus used by You, to know the wonder of letting go of my agenda to allow Yours full rein to proceed.  And this class You have me teaching now, much the same class, but now, in my own church, again:  To see this response is truly something, but let it be nothing that feeds my pride.  Keep me mindful that it’s Your work or it’s nothing but vanity and wind.  So, too, this upcoming opportunity to preach.  I shall have even greater need to relay that much more on Your grace, Your power, Your wisdom to guide and contain me, lest my flesh distort the message You would have brought forward.

In that regard, I would add this prayer for guidance as to what exactly You would have brought forward.  My first inclination runs to this very passage, though much condensed from these morning contemplations.  But is that just because it’s what’s fresh on my mind at present, or is this what You would have addressed?  I’ve considered as well that thread of the gift of suffering.  Is that the subject You would have me present?  Or, given this is a month or two away, is there something else?  Let me hear You clearly on this, that I may serve You rightly, and Your people as well.  And by all means, Father, let pride be far from me in all of this.

Selfless Service (03/05/25)

As I make my way into verse 3, I arrive at the core of Paul’s instruction.  And actually, for the moment at least, I want to move beyond the negative constraints of the first half to the positive outflow of the second.  “Regard one another as more important than yourself.”  This is the point.  This is what the foundational considerations of verse 1 are founding.  This is what supplies the struts and beams to that harmonious unity of verse 2.  Look at the one next to you and care more about their growth than your status.  Seek more to rejoice in their strengths than to advertise your own.  This is more of a challenge than one might like, and there’s more to it than the most obvious aspects.

We can find plenty of discussions about how to relate with others.  We can find plenty of input on what your date or your spouse really wants to hear from you.  All manner of media will point out for us that the one that is so self-involved that he shows no interest in the one he’s talking to is an absolute turn off.  And we know this.  If we’ve experienced such a one who is too busy talking about themselves to hear about us, then we nod our heads in agreement.  Yes!  That’s not companionable at all.  That’s not even conversation.  I mean, conversation implies a bit of back and forth in its very composition as a word.  What we’re getting is monologue, not dialog.  And as the muted channel, we don’t much care for it.  When do I get to say something?  When do we discuss what’s happening in my world?  But again, this is just the most surface aspect of the call we have before us.  After all, what I have considered here is strictly fleshly in nature.  It’s the stuff of feelings and sensation.  We’re seeking for the spiritual.  And let me make certain to be clear, I am not in any way declaring that feelings and sensation are somehow unholy, or beneath us as believers.  No.  That’s not the point.  Indeed, that’s a departure from Christianity, and smacks more of Buddhism or Hinduism.  We are not called to replace the old nature, but to be renewed.  Yes, there will come a time when this body of flesh as it is shall have to be replaced, but the soul is already renewed, reborn.  We continue to be us, and this is what is in need of renewal day by day.  But we are in that place in which Jesus set His apostles at the Last Supper.  You are already clean.  You need only for your feet to be washed, to rinse off the dust of the day.

So, what’s our spiritual task here?  Humility, but that’s a subject for the next section.  What will produce true humility in us?  I’m going to be a bit radical and combine thoughts from Calvin and Clarke.  Of those commentaries I read, I cannot think of any other pair less in agreement with one another, but here, the point is sufficiently evident that both are in fact in harmonious unity.  Isn’t that something?  I suppose I should observe that both these men are men after God’s own heart, both are men devoted to discerning and dispensing the truth of God, knowing Him truly and teaching His gospel truly.  Yet, their views are widely divergent on many matters.  This harmonious unity, then, is something of an example of what I have urged us to recognize exists between our various denominations.  But let me perhaps get to my point.

Calvin advises that if we will concern ourselves with addressing our own faults, we will assuredly see plentiful cause for humility.  Nothing is better suited to preventing our braggadocio than to see ourselves truly.  And nothing, I think, is so rare.  We incline to compare ourselves to others, and in doing so, incline to choose those we are pretty sure have not attained to the level we have done.  We are like that Pharisee that Jesus so roundly renounced, saying, “Well, thank God I can at least say I’m not like him” (Lk 18:11).  We’re happily listing off the sins we managed not to commit, but primarily in hopes of skating past the ones we did.  Stop it!  Don’t wallow in it, but face it, admit it, repent of it.  As to those others you’re so pleased not to be like?  Well, time for a shift.  Time to get the beam out.  I return to Calvin’s consideration:  Honor what is honorable, and let love bury their faults.  What a marvelous shift of perspective.  And it’s not papering over things, just so we’re clear.  There’s much more to it than that.  Honestly, how often have we heard this in Scripture and kind of scratched our heads.  “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1Pe 4:8).  Do you know, Peter is addressing us from the wisdom of Solomon with this.  In Proverbs we find the thought thusly.  “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all transgressions” (Pr 10:12).  Perhaps we might tie that together with Jesus’ lesson on forgiveness.  So often as your brother repents, forgive him (Mt 18:22).  And if he doesn’t?  Perhaps seek to understand rather than to rail against him.

I have a brother here with whom I discuss things fairly regularly, and he is ever reminding me to consider that we don’t know what’s going on in the lives of others.  We are not generally privy to all the trials and challenges they may be facing on any given day, or through any given month.  I suppose this is especially true here in the reticent north, where we incline so much to keep to ourselves, to man up and power through.  But I said I want to lay Clarke alongside Calvin here, so let’s to that.

Clarke observes that when it comes to ourselves, we are only too aware of our every secret defect.  We know what we keep hidden away.  We know how even our best works are so often tainted by self-interest.  We know how often we are just going through the motions, alas.  This, not so we can beat ourselves up over the reality of the situation, but only to say, as regards our own estate, we have plentiful cause to arrive at a lowly assessment.  As concerns our brother over there?  We don’t know, and our calling is to assume the best that can be permitted by what we do know.  “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1Co 13:7).  Love is not skeptical, but believes the best.  We don’t go into it assuming our brother is putting on an act, sure that in his private life, he is a mess just like we are.  That’s not to say he isn’t, but you don’t know, and where you don’t know, the commandment of love insists you take the evidence before you at face value.  This takes us to the application Paul has in view here, and again, it’s nothing but what Jesus taught.  Worry about the log in your own eye, not the speck in your brother’s (Mt 7:3-5).

Okay.  So we have this first deeper level of inter-personal assessment.  Be honest about your own condition, be charitable about the condition of others.  Deal with what you know.  Don’t skeptically downplay the condition of your fellows.  Recognize the risk you run.  The Ten Commandments still apply, and there we read, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex 20:16).  And here, we’re talking one much closer than a neighbor.  We’re talking family!  How much more, then?  This is the great danger of the skeptical mindset.  The skeptical mindset assumes the worst, sees corruption under every visage, behind every action.  The skeptic is pretty sure you’re faking it, pretty sure you’re somehow seeking to scam him.  He is ever on the prowl for a glitch in your programming, looking for the fault, seeking a reason to think less of you, and, as we are discussing matters of faith, to think less of your religion.  Don’t let this be you.  Instead, suppose your brother mor holy than yourself.  Instead, honor what is honorable, promote what deserves promoting.

This is pretty good advice even for dealing with unbelievers, isn’t it?  Or dealing with our children.  If we are busying ourselves with nothing but fault-finding, corrective actions, pointing out the errors, how effective are we in promoting their growth?  Not terribly so.  But where we can apply positive reinforcement instead?  Now, there you’ll see progress.  Encourage what can be encouraged.  I’m not talking bribery and rewards, but simply encouragement.  Nobody hates encouragement.  And nobody long thrives without it.  Indeed, as I have probably said before and even in recent memory, to be an encourager may be one of the greatest gifts given in the service of the body.  I think for my part, I might seek that even more than prophecy.  For one, it’s a far more likely gift to receive, but for another, it is far more readily applied, and far more fully appreciated.  And it removes the risk of speaking falsely and claiming it as truth.  But I don’t wish to counsel in opposition to Scripture here.  Let me, then, just say that here is a gifting of great value, and rejoice if it is in your repertoire, as you know you will rejoice when you are on the receiving end of it.

Okay, where are we?  We have considered how to view one another in a more positive light, in the most positive light permissible by the things we know.  And we have considered how needful it is for us to have a realistic view of our own condition, not so that we can flog ourselves over our failings, but so that we can, perhaps, have a more charitable, more humble mindset.  But we have farther to go.  Love takes action.  Humility leads to charitable love, leads to this action.  This takes us to the ostensible topic of this portion of study, that of selfless service.  As we consider ourselves, and as we consider our brothers and sisters, we arrive at the same point that Scripture makes in regard to our marital relationships.  “You are not your own” (1Co 6:19).  You will, no doubt, remind me that this comes in the immediate context of being God’s temple, observing that it is to Him we belong, and that is why we are not our own.  “You’ve been bought!”  Yes, and at so high a price!  But I, in turn, will observe that this moves directly into discussions of marital duties.  “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise, the husband does not have authority over his body, but the wife does” (1Co 7:4).  You are not your own.  Okay.  Let’s fold in the words of our Lord.  “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all” (Mk 9:35).

Don’t focus on the incentive here.  Wanting to be first is, in itself, a rather poor motivation.  Focus instead on that last clause:  Be servant of all.  Here in this body, you are not your own.  When you come to church, if your primary concern is getting your felt needs met, well, you’ve got some growing to do.  Come instead with a view to seeing how you might serve your brother, your sister, your pastor.  What can I do to help?  How can I be comfort, an encouragement?  Whom can I come alongside?  How can I stir my brothers to more heartfelt worship?  This is a far more beneficial perspective to take up, both for yourself and for your church.  I’ll bring Barnes in here to back me up a bit.  Don’t be selfish.  Don’t be so wrapped up in your own concerns that you don’t even notice the things your family around you are dealing with.  Care.  Truly care.  Care enough to hear them when they speak of their trials.  Care enough to help them in such fashion as you are able.  And care enough to respect boundaries.  This is not, to be clear, permit to become a meddler or a busy-body.  It’s certainly no permit to gossip.  We are not given cause to pry, to insist on this one or that opening up and informing us of all their troubles.  But when they do, be there.  Be there, if nothing else, as a strong shoulder upon which they can lean.  Be there in your prayer life, including their needs.

Here’s a caution for us, or at least for me.  When those concerns come up, don’t belittle them by thinking them insufficient cause to pray.  Shoot, we could stand to do the same in regard to our own situations.  How many times do I consider my various frustrations, aches and pains, and account them too small a thing to be bothering my Father with?  But how does my Father see them?  How does He feel about my reticence?  Well, let me seek that I might be more ready to pray for these others, at the very least, however I may view the things for which they ask.  No, not to the extent of joining them in praying for things that God does not permit, but then, these requests don’t fall into that category.  He may not answer as expected, or may choose to provide differently, but we’re not fielding requests for God to bless sin or supply our lusts.  So, what’s the problem?  Why dismiss them?

Even as I write these things, I see my brother over in the DRC seeking that I might prayerfully consider forwarding a flier of his, describing the ministry of his NGO to those who might be positioned to lend support to that ministry.  And yes, my first response is rather negative.  There’s that skeptical spirit rising up again.  So, enough!  Here is opportunity to practice what I’m preaching to myself this morning.  Or, I could consider the sundry requests noted by my brothers in our morning time of study and prayer yesterday.  Maybe there’s more to be gained in praying for others than in staying on the litany of concerns for my own life.

So, yes Lord.  If there are those to whom I ought to send this flier along for my brother Sam, bring them to mind.  And whether that be the means or not, I pray that You would supply his every need for this ministry.  Bless him with sound stewardship of such provision as You bring, and multiply it to Your glory, even as You multiply the giving of Your church to achieve far and away beyond our means.  Bless my brother Vinnie with healing, both in his physical ailments and in his various family relationships.  Have mercy on his daughters, calling them to Yourself, and let relationships be restored.  Help him in his own growth in faith.  Ground him.  Build him up.  Help him to represent You well in all he does.  Water those seeds that Brian planted in Collin’s ear, that he might indeed arrive at the truth of Your glory and goodness and come to know You as we have come to know You.  Care for my other brother Brian.  Guide him to that means You have for his provision, and guide him as well through his contemplation of moving to a warmer climate for the health of his wife.  Give him clarity and direction, and continue to grow him up in the fulness of all You have for him.  I will pray, as well, for those who have been coming to these classes the last few weeks.  May they lay hold of You more fully through these things You have given me to impart.  May I be clear and accurate in what I convey to them, and ready to come alongside as needed.  And may I be open to whatever You may be calling me to do with this going forward.  I will add prayers for my beloved wife, that You would bring her to a place of true faith, that You would guard her from every false influence, every spiritual assault, and strengthen her in true faith in You, the true God.  You know my myriad concerns on that front, and of those concerns are ill-founded, then I must pray that You would allay my concerns.  If they are not, then I pray You would both strengthen me to whatever part I might have in bringing change, and even more, that You would bring the change by whatever means, and let me be charitable and compassionate whatever the outcome.   Keep me mindful, Father, that I am not my own, and that I am nothing in myself.  As I serve, whether in worship or in teaching, whether at home, or in the church, or in the field, let it be as a vessel for Your will, not as vainly seeking honor for myself.

Humble Compassion (03/06/25)

Okay.  We pick up with much the same thought as guided us yesterday.  Taking from Matthew Henry, be severe as to your own faults, but with others, be charitable.  This earnest self-assessment, as we have said, is bound to produce a humility in us, as concerns our own standing.  When we hear others praise us, it must sting just a bit to recognize that hint of, “if you only knew,” that arises in us.  And honestly, if there is nothing of that arising in response to such praises, then I don’t know but that we should question our self-awareness; that perhaps we should pray for a more honest perception of our condition.

Now, let me temper that point just a bit.  I am by no means suggesting that we should demur and refuse such appreciations as may come our way.  Rather, it ought to encourage in us a greater gratitude towards God, knowing that He has been thus evident in us, not by our great prowess, but by His kind decision to thus equip us and keep us faithful to our task in spite of ourselves.  But I will say that this holds true, true unity in the body is never going to be arrived at until there is true humility in its members.  And let me stress this point:  True humility does not advertise.  It has no need of informing others of its exercise.  There is no, “See what I did there?”  There is no, “You should be more like me.”  Let all such thinking be far from us.  But rather, true humility produces in us, a true and compassionate care for others.

What do I mean by true care?  I mean we are not just listening patiently until we can turn the conversation to ourselves, or turn it to some other topic.  We truly care, because we have come to value these others who form the body together with us at least as much as we care for ourselves.  Look.  I don’t suppose myself to have attained to this level.  I may be getting closer to it.  I want to be nearer to it.  But as often as not, it’s simply not in me to do so, or at least not on any sustained basis.  I have moments of caring for particular individuals, and there are a subset of individuals with whom I would say I have greater connection and greater care than with others.  I suppose that’s natural enough, but then, we are seeking to move beyond the merely natural, aren’t we?  We are being renewed, refashioned for an existence far exceeding that of natural man.

But we have a goal, each one of us, a goal set for us by our Father.  Love one another (Jn 13:34).  This is our chief commandment when it comes to our interactions one with another.  And it’s not just affectionate regard, it’s certainly something beyond politeness.  Love one another.  Really love one another, in that same selfless, sacrificial sort of lovingkindness that God has shown towards you.  Indeed, love one another in the love of God.  That takes us far beyond, “I love you because I have to.”  That’s not love at all, to be honest.  I do often think of my former pastor’s comment that, “I have to love you.  I don’t have to like you.”  And I think there’s probably something to that, if only insomuch as to say that I love you enough to work past the things that currently prevent me liking you.  I love you enough to hope to like you as God continues His work on both of us.  But more, this love is, within our creaturely limitations, akin to the love God has shown for us, reflective of that depth of love conveyed in passages like John 3:16.  The Father loved us enough to send His own Son, His own self, really, to die that we might live.  Jesus loved us enough to lay down His life that we might live, to take upon Himself the full brunt of all our sins, knowing that there was no other hope for our future apart from His deed.  And He did this while we were yet His enemies, while we were yet sinners (Ro 5:8), which amounts to the same thing.

There, too, is great cause for humility.  We only made it because He loved us, died for us, in spite of our utter unworthiness, in spite of our entire lack of interest in being worthy, in spite of our nonstop, committed rebellion against all that is holy.  This is the sort of compassionate care we are being called to here.  This is what it’s potentially going to mean to regard others as more important than ourselves.  This the that same love we are being called to maintain.  Get past the Hallmark sentimentalism, the Valentines Day view of love.  That stuff is too easy, and too cheap.  No.  We’re moving beyond even the parental love for your child, though that, perhaps draws a bit closer to it.  To be sure, our love for our children will move us to do for them what they may not particularly wish to see done, knowing it is needful for them, whether they appreciate the fact or not.  But humility, moving in compassion for those around us, will give itself to their care.  Humility leads us to give preference to others, as we are being called to do in this passage.  Humility, per Calvin’s observation, also brings us to the place of being not easily agitated.

Now, I should have to say there are many factors that militate against that most beneficial product of humility.  We know well enough that there are events or habits in life that will lead us back into agitation.  Exhaustion due to poor sleep habits, edginess due to hunger, or just that easy contempt that comes of familiarity.  Ouch.  And we wonder why this compassionate humility is hardest to exercise in the home.  With whom are we more familiar than family?  I mean, we know their faults almost as well as we know our own.  In some cases, we may know them better than we know our own.  After all, we develop blind spots in regard to ourselves.  But these others?  Oy.  They just get to us, and we’re in constant contact.  The sore spots never have a chance to heal up.  The callouses never form.  And the same can come to apply in our church family.  We’ve been together a long while now, some of us.  We’ve seen each other, if not at our worst, then at the very least, at points where our godliness was at an ebb.  We know each other’s bad habits, as well as the good.  But the good habits never register quite so fully, do they?  There’s something in us seems wired to emphasize the fault and downplay the praiseworthy, and we really need to work on reversing that perspective.  Perhaps it will help to recognize that the thing that bugs us most in our brother is that thing which we realize, if only subconsciously, is a significant flaw in our own character.

We talk sometimes of how our very presence in the world serves to poke the wound of sin in others.  By our very being we make their sin more evident.  That’s at least the way we tend to think of it, in part, because it allows us a better view of ourselves.  Yes, yes.  It’s the holiness in us that offends them.  Well, one hopes there’s some truth to that.  But then, it’s our sinful lapses that offend them even more, and I am going to suggest the reason is twofold.  To be sure, they’ll try and make of it an excuse to dismiss your faith claims and your God.  But then, they are hopefully going to observe your addressing this sin with real repentance and grace, as well.  And that, my friend, is salt in the wound.  For they know they battle the same battles, but they do so in nothing but the weak power of the will.  They fight a losing battle, and they see your victory, and that’s got to hurt.  Why can’t I do that?  But you’ve already told them how to reach that same place.  They are unwilling to the cure, but they do want the result.  Do you see?   Nothing offends us more in our brother than to see them addressing the same sin that so readily besets us, but doing so successfully where we have known only failure.

Well?   Regard your brother.  The call here is to account him more important than your illustrious self.  And that consists in both reducing your assay of self-worth to something nearer reality, and in accentuating the honorable, praiseworthy attributes you see in your brother.  It means celebrating his victories, knowing that in some wise, they are your own.  For you are of the same body, and victory for one member of the body is victory for the whole body, just as injury to even the least member of the body is felt by the whole.  So, guess what?  There’s a degree of self-interest in this compassionate care for others.  I don’t suppose that’s our best motivation, but let’s call it a side benefit to living this body life in the fashion that God desires.  Let it serve as reason for us to seek out this cure for the disease of pride and competition.  Let it serve to stir in us a desire to do our uttermost to tend to the needs of our brothers, to minister to their growth and strengthening, and yes, to avail ourselves unashamedly to their ministrations on our behalf.

The other piece we have in view here is the selfishness, what the Wycliffe Translators Commentary sets as selfish ambition.  We have become a society urgently seeking self-promotion.  It seems that where technology has not been turned to the pursuit of pornographic self-satisfaction, it has been turned to this task of self-promotion.  Get those likes.  Collect those clicks.  Make them appreciate you.  Heck, monetize it if you can.  What a way to make a living, running about, saying, “Look at me!  Look at me!”  Doesn’t matter if the looks come because you’re acting the idiot, or because you’re effectively pimping yourself.  Look at me!  Give me that hit.  Stroke my ego.  And if we’re not doing it on this application or that, chances are pretty good that we’re doing it in other ways.  We hunger, after all, for appreciation.  And, on the other side of that, we ought to be ready to show appreciation where it’s deserved.  The need itself is not sinful.  It’s when it becomes our driving force, when we come to want the praises, whether our actions are praiseworthy or not, when we become attention seekers:  Now there’s trouble.  Now the normal has become abnormal, and strong medicine is needed to address the condition.

Let me turn momentarily to one of those places where we receive the truth of God’s own Word, and then make of it a diseased condition.  We read our way through 1Corinthians, and there, we come across this bold statement.  “But we have the mind of Christ!” (1Co 2:16b).  And for the most part, we pay little enough attention to the surrounding context because this is just such a marvelous thing to discover.  We have the mind of Christ!  Wow!  Well, if that’s the case, who is there can tell us we’re wrong?  We have the Holy Spirit indwelling, surely, then, however it is that I perceive this message, it must be right, right?  And suddenly, we’re adding it to, “You have no need of anyone to teach you, but as His anointing teaches you all things, and is true…” “The anointing you received from God abides in you” (1Jn 2:27).  Oh, my!  I’m a self-sufficient army of one!  I don’t need my brothers.  I don’t need my pastor.  They can’t tell me what to believe.  It’s just me and Jesus, baby!  Look!  The Spirit speaks in me.  I have the mind of Christ.  If you disagree with me, it can only mean that you don’t.  Well, there’s a formula for being of one mind, one love, one soul, and one purpose, eh?  Yeah, no.  But come back to that first verse.  To have the mind of Christ is not about becoming some super-intellect, fully informed as to all that is to be known of God.  Rather, to have the mind of Christ is to have real humility of mind.   Many thanks to Ironside for this particular, eye-opening bit of understanding.  But yes!  It’s going to be coming in the very next verse in this book we are considering.  “Have the same attitude in yourself as was in Christ Jesus” (Php 2:5).  You have His mind of humility, and if you do, then surely, you must share the same attitude, and that attitude is nothing other than that which Paul is urging here.

This humility of mind, this being truly in possession of the mind of Christ, impels us to love.  It doesn’t so much command as produce in us an unopposable desire to love as we ought, to seek how we can help one another in this process of sanctification.  We see the one newly come to faith, and our greatest concern is to perceive and pursue how we might help them to grow in it.  I see this even in this class I’m teaching.  We have those few among us who are freshly come to faith, and struggling to understand better what it is they have come to believe.  Okay, I’ve got this Bible, but it’s huge, and its language is a confusing at times.  It expresses ideas I don’t really understand.  And y’all have this whole language, this terminology you all know, but I don’t.  How am I supposed to make progress?  Well, brother, let me come alongside.  Well, sister, allow me to slow down, to back up and explain, in order that you may make the progress you wish to be making.  Don’t overwhelm with your great achievements.  Don’t insist that they should be at your level of learning, or gain ground by the same means you do.  But lend them of your learning, compassionately, humbly bowing down to bring it to a level they can receive and put to work.  Perhaps some day they will come to possess the same learned perspective that you have.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps they shall excel in other regards where your progress has been glacial.  Who’s to say, apart from God.  But whatever the case, come alongside.  Stop being so impressed with your standing, and give no place to rights and privileges you think to be yours.  It’s not about rights and privileges.  It’s about humbly pursuing a life of godliness together, upholding that finest military tradition of leaving no one behind, as we face this battle of holiness together.

Real Dependence (03/07/25)

So, we have this call to care, to be truly concerned for one another, and as Matthew Henry points out, this concern is to be something other than mere curiosity about them, yet not so callous as to be looking for cause to censure them.  Honestly, as we may have observed in the antics of government, this pursuit of cause to censure is far more likely to leave us devoid of concern, and in fact unable to perceive.  It is the antithesis of that love to which we are called.  Love, remember, believes all things, hopes all things.  The seeking of fault believes nothing, and frankly, has no hope.  Don’t be a partisan.  Be a member.  Don’t seek opportunity to denounce, seek to honor what is honorable.  Don’t poke around for things about which to disagree.  Seek out the points of harmony.  Celebrate the union, rather than getting worked up over the minor differences, however major they seem to you.  Show real concern, real love.  Care enough to truly hear your brother, and to allow yourself to be heard by him, not as a combatant, not as being superior or inferior to him, but as a brother, as family.

And I know we all of us have experience of some familial relations that would hardly serve as models for what we are considering.  We all come from broken home, as my former pastor used to say.  That’s part of life in this fallen world.  We have, if we’re honest, established broken homes of our own.  None of us lives as a perfect example of godliness, though one hopes we try.  But true concern, real compassion:  That is going to require real awareness, real connection.  That is going to require, on the one hand, an attentive interest in others, which this call to think them more important than self will encourage.  It’s also going to require something of those others, that they would be open to sharing their real condition, not putting on the happy church façade, but being real, allowing their family to know their trials as well as their victories.  And back to us.  We have a responsibility to hear with compassion, not judgment, to respond with supportive comfort, not censorious rebuke.  There’s a time when rebuke is the voice of compassion, but it needs great wisdom to know that time, and we are too ready to make the jump to rebuke when the time is quite wrong.

Barnes offers us something which may serve to help us navigate the workings of this call, and to center ourselves on pursuing that unity of purpose to which this call impels us.  He writes, “What we do is to be by principle, and with a desire to maintain the truth, and to glorify God.”  If we will set this as our desire, if we will make it our single-minded purpose to glorify God, I dare say, all bickering and competitiveness must depart.  That’s a big if.  I wish it were as assured and positive as that if which began our passage.  Perhaps it really is, and we just don’t recognize it yet.  Perhaps it really is, but we’re not availing ourselves of that which is needful to maintain the reality of it.  Go back to the start:  The encouragement that is ours in Christ:  Yes, well, we have that, though we may often fail to recognize the experience of it.  The consolation of love, that outward expression of this encouragement we have in Christ:  That’s more on us, and oftentimes, for reasons too varied to enumerate, we fail to express the loving encouragement we should.  Perhaps, we are too caught up in our own neediness.  Perhaps we are too full of ourselves.  Either one could leave us short on our active love for others.  Fellowship in the Spirit:  Again, we know it’s ours.  We know it!  We have pretty constant experience of it.  Yet, we also have pretty constant experience of being inattentive to that reality, to feeling like maybe we’ve lost contact with Him for a time.  And in those times, we may well find our affection and compassion somewhat lacking.  We’ve explored that already, I know, but it’s worth revisiting as I near the end of this study.  Affection and compassion can be worn away by the challenges of life.  Simple things like tiredness and hunger may whittle our compassion down to a mere shard, a toothpick where we should have a tree.

Even in our strongest moments, we know full well how readily these assumed truths can feel far from us.  And to keep God at the forefront of our thinking?  That’s nigh on impossible, if not simply impossible entirely.  Who among us has made it through a day at work with God foremost in mind?  I doubt there’s a one.  Who has thoughts of God’s kingdom first in order as they navigate the grocery store, or the clothing store, or whatever other merchant you might visit?  Who managed to keep God foremost in mind even driving to church of a morning?  Or even getting out the door in the first place?   And yet, here is our greatest need.  We need God present, and tangibly so.  We need the input of our God to guide.  We need to not only know the Holy Spirit is in here, someplace, but to have real and present experience of His fellowship, of His addressing our thoughts and opinions, advising our actions. 

Now, that may seem like overkill for matters such as grocery shopping, and honestly, I don’t suppose we have real need to consult our Lord on every least detail.  Do I buy this particular piece of beef, or that one?  Am I to select this piece of fruit, or another?  Hey, I could be wrong.  There are plenty of times I’ve come home with something that would have been better left at the store, or grabbed one item thinking I had picked up another.  Never mind the temptation aisles.  But what of the potential encounters along the way through that store?  What of the way we interact with the staff?  With our fellow shoppers?  Who knows what good works God may have prepared in advance for you to do on this little shopping trip?  You certainly won’t, if your entire focus is on the mundane task of supplying your larder for the week.  And I know some of us are far better at this mindset than others.  So, you who excel, pray for us who do not, that we may be united in this purpose of pursuing the glory of God, not only in church, but in life.

But know this, however weak or strong you may be in this life of faith.  You have not made such gains as now leave you clear of your need of God, neither have you sunk so low, failed so miserably as to cut off hope of Him supplying your need.  However much you think you have done towards His glory, however much you feel that you know the real experience of Him, let it not lead you to lose sight of your very real need of Him.  Be mindful of that reality of existence which applies.  In Him we live and move and have being (Ac 17:28).  Something in us wants to turn that around, to have God somehow dependent on our adoration to have His existence.  But the reality is that should He turn His back on us for but the slightest of moments, our being would cease to be.  And God is in no such danger Himself.  So, know that relationship as it truly stands.  God does not need your worship.  He deserves it.  He commands it.  And you need it.  You need Him.  You need Him to have anything of worth in yourself.  You need Him to comply with even the simplest of His commands.

Again, He has prepared these good works ahead of time, in order that you might do them (Eph 2:10).  And having prepared them, and you, one might reasonably expect that the onus is on you now to actually do those works.  You, moral creature that you are, are responsible to do that for which you were created, and that includes these good works He designed for you to do.  Does that, then, render Him dependent on your compliance?  No.  His purpose will proceed with or without you.  But that does nothing to ameliorate your responsibility.  And let it be assumed we are at least aware enough to perceive the work set before us.  To actually do it, and to do it in such a way as successfully achieves the intended goal?  That, too, will require us to depend on God for the wisdom and the power necessary to the task.  So, yes, look again at all that is required of you in this passage, and ask yourself just how capable you are of compliance in the power of your own inherent strength and intelligence.  This ought to have us on the first steps towards a very real humility, because I am quite sure that you, like me, are brought swiftly to the recognition that we can’t do this.  Not in our own weak condition.  We might manage it for a season, but you know, and I know, that those moments of weakness, of disregard will come our way at some point.  And I will tell you, the less we have our attention on God, the less we are accustomed to seeking Him out throughout our day, the more rapidly, the more frequently, those moments of weakness will come.

Okay, so let it be said that if we are forever poking at our weak points, forever focused on failure, then fail we will.  But there’s another option.  Keep a real sense of your need, but as to others, keep your eyes on those points where they excel.  In music, at least in the realm of jazz, there is strong encouragement to surround yourself with those you feel excel your capacities, because this will encourage growth on your own part.  For all that, I’ve seen the same apply in such mundane pursuits as bowling.  Bowl with a bunch of folks that you know yourself (or suppose yourself) to be better than, and you won’t be bothered to give it your best, because hey, where’s the need for such expenditure of energy?  But step into a team of better players?  Or enter into a competition where the average level of skill is clearly better than yours?  Oh, you will not only strive, but you will in fact do better, because you will, consciously or unconsciously, be giving more to the task.  What if we come to church with that same mindset?  Not to be knocked down by our comparison of self to others, but neither to boost ourselves by that comparison, for both of those paths are paths to futility.  But what if we came, saw those who excel in an area where we are weak, and found it to be encouragement to do better?  What if they, in turn, are looking to those points where we are strong so as to be encouraged to do better themselves?  But again, neither of us is getting anywhere in this except we are both fully aware of our need for God, and doing our utmost to rely on Him for growth and success.

I hope I am managing to drive this study somewhere near to my intended point.  True humility comes of recognizing our real dependence on God.  And our dependence is very real.  He has determined, in His perfect wisdom, that we should remain dependent on Him, and not just on some philosophical perception that our existence would not have come to pass apart from His pre-existence.  That is true, but it doesn’t go far enough.  We depend on Him as our source, yes, but also as our Tutor, as our sole means.  We see the impossibility of His commandments, and know them to be not merely good advice, but requirements.  And we know that we are so very far from compliance, or even the capacity to comply.  If we don’t know that, well, we don’t know our true situation yet.  We have still far too high a view of ourselves, and far too low a view of God.  But He has determined that we shall not find compliance possible in ourselves.  We can’t do this without Him, and He, though He most assuredly could, will not do it without us.  God can do as He pleases.  That is established.  He could do quite well without bothering with Creation at all.  He would remain perfect and complete in Himself were He to let the whole project just crash and burn, rescuing no one.  His glory would not be the least bit diminished by such an outcome.  But He has chosen to have it that we would be willing partners in the work He does.  Willing partners.  That’s as near to work as we come in this.  Are you willing?  Don’t lose sight of the work.  What is the work?  To believe on Christ.  To rely on Him wholly, solely, and entirely.  Is your will involved?  Assuredly so.  Is your will the deciding factor?  Assuredly not.  “I have called you by name, and you are Mine” still applies.  But by the grace of God you have come to be a willing partner, gladly coming alongside your Father as He pursues His work.  His work.  Bear that in mind.  What you are granted the privilege to be part of is His work.  It’s not your onerous duty, it’s your happy privilege to be with Him in this, to enjoy the fellowship of working together, side by side, with One who loves you.  Don’t begrudge the effort.  Don’t complain of the labor.  Rejoice in the opportunity.  And know that He has you.

Lord, thank You.  Yes, there have been some low points this last week or two, but there have been those points as well where I am quite confident that I am where You would have me to be.  Guard me, my Father, from coming to think more of myself than is right and reasonable.  Guard me from becoming self-sufficient in my own mind, for that is far from the reality of things.  In offering worship, let me rely on You, not my meager talents.  In my teaching, let me be attuned to what You would have taught, not interested in burnishing my credentials.  It’s been a heady place, these last couple of weeks, to be receiving such positive feedback, and such warm regard, but let that not become my motivation, nor let it puff me up.  I am thankful that You are working as You are in me, and through me.  Keep me humble, Father.  Keep me open to Your lead, rather than taking the driver’s seat.  And grant me the time and energy I shall need tomorrow in order to rightly prepare myself, not just with notes and thoughts, but with prayerful consideration for Your guidance, Your agenda, Your power and wisdom to take my offerings and make of them something truly good and useful.  And I will again ask for Your direction, and Your wisdom to prepare for this upcoming opportunity to preach.  Use me as You choose, and guide me in the work, that I may be doing no more and no less than what You would have me to do.  Show me those places where I can put into practice the lessons of this last week and more, that I might better represent Your kingdom and better magnify Your majesty.