SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/25/2017 6:45 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “United in Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
2:2b
Message of the verse: “having been knit together in love”
We will begin with the first part of what is commonly
called “The Love Chapter,” which is the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians and
look at the first three verses:
“1 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.”
I count six times the word “if” is used in these three
verses sensing that the author is really asking a lot of questions that he will
answer as he continues in this chapter.
The chapter is about love and “Fervent love is the necessary balance to
a strong mind,” writes John MacArthur.
We have been discussing having a strong mind in our last few Spiritual
Diaries as we work our way through this second chapter of Paul’s letter to the
Colossians. MacArthur then adds
“Christianity is not mindless enthusiasm, but neither is it lifeless
intellectual orthodoxy.” So what we see
here is that the Bible is a book of balance and the balance we are talking
about here is love along
with intellectual orthodoxy. I
have to say that I am reading a novel written by Jerry Jenkins entitled “I
Saul,” and not to give too much of the plot away it is about the parchments
mentioned in Paul’s letter to Timothy in the last recorded letter that is found
in the Bible written by Paul. The author
uses those parchments to be kind of an autobiography of Paul’s life from the
time he is a young man until, I suppose to the time right before he will be
killed for his faith, as I really don’t know as I have not finished it yet, but
the chapter I am reading now speaks of the intelligence that Paul shows in the
school that he is in there in Jerusalem.
Now we know his name is also Saul and that he sat at the feet of
Gamaliel from the Scriptures and according to the story Gamaliel was a man who
truly wanted to know God personally, something Paul wanted to do too, but Paul
was letting his intellect get in the way of knowing God in a personal way and
as we know he turned into a very strict Pharisee, and a strict Pharisee had no
room for love in his heart. I think that
is what MacArthur is referring to when he writes about the balance between love
and a strong mind. I also think that
Paul learned his lesson as can be seen in that 13th chapter of 1
Corinthians.
Paul uses the word “sumbibazo”
which is the Greek word translated “knit together,” and MacArthur states that
this “means to unite, or bring together.
This aorist participle explains the main verb (‘may be encouraged’) by
further defining the strengthened heart as one filled with love. It refers in Ephesians 4:16 and Colossians
2:11 to the various parts that unite to form the human body. Believers share a common life with love as
its basis. All believers possess the
same eternal life, all come to Christ in the same way, and all were placed into
the Body of Christ by the same Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 12:11-13). The church’s unity is not organizational, but
organic. Believers are ‘all one in
Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3:28; cf. Rom. 10:12).”
It just so happens that we will quote from the very
chapter that I am studying in my morning devotions which is John 17, and we
will look at verses 20-23 to show the prayer that Jesus prayed shortly before
He went to the cross, and we will see in these verses that He prayed for unity.
“20 "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; 21 that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. 22 "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; 23 I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”
MacArthur quotes the late Francis
Schaeffer in his commentary where Schaeffer stated “the final apologetic” to
the world is the unity of the church:
“In 1 Cor. 13 the point was that, if an individual
Christian does not show love toward other true Christians, the world has a
right to judge that he is not a Christian.
Here [in John 17:21] Jesus is stating something else which is much more
cutting, much more profound: We cannot
expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims
are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of
the oneness of true Christians.
Now that is frightening.
Should we not feel some emotion at this point?”
My answer to that question
is that yes we should!
2/25/2017 7:20 PM
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