But sometimes those brains get us to thinking down the wrong trails When a brain starts a person to thinking they can do what they want because it’s what they want no matter who it hurts…well it just gets me steamed.”
–Lou Bradshaw (Cain…Just Cain)
“Also the hand of God was on Judah to give them singleness of heart to obey the command of the king and the leaders, at the word of the Lord.”
–2 Chronicles 30:12 (NKJV)
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I read an argument the other day, and it sort of irked me for two reasons. The first one was that it had no business being discussed/argued on the site where it was posted. The second was that the people who were arguing really didn’t have a very good grasp of the Scriptures.
We are not to be dabbling in the things of the world. We are not to depart from the commandments of the Lord, and to do that we must be in His Word, studying and meditating upon it so that we know His commandments. Why do some choose to walk in darkness, when we have the light? That’s one reason I cannot understand why the sophisticated, enlightened, modern church chooses to turn down the light during the song service to bring in darkness. There is no darkness in Christ.
Perhaps my favorite book in the New Testament is 1 John. There is so much in that book that instructs us how to live in this current age. We live in an evil, dark world. It is tainted by sin, but in the midst of that we are children of the Light, therefore, we should be walking in it.
“This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.”
–1 John 1:5-7 (NKJV)
We cannot have fellowship with the Lord if we walk in darkness. To walk in darkness is to have fellowship with the world. We are to abhor anything and everything that is displeasing to God. We are to hold every form of hypocrisy in detestation. A few years back a person in our church and I had a disagreement about Jesus. He was saying that Jesus was born with a sin-nature. (There we go, not knowing proper doctrine again). I said, no, he was born as Adam, without the sin nature for His father was God. He said can we then agree to disagree; to which I again replied, no, not when it comes to doctrine.
We are to walk through this world in the light of the Holy Spirit. Our minds should be fixed on Him, and our hearts dedicated to Him. Our every step should be guided by the blessed Holy Spirit. Legalism? Most assuredly not. I like what H. Maurice Lednicky said, “What is too often defined as legalism is nothing more than carnality refusing to be crucified.” There are those who are legalistic, that is noted in the Word, but too much of the time those that scream that you are being legalistic are those who are feeding their carnality. They have compromised and have become friends with the world.