Growing in Christ
The essentials of both wings
Many times, you will come across, when scriptures speak of certain matters, it speaks of the necessity of two things.
For eg.
🔸For Salvation two things are essential -
Faith and repentance.
🔸True worship - Spirit and truth.
🔸Jesus came with - Grace and truth.
And the list goes on......
We shall see today, what are the two things(two wings ) that are essential for our spiritual growth, let us read the scripture given below.
*"Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby...., "* I Peter 2:1â€-‬2 .
Two things are :
Taking heeds to sins - verse 1
Taking God's Word in our life - verse 2
Many a times we hear a sermon on verse 2 ( Reading /hearing the Word )and the second verse ( laying aside sins ) is normally ignored .
In this article, we shall learn about verse one. ( 1 pet 2:1 above )
Paul said we must (decide/make an attempt) to lay aside(turn away) our sins.
Let us look at the sins listed in 1 pet 2:1.
Malice
"Malice is behavior that is intended to harm other persons reputations, or cause them embarrassment and upset. "
Jesus should be our role model in our walk with Him.( Matt 11:29). He never spoke things, with a wrong motive, even when He spoke to the Pharisees, though he spoke sternly and exposed their hypocrisy. He Did it with a heart of Love.
If we know that God sees our heart and our motives ( Prov 16:2 ) then we will be careful not to malign others with the intention to bring them down.
In the world, they use this tactic, where they feel that they can give a better image of themselves if they defile another person's image.
Deceit
Deceit comes from the Latin word for "cheat." When you deceive someone, you give them a false impression, mislead them so as to get away with something bad.
These are the common habits of the person who indulge in a- the Lust of the flesh ( sexually immoral ) and those who indulge in the lust of the eyes.( Money matters ).
They deceive others since they seek to take advantage of the other person in terms of extracting money or indulging in fleshly advances.
Thus they tell lies making the other person believe that they are speaking the truth.
Hypocrisy
When a person in the church wears a spiritual mask, he gives a false impression to others, that they are more spiritual, than they really are. Such a person lives a hypocritical life. Jesus firmly rebuked the Pharisees for putting on a false picture of their spiritual condition. But to the sinners, He was a gentle friend to them.
People are very happy when others think highly of them, but the reality could be a different picture.
Envy
This virus is not much visible on the outside, the person who is defiled by this may not even be aware, envy is such a sin that brings rottenness ( Prov 14:13 )to our spiritual life. We need to see this and ask the Lord to cleanse us when we receive light on this.
The motive, ( why we behave in a certain way ) reveals the condition of the heart. For eg. A person may not like that Bro/Sis is given the platform to share the word. The person out of envy/pride feels that he/ she can do it better. If the person is highly infected by this virus (envy) then the person may even leave the fellowship but point out some other reason before leaving.
Evil speaking.
When a person visits a doctor for the normal ailments like cold, fever, etc. The doctor normally checks the tongue first.
It does speak about the condition of the patient.
If you want to know how spiritual a person is, you need to hear what kind of words the person brings forth especially when they are not in the church.
The kind of jokes a person cracks speaks about the person.The kind of language a person uses at home or with friends speaks about the spiritual condition.
Conclusion of the Matter
Now the conclusion of the matter is that we were once walking with these things when we did not know Christ (Eph 2:3 ). The possibility is that we may even overcome some of the sins, in which we were once entangled. When we have a heart to Lay aside the old habits we will definitely grow in the Lord.
He that has an ear to hear, let him hear.