Monday, August 10, 2009

Love Rejoices Not In Iniquity

"Lovelessness is a sea that knows no shore, for it is what God is not. And eventually not only will the other man drown, but I will drown, and worst of all, the demonstration of God drowns as well when there is nothing to be seen but a sea of lovelessness and impersonality. As Christians, we are not to be in fellowship with false doctrine. But in the very midst of the battle against false teaching, we must not forget the proper personal relationships[...] Every time I see something right in another man, it tends to minimize me, and it makes it easier for me to have proper creature-creature relationship. But each time I see something wrong in others, it is dangerous, for it can exalt self, and when this happens, my open fellowship with God falls to the ground. So when I am right, I can be wrong. In the midst of being right, if self is exalted, my fellowship with God can be destroyed. It is not wrong to be right, but it is wrong to have the wrong attitude in being right, and to forget that my relationship with my fellowmen must always be personal. If I really love a man as I love myself, I will long to see him be what he could be on the basis on Christ's work, for that is what I want or what I should want for myself on the basis on Christ's work. And if it is otherwise, not only is my communication with man broken, but my communication with God as well. For this is sin, breaking Christ's second commandment to love my neighbour as myself[...] This remains true even if the man is desperately wrong and I am right. When 1 Corinthians 13 says, "Love rejoices not in iniquity," it means exactly what it says. When we find another man to be wrong, we are not to rejoice in his iniquity. And how careful I must be, every time I see a situation where I am right and another man is wrong, not to use an excuse to scramble into a superior position over that man, rather than remembering the proper relationship of fellow creatures before God"
I thought this very fitting. Just a reminder to myself and to all, as to what my personal relationships with others ought to look like in light of everything I've been learning.

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