I recently read an article entitled, “Rescuing The Church From The Snare of Good Performance.” It was dealing with the subject along the lines of: “The church at Ephesus had good performance, but left their first love (Revelation 2:1-7). Good performance is no replacement for love for Christ and others.”
How true this is in light of 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, which points out that regardless of our talents, our abilities, our knowledge, and, yes, our performance, without charity we are nothing. A love for God and others, the two great commandments on which hang all the law and prophets, is the true spirit of Christianity.
This leads us to the reality that our lives as Christians are a mixture of both the flesh and the Spirit, which are contrary the one to the other – Galatians 5:17. We are not only what we learn in church, but we also have the influences of our culture upon us. What we know to be true, and what we do, may not always be the same. It may be the Spirit of God moving us, or it might be our fleshly passions driving us. Indeed, we are a mixture of sorts!
The Bible teaches us, not to just be content with whatever our personal mixture may be, but rather we are to seek out the formula of God’s will and way for the make-up of our person and our way of life. This involves repentance and faith unto self-denial and the taking up of our cross to follow Christ.
Just as Christ emptied Himself of all His rights and privileges, to take upon Himself the form of a servant, and humbled Himself to die on the cross for our sins, it is our reasonable service to present our body a living sacrifice unto Him, to prove what is that good, acceptable and perfect will of God – Romans 12:1-2.
Sometimes, we need to be rescued from the arrangement of our lives, because the arrangement we have that pleases us, may very well not be pleasing to God, but rather falling short of having eternity’s values in view.
SHARING
