In the Week 23 Post, king Solomon and the apostle Paul, in words like a clarion call, advise all people who claim to be one of Gods people, to live in a way, that is ‘harmless as a dove’, loving and right doing in the eyes of God. They are not lone voices in the Bible record. Today the words of the apostle Peter call the followers of Christ to live in the same way, 1 Peter 2: 1 “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking.”
There is more to the statement ‘laying aside’ than might first be evident, when it comes to putting this advice into practice; as all practicing Christians past and present attest. Romans 7: 15 “For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.” Verse 17 “But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” 19 “For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice;” All of us born sinful into this sinful world, are allowing or contending with the sin within us. Many of us do not recognize how many times Satan implants his thoughts and desires into our mind and we in our own strength cannot resist and very often will respond to his influence and temptations. Verses 22 “For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. V23 “But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.” Many of us have been made wretched and full of self-recrimination when we behave in an unlovely way. Verse 24 “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Obviously neither Paul nor anyone else has found peace or change of behaviour through our own resolve. Verse 25 “I thank God-through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” Romans 8: 10 “And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.”
Praise God there is an answer. 2 Peter 1: 1 “…..To those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ: V 2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, V3 as His divine power has given us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue.”
Each of us desire and need physical food each day to grow and remain healthy. To also grow and be sustained spiritually, we need to, daily ingest and absorb different and various spiritual ‘ingredients’ within God’s word. To have the desire to read, and contemplate the messages from God, in his word, will come naturally when we fall in love and maintain a relationship with Him, 1 Peter 2: 2, 3 “As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
We have the sure promise that Jesus will work within us so that we will be made acceptable to God. Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and by this same power we are destined not to, forever, remain in Satan’s sin and death option. Hebrews 13: 20, 21 “Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen”