Stop it

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS

STOP IT

 Gal 5:13-15

13 You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. 14 The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself."   15 If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.

NIV

This is not the first time we have dealt with this issue as we have already been thinking and have written about this concept of loving each other as we love ourselves. In fact, we even titled a recent devotion as “Free to Love”. Our freedom in Christ does not give us the right to commit any sin we would desire, although we do still fall short. However, that is not acceptable, as we should not make excuses for flesh. We should not simply say that “Well, we are human”, although we are, and we will never attain perfection. Yet, we should not make that an excuse to sin. Through the power of the Spirit, we should be able to say no, to those desires. It is a battle that we have to be aware of exists within us. As Paul has said the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak, which may be my paraphrase, but that is the idea. However, having dealt with this freedom to love, we should also consider the situation which was going on instead of this loving each other. This biting and devouring each other will destroy the church. Gossip is the biggest destroying of all. How do can we believe it is appropriate to tell rumors about another believer. First of all, when we gossip, we do not even know what we say is the truth. Unless we absolutely know, first hand, witnessing someone doing something which would be wrong, we have no real knowledge of anything. Even then, we have absolutely no right to tell anyone. Our first and foremost responsibility is to go directly to that person and confront them with their behavior and then doing that in love, not in any way being judgmental. If they do not accept what we have to say, then we can take one other person with us and go to them once again. But this must be done in private. It is not about hurting them, but helping them. This gossip and rumor mill is the destroyer of the church. It comes from the pit of hell itself. When we hear gossip from someone, we need to tell them to stop it, they are in the wrong and as they are gossiping about the sin of another, they are, in fact, in sin as they gossip. That also means that we cannot gossip about someone who is gossiping. We cannot allow ourselves to get involved in this behavior, for we are to love others as we love ourselves and why would we ever do anything intentionally to harm ourselves is beyond comprehension. What Paul is saying in plain English is, stop it!