The Holy Spirit who miraculously brings us to spiritual life, leads us to repentance, gives us faith, and continues his sanctifying work in us, empowering us, also miraculously, to love like Christ with affection and sympathy! Is there then “any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy” (2:1)? Indeed there is, for the Holy Spirit is at work in us to glorify the one who loves us most. Let us then love one another as we have been loved, by the Spirit of unity, in the likeness of Christ, to the glory of God. Amen!
Tag Archives: Body of Christ
The Tie That Binds
It would appear that this fourth chapter is an assortment of unrelated topics. But upon closer inspection, we see a repetition of introductory phrases, “better than,” carried onward from the previous chapter. Solomon is clearly building his argument, which he will carry forward to its conclusion at the end of the book. But this chapter, short as it is, is not merely a building block, but a thematic treatise. It has an important message for us, especially in the church today, even this church today.
In Accord for God’s Glory
In a choir, a selfish voice creates dissonance. A submitted voice enjoys consonance. If you can hear one voice above the others, a choir sings not as one voice but a dissonant two. But when every individual submits to one another together, a choir produces the beauty of harmony in one voice. Likewise in Christ’s church, who is composed of many yet sings as one, we submit to one another resulting in harmony, living, singing forth, to the glory of One. May we as Christ’s church, as one voice, sing forth beautiful praise to the One who not only gives us life but also lives that we may glorify him forever.
Members One of Another
Modern Evangelicals have seemingly accomplished a miracle (Or, maybe it’s a magic trick?), something foreign to Scripture yet readily embraced: the churchless Christian. Emphasizing our desires over God’s design and our pleasure over pleasing him, we have relegated the cherished assembly of the Beloved into a consumer’s option. This not to say that God is forgotten. But with the reign of easy-believism, the individual is all-important, and the authority of the self stands sovereign. In his commentary on Romans, James Boice (writing in 1995) observes, “It strikes me…that today the problem is our individualism, which I would define as hyperpersonalized religion. It is the religion of ‘Jesus and me only.’”[2] Boice goes onto label this phenomenon a form of narcissism, warning, “you cannot have ‘one body in Christ’ if everyone is creating a private little a la carte religion for himself.”[3]
Planter, Pastor, Preacher 