Brethren, I urge you
to become
like me, for I became
like you.
You have not injured
me and all.
You know that because
of the physical infirmity
I preached the gospel
to you at the first.
In my trial which was
in my flesh
you did not despise or reject,
but you receive me as
an angel of God,
even as Christ
Jesus. What then was the
blessing you enjoyed?
for I bear you witness
that, if possible, you would have plucked out
your own eyes and
given them to me.
Have I therefore
become your enemy
because I tell you
the truth?
Galatians 4: 12 -- 16
What did
Paul mean what he urged the Galatians to become like him? Let us take a moment and look back in
Galatians to see if we can find an answer; and yes we do: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by
faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians
2: 20). What does it mean to be
crucified with Christ? It is to sign
your death warrant of the disposition of sin, to turn all in emotional
impressions and intellectual beliefs into a moral verdict against the
disposition of sin; furthermore, you are to remove yourself any claim to
yourself. Do not Jesus Christ tell us
that we must deny ourselves? All is not
saying anything different! What this
means for each of us is that we must endeavor to follow Jesus Christ, and Paul
does not tell us that we must be determined to imitate Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that we must be identified
with Jesus Christ in His death. A
person may run around doing all kinds of antics, speaking in some sort of
unknown gibberish sounds coming out of their mouths, and I'm not speaking about
hearing a person speak a language you do not know and must be interpreted by another
person who speaks that language. No,
you must come to a moral decision and act upon it and when you do that
everything Christ has wrought for you on the cross will be wrought in you. A person's responsibility for their
salvation is first to know that God is the only one who saves a person by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross.
A person's responsibility is to give to God your free committal of
yourself to God and to the Holy Spirit and then you have given God the
opportunity to impart to you the holiness of Jesus Christ. You are living in this life, albeit,
temporarily, for death is still reigning until the return of Jesus Christ,
nevertheless you must live and that life is to be living for Jesus Christ. Your individuality remains, God does not
take that away from you, but your mainspring, the ruling disposition, is
radically altered. Yes you remain in
the same human body, but that old Satanic right to yourself is destroyed. The life you now live the life you live in
the flesh, not the life which you long to live in pray to live, but the life
you are now presently living in your mortal flesh, the life which men can see,
and what they should see is your faith in the Son of God. You no longer have faith in the face, but
faith which has leaped over all bounds of conscious thoughts, and you have come
to the identical faith of the Son of God.
How often
do we look at the outward appearance of a person and determined much about them
whether we know to be true or not?
Apparently whatever physical ailment that Paul had it cause some sort of
similarity to what we often do when we see someone in poor clothes, or in poor
health, we speak poorly of them. But
Paul was not injured by their rebuke or detesting whatever it was that Paul had
as infirmity. There were some that did
not allow this infirmity to reject Paul.
Some Paul had become their enemy, not just because they were Judaizers,
or Gnostics, or some other form of heretic, but because Paul spoke the truth
and often the truth is hard to swallow.
Can you think back to when you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior how
happy you were in receiving the gospel? Have you then in time come to
reason otherwise? Often the person we think is our enemy is in actuality our
best friend, and this so happens when one steps aside from the truth of Jesus
Christ and in some sense declaring Him to be an enemy when in fact He is your
best friend. As the old song goes:
"What a friend we have in Jesus."
False teachers were drawing the Galatians from the truth of the Gospel
as given to them by Paul. These were
designing men, who under suspicious pretenses consulted their own interest. We see this all the time was pastors
thinking more about their pocketbooks than helping people to come to the truth
of God's Word and live the truth? How
often do those types of leaders pretend affection for you, but they are not
sincere and upright in their professions?
It's good to be zealous if that zealousness is in truth and sincerity. Zeal
should be exercised only upon what is good; it is good to be zealous always in
a good thing; not for a time only, or now and then, but constantly. How happy would it be for the Church of
Christ, if this rule was better observed among Christians? nothing is more sure
is a proof for a sender in that he has passed into a state of justification, as
Christ formed in him by the renewal of the Holy Spirit; but this cannot be
hoped for while men depend on the law for the acceptance with God. Pray that your zeal has all the marks of the
truth of God as revealed in His word.
Who can to the mighty acts of the LORD?
Who can
declare all His praise?
Blessed are those who keep justice,
and he who
does
righteousness at all times!
Psalm 106: 2 -- 3
Give your utmost for His highest
No comments:
Post a Comment