Saturday Reading: 1 Peter 4 7-11
 
Key Verse: 1 Peter 4 8
8  And above all things have fervent love to yourselves, for love will cover a multitude of sins.

 

Devotion:
The destruction of the Jewish church and nation had been foretold and was close at hand. Even though these words are targeted at that stage, we need to take earnest advice from them now – being careful not to read into it what you want, but what is actually there!

 

Too many times in our lives we like to think one way and if any rule or warning comes along, we change it so that it will fit into our way of thinking – into our own little world. We change just about anything just enough to make it look like the original, but so that it will seemingly cover our sins – so we can bend the rules and entertain sin with some sort of backing.

 

Too many times we take a brief phrase from God's Word and we twist it's intended meaning so that we can entertain something new in our lives. We may take the phrase “love will cover a multitude of sins” and say that it is OK to do some small sins because Christ has shown His extraordinary love for us and that they are covered. We may do things like think that a traffic warden will not give us a ticket because we will only be a couple of minutes – the law states that they can give us the ticket... it is only their own compassion that will prevent it. This phrase is dealing with compassion between people of a community, not between Christ and us.

 

Christ's love is not under discussion, ours is! We are the ones that need to show more love. We don't show love by breaking the rules that Christ has set. We do show it by following them. We don't show love by disowning others as soon as they do wrong. We do show love by saying that we are willing to forgive, setting an example by which they can be encourage to do what is right... Speak God's Truth. Don't twist His Words...

 

Points to Ponder:
Do you often take other peoples words out of context to win an argument?
 
Do you bend God's rules to suit yourself?