Reading
SAA Notes
There is a difference between exercising your judgment and taking God’s prerogative of judgment on someone else. This reading demands that you exercise your judgment (see 2:7, 25-29). The warning is: Don’t sit in our Father’s seat! That is treating Him with dishonour.
SJA Notes
* God Above, please shine the light of Your word into our lives today.
“The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.”
This is a hard word for us today, to dwell on whether it could be said of us.
Church leadership is often given to hypocrisy, saying one thing and doing another. Given to partiality, treating some people one way and other people another way.
This is not the way of God.
God shows no partiality.
God has promised eternal life to those who believe in Jesus Christ, God in the Person of the Son.
God has promised a final judgement that will come, the day of wrath.
Does our behaviour cause unbelievers to take God seriously, or to not?
Our behaviour shows out the truth of our hearts.
True circumcision is of the heart, by the Spirit not the letter.
Are our hearts hard and impenitent in sin, or remade and humbled under the rule of Christ?
* Dear God,
Thank You for Your word, the law of the Spirit, that You write on our hearts.
May our hearts be Yours today and onwards.
May our behaviour show the truth of Your work in us, of our love for You – Because You first loved us!
Amen.