“I have made known Your name to those men You gave me from the world. They were of You and You gave them to Me and they have kept Your word” (John 17:6).
This is what the Christian life is all about; keeping His word. This is not as easy to do as it is to say. Throughout the world error and truth travel the same roads, work in the same fields, factories and offices, shop in the same stores and attend the same Churches. So skilled is error at imitating truth that the two are constantly being mistaken for each other; Isaac felt the arms of Jacob and thought they were of Esau; even the disciples could not tell who was the traitor amongst them; “Is it I?” they each asked Jesus (Mark 14:19).
In these days, there are new religious Laws being introduced which are the engine room of the lawlessness amongst God’s people as prophesied by Jesus (Matthew 24:10-12). These laws reflect the world’s values and say, “You must tolerate everything” and “you must not disagree”.
We need to train ourselves to discern truth from error; but truth is not intellectual only, it is also moral. A theological fact only becomes a spiritual truth when it engages the humble heart; a proud man can never know spiritual truth, just theological facts. Knowledge without humility is vanity; without moral expression in the life of the believer it will not become wisdom or truth.
If we knew that we were going to die next week, how would we spend our time? I suggest that we would be giving ourselves over to anxiously bringing our entire life under the authority of Christ Jesus. There is not one newspaper we would want to read, one TV show we would want to watch; not one of the words uttered in the corridors of power in government or the UN would have any interest for us; the attractions of the market place would cease to occupy our minds; we would finally realise how empty and shallow are the things of this world, including every book that has ever been written, bar one.
If we know that, becoming aware of our imminent death, we would dramatically alter our daily life then we should do it now, while there is yet time, because the fact is that we are all dying and the timing of our death is not something that we can know; therefore we should be living as though we are going to die tomorrow night. The saints of old “all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13).
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