Saturday 18 April 2009

So...stay connected!

Colossians 2:18-20 (New International Version)
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions. He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules...


or, as The Message puts it:
Don't tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape, insisting that you join their obsession with angels and that you seek out visions. They're a lot of hot air, that's all they are. They're completely out of touch with the source of life, Christ, who puts us together in one piece, whose very breath and blood flow through us. He is the Head and we are the body. We can grow up healthy in God only as he nourishes us.

It's very easy to become so enthusiastic about our own beliefs that we take pride in them: we want everyone to agree with us and pursue the same goals, however spiritual they are. But in the end, we have to defer to each other as being part of the body: For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. (Romans 12:3 - 5, NIV)
Philippians 2:3 sums it up beautifully:
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

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