Don't Forget!

Isn’t it easy to use our own “righteousness” as the standard for all people? The sins we get tripped up on are either “not that bad,” or else we praise God for his grace and mercy; however, with other people it can be easy to go on a witch hunt and ready to speak for God the condemnation their actions deserve. But as Paul said about the false teachers in Corinth, “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise.” (2 Corinthians 10:12). Instead, they needed to consider his words to the Galatians in Galatians 6:4-8, “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load… Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.”

Comparisons can easily become sin, because they lead to the “deeds of the flesh”: “…hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy…” (Galatians 5:20). However, there are healthy comparisons that we teach and preach regularly–living our life to emulate the life of Christ (aka Christian, which means Christ-like). As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:1, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.”

We can even read Hebrews 11 to see an entire list of people who modeled righteousness and faith. Comparing ourselves to those who made it their life’s ambition to love and obey God, isn’t a bad idea. Theoretically, that’s what eldership is designed to do for a congregation: model and teach Godly living by being an example of Godly living and demonstrating wisdom in exercising it.

In a similar way, through the inspired words of God, we see people in the New Testament being compared to people of the Old Testament (often called parallels). For instance, Jesus compared to Adam–both being the first-at-new-life (Romans 5); or comparing Abraham’s faith to the kind we should have (Galatians 3); or comparing Jesus to the priest, Melchizedek (Hebrews 7), or Elijah to John the Baptist (Matthew 11:11-15), and many times the rebellious nature of Israel to our own rebellion.

Consider some of the comparisons between Moses and the apostle Paul. Both began their ministries after seeing a bright light (burning bush–Moses, road to Damascus–Paul), both received the best education (Acts 7:22–Moses, Acts 22:3–Paul), both had “thorns in their flesh”, both had the great burden of trying to get people to follow God, both loved God. We can easily see that both of these men had a burden on their heart to help people remember God’s will. Hopefully, we see that as a trait worth modeling our life after–people who want to do, and promote, the will of God. But just like those two men suffered a lot of heartache–trying to get people to love God rather than selfishness–we too must stay with it; we must keep on encouraging, “bearing one another’s burden–thus fulfilling the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

Let’s consider the need to remember the great examples of our own past and learn from the examples in Scriptures. After all, they’re there to serve that purpose–“For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope” (Romans 15:4).