12Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, 13and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Hebrews 12:12-13 ESV
Day before yesterday, in my haste to sit down at my desk I whacked my kneecap against the front panel. I thought I'd pass out from the pain. Over the years, due to having extremely long femurs, this has happened often, with the result that when I walk, I creak and pop like the Tin Woodman in the Wizard of Oz. ("Slide some oil to me!") Fortunately, it is feeling much better this morning although...no marathons for a while. {Stop chortling, friends and family! 😆 }
In this verse, the word "therefore" causes us to note what it is "there for", and in this case, it is referring to the passage I blogged about yesterday. The crux of that was "God's discipline is an expression of His love for us."
So, when we experience the Lord's discipline, we need to allow it to strengthen us, to guide us and to heal us. Amen.
The next verse is this one:
14Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Hebrews 12:14 ESV
Folks, it is no accident that peace and holiness are mentioned in the same sentence. Nor is it an accident that the theme of God's discipline, peace with others and holiness are mentioned here together. Let's face it: many of our sins are relational, that is, sins that come from "unpeaceful" relations with other people. And, sometimes, we sin in order to "keep the peace". We take the easy way out. We give in on points of holiness. We sin by approving or allowing something we know is unholy or, at best, "marginal". And, we do it in the name of peace and love!
This reminds me of my pastor's sermon on Sunday. His text was 1 Peter 1:17-25. The point he made, which fits well here, is that the sign of having been born again, having accepted Christ as Savior, is how we obey the truth and love one another. Again, they go hand in hand. You can't have one without the other, and please God.
22Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, 23since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God;
1 Peter 1:22-23 ESV
Peter is essentially echoing what the writer of Hebrews said in chapter 12 above, with one important distinction. Peter emphasizes in verse 23 that what occurs in verse 22 is the outworking, the RESULT of a person having been transformed by the saving grace of Jesus Christ, as opposed to a working to earn it. As I've said so many times you are probably tired of hearing it: salvation cannot be earned, nor can you "work to keep it". Both would be equally impossible, according to God's standard of holy perfection.
So, getting back on track here - - - you can't have peace and love without holiness. Both are indispensable components of the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
But the word of the Lord remains forever, and this word is the good news that was preached to you.
1 Peter 1:25 ESV
I was talking with a friend this morning about how our military has been co-opted by non-Christians as an agent for social change in this country. (The same has been done with our courts and our public schools.) This has been done in the name of "love" and "fairness" and "compassion", when it is none of those. To force our military doctors to cater to the mental illness manifesting as sexual perversion, and call that "good" is a stark example of burning holiness at the stake, in the name of "love".
This kind of thinking is running rampant today, even amongst Christian leaders whom we thought were solidly anchored in the Word of God. It hurts my soul to see them take a stand against the holiness of God, in order to be "socially relevant".
As noted in the 1 Peter verses, the word of God does.not.change. Ever. If something was sinful thousands of years ago, it remains sinful today. The word of God is living, but it ABIDES. It is changeless, forever.
If you are confronted with a choice between peace with others and adhering to God's standard of righteousness, you'd better side with God. While we are exhorted by the writers of the Bible to seek peace, we'd better not seek it at the cost of the gospel.
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