Watch Out!

Our reading this week covers parts of two books - the last two chapters of Galatians and the first two chapters of Ephesians. It is a conclusion and an ending - just not in the usual order, and this may illuminate some ideas that we often overlook due to familiarity. So I invite you to read prayerfully and read attentively this week, and let us see what God may say to us.

It did not take me long in reading these four chapters this morning for one of the verses to jump out at me. Perhaps it is is because I had skimmed the news headlines this morning, but Galatians 5:15 sparkled blindingly at me:

But if you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

The Holman Christian Standard translation renders "take care" as "watch out"!

Here is something that requires a warning sign - our unloving treatment of one another. How easily we fall in with the crowd. How quickly we move to condemn, to bite, to tear down, to belittle, to dehumanize. Social media is a multiplier of this tendency, but it is not the cause. The real reason we are such a bickering, hateful, uncaring society is because our hearts are corrupt and we have not heeded the command of God. Social media has just given us all a larger platform from which to reveal the mess in our hearts.

Watch out!

Of interest to me is that the judgment for breaking God's command about love is not God's direct intervention. Instead, it is God allowing the natural consequences for our unloving actions to have have their full effect. We bite and devour, thus breaking God's law, and we discover that we ourselves are being devoured.

The better option - God's option - is that we refrain from biting and devouring one another and walk according to God's Spirit. Paul contrasts these two options in verse 19 to 23. Reading verses 19 to 21, do you not think of our own society? And reading verses 22 to 23, we see God's plan.

If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (Gal. 5:25)

What a challenge for us today - and everyday! Walk by the Spirit! Love our neighbors as ourselves! Let the fruit of God's Spirit - love, joy, peace, and all the rest - fill our lives!