Category: Devotion of the Day

THE CAUSE AND CURE OF ERROR

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.
Matthew 22:29

For all our education today, we never had more ignorance and error. The root of it is revealed in this word from our Lord: we do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. For Scripture we substitute our own explanations, and for the power of God we substitute our own experience. God has said something to us in the Scriptures, His written Word, and He has done something for us in His Son, the Living Word; but we refuse both and live in error.

Like the generation of Noah’s day, this age lives eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, and knows not, and will not know until judgment breaks. But God has provided a cure for ignorance. Again and again He says, “I would not have you ignorant” (Rom. 11:25; I Cor. 10:1; 12:1; II Cor. 1:8; I Thess. 4:13; II Pt. 3:8).

The cause of error is plain: ignorance of the Scriptures and of the power of God. The cure is equally plain: knowledge of the Scriptures and of the power of God. The first leads to the second: as we know the Scriptures we may know the power of God. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

PROPER IDENTIFICATION

Christ liveth in me.
Galatians 2:20

We are always intrigued and haunted by the simplicity of first-century Christianity. What would happen if a man started out today to be just a Christian? The idea has inspired books like In His Steps. Well, if a man started out to be “just a Christian” he would probably gather a band of “just Christians” around him, and soon there would be another denomination! Through the centuries believers hungry to recapture the simplicity of the early faith have started out to be just friends or disciples or brethren or some other group. But one always has to watch lest devotion to a group or movement supersede devotion to Christ Himself.

In every Christian Christ lives again. Every true believer is a return to first-century Christianity. The problem is how to maintain the simplicity of being just a Christ-ian, an en-Christed one amid the complexity of the modern religious set-up.

What ought to be most evident in us is that Christ lives in us. If our church or group is more evident than our identification with Christ it is too evident. We are here to advertise Him, not “it” or “us” or “them.”