Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

Where Is Our Understanding From

JOHN 13:34-35 – A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

THEME OF THE DAY. WHERE IS OUR UNDERSTANDING FROM? As Christians, allow me to give you a revelation which is not really a revelation. We are far from perfect. We still struggle with sin. We still fall to worldliness. We still get tripped up by the devil. We still surrender to the flesh. And in all our imperfections, there is one that perhaps we don’t pay enough attention to. Stay with me on this.

We are prone to lean on our own understanding when it comes to things in the Christian life and church. Even with the commands and warnings of “Do not lean on your own understanding” and “Be not wise in your own eyes”, we lean on our own understanding and operate out of our own wisdom (Proverbs 3:5-7). And here are a couple of illustrations of the ease we do this – understanding the Christian life and church. There are two possible sources which define the Christian life and church – our understanding and God’s understanding. Obviously, the only correct one is God’s and that is found in the Bible. Yet, we easily, and often, default to the former – our understanding. Why? Because if we are not regularly in the Word renewing and educating the heart and mind to get God’s understanding, we default to our own. It is always “either/or” when it comes to gaining understanding and knowledge about spiritual things. Let’s test the point I am making in two areas; our understanding of the church and how we are to love fellow believers.

First, the church. Quick. No time to think. When we hear the word “church” do we immediately think of the universal body of Christ or local visible assemblies? The Greek word for church in the New Testament, “ecclesia”, appears 114 times; 109 of those refer to visible local assemblies of people. I often wonder if we are allowing our own understanding to define church and not the Bible. I say that by eye-witnessing significant low levels of commitment to the local church in attendance, sacrificial service, cheerful giving, and keeping it a necessary priority for family spiritual growth. There are Christians who actually believe they can be spiritually healthy, grow intimate with Christ, and serve Him independent of immersing themselves in a local church. That is leaning on one’s own understanding and contrary to what the Bible says and teaches.

Another area to evaluate whether the Bible is forming our understanding of spiritual things or ourselves is in the area of obeying today’s scripture; loving other believers. Here is another “pop quiz” . . . “How do we love God’s people?” There is only one answer. If we attempted to “fill in the blank” with anything other than, “We love fellow believers like Jesus loves fellow believers”, then we are leaning on our understanding and not the scriptures. And this will be disastrous to our spiritual lives. Why? Because the standard of measurement of our love for people will be what we think it should be. This will lead to a love of partiality, convenience, selectiveness and of minimal effort. But it will be damaging for another reason. We will fail to see that to love like Jesus means to live a life of love – all the time, regardless of circumstances or the ones we are to love being difficult. So, how would we know if we are leaning on our understanding or God’s when it comes to loving people as Jesus did? I will leave this question to each of us to answer and the way to get the right one is to immerse oneself in the Gospels. Let me encourage each of us. Do a Bible study in the four gospels and write down every instance where Jesus displayed His love to His disciples. I guarantee, it will change our lives.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to measure my love for Your people by the standard Your Son loves Your people.”

QUOTE: “Jesus is not only the standard and definition for love but is the example for us to follow in loving.”