FOR OUR OWN GOOD

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

But if we were more discerning with regard to ourselves, we would not come under such judgment. Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world.

1 Corinthians 11:31-32

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

I remember getting in trouble more than a few times when I was growing up. In those instances, my parents would impose consequences on me and they weren’t pleasant. That was the main idea behind them. They weren’t supposed to be enjoyable. Rather, they were meant to be disliked so that they might serve as a deterrent to me repeating the same misconduct or any other misconduct for that matter.

When I did get punished, I thought my parents were the meanest but what I didn’t know was that it wasn’t easy for them either. I don’t think any parent really enjoys imposing penalties on their children but they do it anyways because they love their kids and want them to grow up to be good, productive contributors to society. I learned this when I became a parent myself and had to correct my own children. Although my daughters couldn’t see the reasoning behind the consequences imposed, I knew as their father that I was disciplining them for their own good.

As we turn to our scripture passage for today and finish our study of 1 Corinthians 11, we are reminded that we are all God’s children. He is our heavenly Father, a divine parent for all of us. And just as a parent sees the need to discipline their children, so too does our Lord when we go astray and transgress.

Looking at Paul’s words in verse 31, we see one of the root causes of sinful behavior, a lack of discernment. When we make the wrong choices in life, it’s because we usually aren’t allowing the Lord to guide us. We go our own way, rely on our own understanding, and suffer the consequences for it when we fall into iniquity which, in turn, initiates God’s judgment.

Paul states what should be the obvious as he writes to the Corinthian believers. Proper discernment leads a person to the places where the Lord wants them to be to do what He wants them to do. And when a person is where the Lord wants them to be, doing what He wants them to do, then they will always be living in righteousness and distant from sin.

This is how it would be in a perfect world but we don’t live in a perfect world and we certainly aren’t perfect people. Not even close. We are sinners that fall short of God’s glory and when we do sin and fall under His judgment, we need to understand that He is disciplining us for our own good. He wants us to turn away from the ways of the world where sin runs rampant and turn to His ways, ways that will keep us in Christ and away from being condemned with the world.

God loves us, His children. He loves us so much that He doesn’t want us to miss our opportunity for salvation by choosing the world over His Son. He will always correct us when needed and our only proper reaction needs to be thanksgiving for the way our Heavenly Father decided to discipline us for our own good.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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