DEVOTION
THE 2ND
LETTER TO THE CORINTHIANS
WORLD VS DIVINE
2 Cor 10:1-6
10:1 By the meekness and
gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you — I, Paul, who am "timid" when
face to face with you, but "bold" when away! 2 I beg you that when I
come I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be toward some people who
think that we live by the standards of this world. 3 For though we live in the
world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are
not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to
demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets
itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to
make it obedient to Christ. 6 And we will be ready to punish every act of
disobedience, once your obedience is complete.
NIV
Once again, it is difficult to
break up one of Paul’s thoughts that take up a whole lot of words. However, there is a truth that we can focus on that could apply to our lives. One of those is what
he says about there are some of them who think that we live by the standards of
this world. Some of them thought that Paul was living by the standards of the world
seems bizarre, when they might be the ones who need correction regarding how to
live. But the question is as to what kind of standards of the world were being
thought of. Most likely this is about personal gain or being controlled by the
weak and corrupt principles of human nature. They most likely thought he was not
governed by high and holy principles but rather by the mere worldly policy that
is guided by personal interests and worldly views of ambition or love of power,
wealth, and popularity. This is something that could invade the way we think in
this post-modern way of life. Although we are Christians and that should be our
guiding light as to how we think and behave, we also have grown up in this
world and have been taught by its principles most of our youth, and even into
our adult lives. The idea of success is basic to life. We think we should work
to gain as much wealth as possible and to store as much as we can for that
golden time of retirement. We think that our success is tied to our education
and our personal work ethics, showing ourselves to be worthy of promotions and
further financial gain. It is just the way the world functions, and we live in
this world, yet we are told to not be of the world. That is we do have to work
for our own welfare, being able to buy food, clothing, housing, and some type of
transportation. But is that what governors us, our outlook on life? We are supposed
to be governed by the Spirit who dwells within, guiding us in the principles of
God, leading us into all truth so that we can live by the divine power of God,
and making our thoughts, how we think about everything, obedient to Christ. What
does that look like in our daily walk? We think that the main issue is that all
that we do, all that we say, in every aspect of our lives, where we work, live,
worship, and play, we should be bringing glory to God and not to ourselves in any way. If we succeed in any way, God should be given the glory. Our lives should
reflect His divine influence on our hearts and mind. If someone tells us that we
are a good person, or how smart or intelligent we are, or that we are doing so
many good things, they are liars, for no one is good except God, at least, that
is what Jesus said. So, then we should not accept that kind of praise from men
but live to receive praise from God. Still, if men must make those comments
about us, we need to make sure that we point their praise to God. It is the
Lord working in and through us, it is Him who should be praised for anything we
say or do. Just as Jesus said that we cannot serve two masters, it is either
the world or the divine.
No comments:
Post a Comment