Subject: What do you mean? |
Bible Note: "What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God." --James 4:1-4 "Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned." --Titus 3:10-11 "As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith." --1 Timothy 1:3-4 "If anyone advocates a different doctrine and does not agree with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine conforming to godliness, he is conceited and understands nothing; but he has a morbid interest in controversial questions and disputes about words, out of which arise envy, strife, abusive language, evil suspicions, and constant friction between men of depraved mind and deprived of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain." --1 Timothy 6:3-5 "For we hear that some among you are leading an undisciplined life, doing no work at all, but acting like busybodies." --2 Thessalonians 3:11 "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world." --1 John 4:1-3 "Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ." --Jude 3-4 Then we could read more and more...Revelation 1-3...the rest of the two epistles to the Corinthians...Acts 5...2 Peter 3. The first century church was no utopia like some well-meaning but misguided people claim that it is. It had its share of false teachers, factious men, disobedient children, liars, gluttons, hypocrites, adulterers, legalists, etc. Rather than longing for an idyllic yesteryear that did not exist, rejoice in the fact that God has preserved His church despite the sins of His people, and realize that in His sovereignty He has placed you at this time and in this place to serve Him here and now. God knew what he was doing when He gave you the time and place you occupy. Glorify Him here and now, following His timeless truth than longing for the alleged "first-century paradise" that simply did not exist. --Joe! |