Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Agree with your adversary quickly


Mat 5:2  And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying…

 

Mat 5:25  Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.

Mat 5:26  Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.

 

Be reconciled with our enemies.

 

It's true that people who purposely set out to hurt others and do as much damage to them as possible will not generally be swayed from that course of action. But while a situation is developing if at all possible we must do everything we possibly can - as children of God - to defuse it.  We ARE NOT to be stubborn- this is NOT what God wants of us, this is not what Christ is teaching us.  We ARE NOT to hold fast to our pride at the expense of all else.  A person who can, will make someone pay to the uttermost for any slight incurred- whether deliberate or not. When we get a hold of our pride and let it run away with us the damage it is causing can be irreparable.

 

Have you ever had an argument with someone that went on far longer than it had to because you held fast to your pride?

 

We are to be selfless, not prideful.

 

Even if we are RIGHT a person arguing how much they are right, refusing to just let a situation go, will often suffer for their insistence at being right.

 

I'm not talking about denouncing Christ or our walk with God, I'm talking about arguing over mundane things. Does the fact we are right- perhaps someone took money from us, stole from us and we know it but they insist they didn't. Do we hold fast to our belief that they stole from us to the point they are able to convince a judge that we are bad mouthing them, slandering them because we have no proof of the theft? Does the fact we are in the right mean that much to us? Should it?

 

The ultimate Judge, our God, our Savior will judge in truth knowing all things, nothing hidden from them. Rather than our desire to be RIGHT being paramount, we should be desiring leniency, desiring a way to reveal forgiveness and love even to those who do not want to admit to wrong doing.

 

Our Savior stood before judges and they ordered Him crucified. Did He throw a fit trying to convince them of His innocence?  Did He submit to His sentence, though it was of the grossest injustice? How did He behave as One who was completely innocent?  He is our EXAMPLE in all things.

 

We are NOT to give in to arguing and fighting - even if it's just verbally- with anyone  over anything.  

 

We do though. We argue all the time. Maybe not huge fights but little spats.  Is it possible our little spats are just as bad as larger arguments?  Is it better to have 100 little spats or 10 large fights?  Who determines all this?  The truth is  - it's better not to argue at all- a little bit, or a lot and this is what our SAVIOR was trying to teach us.  Not to be prone to arguing for ANY REASON AT ALL!

 

We don't know when any argument we have might snowball out of control far beyond anything we ever imagined.

 

Arguing is wrong.

 

We will pay in some way for all our arguing because all our arguing has consequences.

 

By the grace of God may we STOP fighting with others, STOP arguing, STOP trying to prove our rightness even if we are as right as right can be.  May we ever remember our SAVIOR standing before His judges and how He behaved. May we ever recall how our SAVIOR treated those who taunted Him.  May we LIVE with CHRIST ever our EXAMPLE, ever before us, ever in our LIVES.

 

All in HIS LOVE!

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