31. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger and clamour and evil speaking, be put away from you with all malice. 32. And be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, for giving one another even as God for Christ sake hath forgiven you."
I know that I have written on these verses in the past, but I came across them in my devotional reading today, and felt the need to share their wonderful truth with you. Before we can fulfill the teaching of verse 32, we will need to pay heed to verse 31. We cannot be kind, compassionate and tenderhearted until we have ridded ourselves of bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour (brawling), evil speaking, and definitely of "malice." Malice is anger that has become so ingrained in our hearts that it leads to a continuing anger and hostility. It is obvious that these things cannot result in kindness, tenderheartedness (compassion) and a forgiving heart. We are reminded here to be kind to people. Kindness is something that is terribly missing in our country today, and often it is missing in our churches. If we want to be kind to people, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt. I will confess that it is difficult in some situations to be kind to certain people. (You know what "certain people" means to you.) We need to listen to the inner voice of the Holy Spirit in order to act kindly toward people, no matter what the circumstance. I do not mean to make this sound easy; I mean to make it sound necessary if we are act as Jesus acted, and as the Bible tells us to act. We are reminded to be "tenderhearted." Another translation of tenderheartedness is compassion. We are compassionate when we "feel for" the other person. I do not mean to feel sorry for them, but to feel the need to look kindly at them, understanding their feelings. I know that I like for people to act compassionately towards me, but I really can't expect them to act in compassion towards me if I am not acting compassionately towards them. This also takes the leadership of the Holy Spirit to accompllsh. In the final analysis, we are reminded to forgive other people. Unless we have paid special attention to verse 31, and the first parts of verse 32, it will be difficult for us to forgive. Frankly, there are some people who are hard fo forgive. Sometimes people can hurt us so deeply, that it is difficult to be kind and compassionate towards them, let alone forgive them. Paul did not tell us that it would be easy, but if we are to be Christian in our dealings with people we will need to rid ourselves of certain things (verse 31) and to act in certain ways (verse 32). How is that for an assignment to begin your week in the world? Read it carefully and prayerfully, as I will be doing. Bro. JoeAA
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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