Luke 6:37-38
If you are a follower of
Christ and have come by conviction of the Holy Spirit to the reality that your
body is the temple of the Holy Spirit as instructed in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; “Or do you not know
that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from
God, and that you are not your own? For
you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” I have obeyed this verse by watching
what I eat and drink, by exercising and daily feasting on the word of God,
reading the Bible, and asking Christ who is my life to live it out in and
through me. It is called a learners
life, maybe even a resilient life.
Gordon
MacDonald has written a book called “A Resilient Life” and on page 150 he quotes
Thomas Merton: “No one who simply eats or drinks when
he feels like eating or drinking or smokes whenever he feels the urge to light
a cigarette, or gratifies his curiosity and sensuality whenever they are
stimulated, can consider himself a free person.
He has renounced his spiritual freedom and become the servant of bodily
impulse. Therefore his mind and his will
are not fully his own. They are under
the power of his appetites, and through the medium of his appetites they are
under the control of those who gratify his appetites. Gordon goes on to state; Merton offers
an idea that seems paradoxical: “We are most free
when we are under discipline.”
My
flesh and maybe yours enjoys looking good, it likes to feel good and be noticed
and if not under the control of the Spirit it will do as all flesh, become
proud and arrogant about its desire to submit to a disciplined life and not a
slave to food or drink. Without notice,
as if spiritual darkness came in while we were minding our own business, the spirit
of judgment pops-up and we become judges.
Judging others is common to us human critters, it’s the nature of the
flesh to do so and being a follower of Christ does not exempt one.
Dr. Luke shares these words
of Jesus in Luke 6:37-38, “Judge not, and you
will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and
you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed
down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the
measure you use it will be measured back to you.” It is so important to believe and act as if
Jesus tells the truth, and yet each day we find ourselves in the role of the
Judge. In Romans 7, some refer to it as
the defeated Christian chapter of the Bible, we find Paul stating, like us, he
does think in the flesh things that are not pleasing to God. But the answer is in Romans 8 where Paul
tells us to set our mind not on the flesh and its desires but on the Spirit and
we will live out the victorious life.
Often, way too often, this
writer forgets he a student, a learner, and that his role is not judge, not a condemner
but a seeker of truth. Truth leads us to
love, mercy, grace and forgiveness, for that is what has set me free, from the
fear of death, the fear of men.
From the Back Porch,
Bob Rice
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