Knowledge is the sort of thing that takes facts like "there is no God but one" and "there is no idol in the world" and uses those facts in a way that is abusive to our brothers and sisters. What if there is a brother who all too recently turned from idols to the living God (cf. 1 The. 1:9)? Do we want keep him in close contact with the ideology which he believed until just recently? Do we want to force him to exert his will to deny the existence of these idols? Do we want to force upon him what can only be considered a temptation? This is how knowledge uses facts. This is what the demons do. They believe that God is one and tremble (cf. Jam. 2:19). They are constantly shouting out the identity of Jesus to passers-by. Yet Jesus silences them because their knowledge is less than useless. It causes genuine harm.
Love builds up. Love is love even toward ones enemies. Knowledge needn't be. Even truth can be weaponized when we dealing with our enemies. If we accuse someone of sin we may risk alienating the person rather than winning them. If we, in other words, judge them, without love for them we do great disservice. Instead of revealing the truth about their sin we instead reveal a truth about our lack of love for them. We disregard that they are a person with whom God's wants to spend eternity and is is passionately in love. And disregarding this, the person may extrapolate that God may not love his enemies either. It is easy to infer that the God of a hateful person is a hateful God. But our God died for us while we were yet sinners (cf. Rom. 5:8). Rather than condemning the servant who owes the huge debt is shows leniency. Rather than insisting on the truth he instead offers mercy. He then insists that we do the same for our fellow servants.
This gets harder when our enemies are behaving like genuine enemies. When they strike us, take our cloak, or ask more of us than they have a right to ask are we still able to put love first? Or do we weaponize our knowledge in order to defend ourselves? Do we insist on our "rights" in a way that subverts the kingdom of God by preventing us from loving others? We abuse Jesus in all these same ways that our enemies abuse us. And we all need to rely on his mercy in spite of our failings.
Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”
The LORD probes us and knows the our hearts. He knows if our thoughts our crooked. He wants us to have knowledge. But he wants us to use it at the service of love. So let us ask, "See if my way is crooked, and lead me in the way of old." Grace is offered to us this morning. The LORD will penetrate our pretense and reveal our hearts to us. He will clear away the clouds of self-delusion. Let us use these words as our prayer today to open ourselves to that grace.
Even when he reveals mixed motives within us he also reveals his love for us that precedes anything we do or earn. He does not weaponize his knowledge of us. He uses his knowledge of us to build us up, to transform us, and to free us to love one another.
Truly you have formed my inmost being;
you knit me in my mother’s womb.
I give you thanks that I am fearfully, wonderfully made;
wonderful are your works.
No comments:
Post a Comment