She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
For those nations of the earth which have known the story of Jesus, Christmas is undoubtedly the most beautiful time of the year. Though the celebration of the Savior's birth occurs in the dead of winter, when in many parts of the world the streams are frozen and the landscapes cold and cheerless, still there is beauty at the Christmas season ? not the tender beauty of spring flowers or the quiet loveliness of the full-blown summer, or yet the sad sweet graces of autumn colors. It is beauty of another kind, richer, deeper and more elevating, that beauty which considerations of love and mercy bring before the mind.
Though we are keenly aware of the abuses that have grown up around the holiday season, we are still not willing to surrender this ancient and loved Christmas Day to the enemy. Though those purer emotions which everyone feels at Christmas are in most hearts all too fleeting, yet it is something that a lost and fallen race should pay tribute, if only for a day, to those higher qualities of the mind ? love and mercy and sacrifice and a life laid down for its enemies. While men are able to rise even temporarily to such heights, there is hope that they have not yet sinned away their day of grace. A heart capable of admiring and being touched by the story of the manger birth is not yet abandoned, however sinful it may be. There is yet hope in repentance.— Matthew 1:21
thought
Fleeting though it may be amidst all the commercialism and secularsim, there is the gentle breeze reminding celebrants of the true meaning of Christmas. Christ has come! In Him there is forgiveness and life.
prayer
O God, may we see Christ in Christmas ? the baby in a manger who lived and died for our sins, rose again and lives today as King of kings and Lord of lords.
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: 'Be holy, because I am holy.'
— 1 Peter 1:15-16
"Your calling," said Meister Eckhart to the clergy of his day, "cannot make you holy; but you can make it holy." No matter how humble that calling may be, a holy man can make it a holy calling. A call to the ministry is not a call to be holy, as if the fact of his being a minister would sanctify a man; rather, the ministry is a calling for a holy man who has been made holy some other way than by the work he does. The true order is: God makes a man holy by blood and fire and sharp discipline. Then he calls the man to some special work, and the man being holy makes that work holy in turn.
The anonymous author of the Cloud of Unknowing sets this truth sternly before his readers: "Beware, thou wretch . . . and hold thee never the holier nor the better for the worthiness of thy calling . . . but the more wretched and cursed, unless thou do that in thee is goodly, by grace and by counsel, to live after thy calling." Our whole point here is that while good deeds cannot make a man good, it is likewise true that everything a good man does is good because he is a good man. Holy deeds are holy not because they are one kind of deed instead of another, but because a holy man performs them. "Every good tree bears good fruit . . . a good tree cannot bear bad fruit" (Matthew 7:18). Every person should see to it that he is fully cleansed from all sin, entirely surrendered to the whole will of God and filled with the Holy Spirit. Then he will not be known as what he does, but as what he is.
He will be a man of God first and anything else second: a man of God who paints or mines coal or farms or preaches or runs a business, but always a man of God. That and not the kind of work he does will determine the quality of his deeds.
thought
What a difference it would make in this world if all believers exuded holiness whatever their daily tasks in life. Godly merchants, teachers and students, attorneys and judges, politicians, police and military persons ? men and women of God first then wh...
prayer
Deliver me from the deception, Father, of thinking of myself as what I do rather than what I am.
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
— 2 Corinthians 3:18
Emerson complains in one of his essays that society tends to overlook our essential humanity and to think of us as being what we do. There should be no farmers, he argues, or carpenters, or painters; there should only be men who farm and paint and do carpenter work. This distinction is fine but vastly important, for the most vital thing about any man is not what he does or what he has but what he is. And first of all, a man must be a man ? that is, a human being free in the earth, free to do anything his basic humanity requires him to do.
And apart from sin (which is a moral abnormality, a disease in the heart of the man), whatever the man does is good and natural and pleasing to God. Man was made in the image of God; it is that image that gave him his high honor as a man and marked him out as something unique and apart. His occupation ? farmer, carpenter, miner or office worker ? is altogether incidental. Whatever he may do for his living, he is always a man, the special creature of God. Except for the presence of sin in human nature, there could be no nobler sign than the one seen so often on city streets or in the middle of busy highways: "Men at Work." Whatever he may be doing, the significant thing is that he is a man. "You made him a little lower than the angels" (Romans 2:7).
And nothing he does can change in any degree his essential humanity. His work can neither elevate nor degrade him; being made in God's image, he can elevate work by the very fact that he engages in it. A prince walks casually across the field, and his path becomes to the populace something different and wonderful. A thousand oxen had walked there before, but now the field is royal. The humble cow path did not degrade the prince; rather, he elevated it by his presence. That is as men see things, but it serves to illustrate a higher truth.
thought
We have been created in the image of God. Because of sin that image has been marred and distorted but not destroyed. As those of second-birth God purposes to transform us into the likeness of Christ. Understandable it is, then, being colors doing!
prayer
May I be increasingly aware, Lord, that my being colors my doing.
This brief list does not at all exhaust the number of infirmities we are likely to find in the Christian assembly. Who has not had to bear lovingly with a brother (or sister) who is afflicted with logorrhea, the incurable propensity to talk without pause or punctuation? That the talk is "religious" does not make it the less painful. And the unstable brother who spends his time either falling or getting up again, who is either leaping for joy or lying face down bewailing his hard lot ? what church is there that does not have one or two such believers in it? Then there is the Mark Twain of the holy place, whose testimonies must always have their element of alleged humor; and to offset him somewhat is the man of heavy countenance who cannot smile and to whom a pleasantry is a mortal sin.
Add to this list the sister whose prayers are accusations against the church or self-pitying complaints about the way she is being treated by other members of the flock. What shall we do about these infirm brothers and sisters? If we deal with them according to their deserts, we may crush them beyond recovery. The thing to do is to accept them as crosses and bear them for Jesus' sake. In the great day when we have become like our Lord and have left all imperfections behind, we will not be sorry we endured patiently the infirmities of the weak.
thought
Surely there are believers whose patience our deficiencies test. Patient, loving acceptance of one another's weaknesses promotes family harmony.
prayer
Lord, may I be as patient with my brothers and sisters as they have been and are with me. And You have been so patient with all of us!
We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.
— Romans 15:1-2
The Apostle Paul wrote, "We who are strong ought to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves" (Romans 15:1). He thus plainly accepts the fact that there will be infirm persons among the believing members of the spiritual community we call the local church. He tells us to bear them, or bear with them in their weakness. Now who are the infirm persons in the church? How can we identify them? Not how can we find them, for they are sure to be easiest of all persons to find. Their very infirmities make them conspicuous. The infirm brother is the one who has painful conscientious scruples about foods (Romans 14:1-2); or he has deep convictions about certain holy days (Romans 14:5-6); or his grasp of gospel truth is weak, and he is forced to support himself by various crutches which he may have found in some religious attic. To him these scruples are sacred; consequently, he is likely to try to force them upon everyone else, and in doing so he is pretty sure to make very much of a nuisance of himself. That is where the "strong" Christian gets opportunity to give his patience a workout. He dare not dismiss the overheated brother; he must bear with him in love, knowing that he too is of the company of the redeemed.
thought
Love for a brother or sister in Christ will keep us from doing or saying what harms that person, even though our strong convictions are challenged. Love always takes priority over the exercise of personal freedom.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for those who have put up with my weaknesses over the years. And thank You for Your patience with me.
And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone.
— First Thessalonians 5:14
Our Lofty Idealism would argue that all Christians should be perfect, but a blunt realism forces us to admit that perfection is rare even among the saints. The part of wisdom is to accept our Christian brothers and sisters for what they are rather than for what they should be. We do not wish to excuse the laziness of the saints or to provide carnality with a place to hide, but it is necessary that we face facts. And the plain fact is that the average Christian ? even true Christian ? is yet a long way from being like Christ in character and life.
There is much that is imperfect about us, and it is fitting that we recognize it and call upon God for charity to put up with one another. The perfect church is not on this earth. The most spiritual church is sure to have in it some who are still bothered by the flesh. An old Italian proverb says, "He that will have none but a perfect brother must resign himself to remain brotherless." However earnestly we may desire that our Christian brother go on toward perfection, we must accept him as he is and learn to get along with him. To treat an imperfect brother impatiently is to advertise our own imperfections.
thought
We are all in the process of spiritual transformation. None of us has fully arrived. Let's be patient with our brothers and sisters even as they must be patient with us.
prayer
Lord, may I not demand of other believers a level of spiritual maturity that I myself have not attained.
Take the helmut of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
— Ephesians 6:17
Undoubtedly God goes along with us as far as He can in this weak and one-sided treatment of the Holy Scriptures, but He cannot be pleased with this way of doing. Our Heavenly Father takes pleasure in seeing us develop and grow up spiritually. He does not want us to live entirely on a diet of sweet stuff. He gives us for our encouragement Isaiah 41, but He gives us also Matthew 23 and the book of Jude, and He expects us to read it all. The eighth chapter of Romans is one of the most elevating passages in the entire Bible, and its popularity is well deserved; but we need Second Peter as well, and we should not neglect to read it.
When reading Paul's epistles, we should not stop with the doctrinal sections but should go on to read and ponder the bracing exhortations that follow. We should not stop with Romans 11; the rest of the epistle is also important, and if we would treat our souls fairly, we must give it the same attention we gave to the first ten chapters. Briefly, the health of our souls requires that we take the whole Bible as it stands and let it do its work in us. We cannot afford to be selective with anything so important as the Word of God and our own eternal future.
thought
We are engaged in warfare with unseen powers for which God has equipped us with armor. The major offensive piece is the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God. We desparately require the whole sword and not just a piece of it!
prayer
Thank You, Lord, that I have in a language I understand the whole Bible. What a treasure! May I fully explore and utilize all of it.
For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.
— Hebrews 4:12
Almost every cult with which we have any acquaintance practices this art of selecting and ignoring. The no-hell cults, for example, habitually stress everything in the Bible that seems to support their position and play down or explain away all the passages that deal with eternal punishment. But we do well to look closer to home. Proneness to heresy is not confined to the cults. By nature, we are all heretics. We who count ourselves to be in the historic tradition of sound doctrine may in actual practice become heretics after a sort. We may unconsciously select for special attention such Scriptures as comfort and encourage us and pass over the ones that rebuke and warn us.
This trap is so easy to fall into that we may be in it before we are aware. Take, for instance, the "well-marked" Bible. It might be an illuminating experience to peep into one sometimes and note how the owner has underscored almost exclusively the passages that console him or that support his views on doctrine. We habitually love the verses that are easy on us and shy away from the ones that disturb us.
thought
Do you find yourself at times ignoring or diluting certain passages of Scripture that penetrate your defenses and stare you in the face? God's Word sometimes wounds deeply. But exposure to all the Word is imperative because through it He speaks.
prayer
Thank You, Lord, for chasing me when I try to flee from those sections of Your Word that expose and condemn my sin. Speak, Lord, even when I try not to listen.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
— Second Timothy 3:16-17
Heresy is not so much rejecting as selecting. The heretic simply selects the parts of the Scripture he wants to emphasize and lets the rest go. This is shown by the etymology of the word heresy and by the practice of the heretic. "Beware," an editorial scribe of the fourteenth century warned his readers in the preface to a book. "Beware thou take not one thing after thy affection and liking, and leave another: for that is the condition of an heretique. But take everything with other." The old scribe knew well how prone we are to take to ourselves those parts of the truth that please us and ignore the other parts. And that is heresy. Almost every cult with which we have any acquaintance practices this art of selecting and ignoring. The no-hell cults, for example, habitually stress everything in the Bible that seems to support their position and play down or explain away all the passages that deal with eternal punishment.
thought
All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training. To be selective is to cripple ourselves spiritually.
prayer
Father, through Your Word You rebuke, correct, encourage and teach. Thank You. I need it all!