The Devotional - A Look at the Book #877

by Jesse Abel

 

Thoughts from Papa “J”

 

I am not alone in this, especially if you are over fifty years of age and saved; you will see the many plans you’ve made. You will also see that those plans; when rolled upon the LORD, the direction and outcome were always completed in His Righteousness. Proverbs 16:3-9

 

Good Morning

 

2 Corinthians 3:1-6 – Before getting transferred to my next duty station (at sea or ashore) I would seek to find out as much as I could about my new assignment. Sort of a heads for the future you might say! Knowing some of the people that will be there and knowing a bit of the history of the ship or shore station always helped in the preparation of the new tasks ahead.

 

Here in Paul’s writing to the Corinthians we see similar thoughts or concerns racing through his mind. It is not as if he has never written to the Corinthians or been to the church at Corinth; he has, so in truth he does not need to provide them with letters of commendation from others, nor does he need any from them, he knows them and they know him. Yet people do change as do religions; but Christ is not a religion.

 

In fact; if our relationship in the gospel of God were a religion, then letters of commendation would be necessary, but the apostle knows that those in the Corinthian church are of the Household of God and not some household or public religion of the day. Pen and ink religions are always updating their doctrines and recertifying their credentials just as the world continues to do, even today.

 

So believers in Jesus Christ (not just the church at Corinth) are epistles of Christ. We are living letters of commendation to the world and to the world’s religions that what we believe in is not found on tablets of stone that can be destroyed or changed when found flawed. Our faith is found in our heart, that God through the Person of Christ has purged us from sin (the flaw) and that our testimony or epistle is not in the letter of the Law which kills, but in the Spirit who gives life.

 

This sufficiency then is not of our self to be thinking that we have acquired or achieved some plateau of godliness. This sort of human thinking is the very thing that discredits the testimony of a religion or a fleshly minded believer. Those who believe that his or her selfish behavior has contributed to the ministries of the New Covenant have failed to understand what the apostle says in 2 Corinthians 2:12-17.