Category: Devotion of the Day

The Impossible Symphony

What concord hath Christ with Belial?
II Corinthians 6:15

What we read as “concord” is really the word from which we get “symphony.” “Belial” is found only here in the New Testament, but throughout the Old Testament it stands for the spirit of evil. The spirit of Belial shows up in false religious movements (Dt. 13:13), in lawlessness (Judges 19:22), in wayward daughters and sons (I Sam. 1:16; 2:12). We have concord with Belial when we oppose God’s chosen man (I Sam. 10:27; II Sam. 20:l), when we are sour and churlish (I Sam. 25:17, 25), when we are ungracious toward the weak (I Sam. 30:22), when we bear false witness (I Kgs. 21:10,13).

There is no “symphony” of Christ with Belial. When we try to harmonize them we have not concord but discord. To be a friend of the world is to be the enemy of God (Jas. 4:4), and if we love the world, the love of the Father is not in us (I Jno. 2:15).

We are not to effect a truce between Christ and Belial. We are out to issue an ultimatum: “Choose ye this day whom ye will serve.”

It is never Christ and. It is always Christ or. “He that is not with me is against me.”

The Guest Who Would Go On

He made as though he would have gone further.
Luke 24:28

Our Lord did not force Himself upon the Emmaus disciples. He would have passed on, but He longed to manifest Himself to them and must have been delighted when they constrained Him to tarry.

Have we not sometimes, in the company of one beloved, moved as though we would be going but inwardly hoped we would be asked to remain?

Jesus is passing by. He is a gentleman. He will not abide with us uninvited. If we are to know Him better we must constrain Him. The deeper things of God pass on if we do not lay hold on them. Jesus always makes as though He would go further.

Yet He longs to abide as our Guest, that He may become our Host as He became the Host here and at Cana of Galilee. He sits down at our table, but soon we sit at His. He will sup with us, that we may sup with Him.