Love Builds Up

   Every day I interact with people. I genuinely love people, but I have noticed lately that people are on edge. It’s true and I think you have noticed this as well. 

People are carrying heavy loads and they aren’t sure how to unburden themselves. 

As Christians, I believe it’s so important for us to be a source of peace for people. In the busy and frantic pace that so many are running at what if Christians looked for opportunities to help bring respite from the noise? 

     In chapter 8 of 1st Corinthians Paul, the apostle is teaching the church that it is better to choose love over personal rights. Modern Western culture prides itself on individual freedoms – any attempt to speak of self-denial, self-discipline, or the necessary abandonment of rights is shouted down as talk from the Middle Ages or Dark Ages (of course the people shouting usually have little knowledge of what those times were actually like.) 

 Paul has been building up to this point in the letter to communicate that the giving up of one's rights is Christ-like and therefore what a Christian is meant to do. In this case, it’s about food sacrificed to idols. Paul is saying of course food doesn’t bring you closer to or further from God, as Jesus teaches it is not what goes in a man that defiles him but what comes out. But Christians were convinced that eating food from these certain temples dishonoured Jesus and so out of love for these brothers Paul teaches, forget the food choose unity with your brother.  

  So if what I eat causes another believer to sin,

I will never eat meat again as long as I live—

for I don't want to cause another believer to stumble.

1 Corinthians 8:13 

    In the beginning of the chapter he explains that we may have knowledge but knowledge that ‘puffs up’ or makes you feel superior to another isn’t knowledge of God. Simply, the one who loves has known God and is known by God. Being right isn’t the point, we are called to something higher something much more holy; we are called to Christ-likeness. When we choose to build up people over our ‘right-ness’ we are pleasing to God and edifying to His people.

This practical teaching helps us to represent Jesus well in that it reveals our motivations and corrects our direction. Is the word you are giving that brother for his good, for the betterment of his life? Then give it. But if it is to make yourself feel superior then be silent. 

   Remember this, people have layers. We are all complex. We all need love, forgiveness, and grace at times. So in all of your endeavours choose to build up the people around you. May Jesus show us His way a little more today as we take up our cross and follow Him together.       

Here to help

Pastor David Wilkinson