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NASB | John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh conveys no benefit [it is of no account]. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life [providing eternal life]. |
Subject: How do we understand these words? |
Bible Note: It has been a long time, and we have learned a lot. I trust that the Lord has given you grace to stay humble. As we remain humble, he gives more grace (James 4) and more knowledge (2 Peter 3:18). But how can we know if we are sufficiently humble? Someone pointed out at a recent meeting that we can become proud of our humility. Isn’t that amazing? We decided that we could combat this by always reminding ourselves that we are not humble enough. The standard, after all, is our Lord Jesus Christ (Matthew 10:35). We always have a ways to go to be like him in anything (Philippians 3). I mentioned somewhere else in the thread that our group had done an exercise in humility. I think we all felt more humble for it. Yet I wonder about that humility thing. Would true humility have kept me from reporting on that meeting? Someone got the idea it was a good meeting, with everyone in one accord. The truth is that everyone in the meeting was struggling. Many were admitting pride in their Christian heritage, and some were confessing they could not be in one accord with people from certain denominations. I returned to the church that had sent me to the meeting and, without knowing what I had just been through, they proceeded to tell me how proud they were of their heritage. Yet, in some ways, I am identified with them. We had been reading the first part of Philippians 2, and I have often wondered whether we understand that passage. I have heard it read so many times, and the emphasis has been on the fact that Jesus humbled himself. Yet we seem to miss the point that we are to be like him, of the same mind. Someone says we should focus on him and not on ourselves. The passage saying, though, that the goal is to be likeminded, and a humble spirit is the means to that end. Put that together with the fact we have to be willing to obey the word (John 7:17) before God will reveal the meaning to us (Psalm 25:12) and what do you have? The point made so long ago, that we must be humble (Psalm 25:9) and patient (Hosea 6), so that the Holy Spirit can show us (1 Corinthians 2) what he alone knows, the mind of God in the word of God. |