To the pure, to the devious
“to the pure You show Yourself pure, but to the devious You show Yourself shrewd.” (2 Samuel 22:27)
It is one of God’s characteristics to discriminate everything reasonably. Those who cannot adapt oneself to God’s characteristics cannot be the people following God. David was able to become great than others because he knew what God’s characteristics is and lived hard to be adapted himself to that. Those who want to have blessings from God should have an attitude to accept even a scary punishment willingly in some cases. If you mark satisfaction and gratitude based just on your own expectations, you will be hard to experience what a true life with God is. We don’t know how many Christians live in such an illusion. Those trying hard to become cleaned in soul will see what God’s cleanliness is, and the evil will see what God does opposite management against themselves.
Receiving God’s blessings means to receive an award from God. It is a principle that the awards are not given by the demand of candidates, but it is according to the qualifications appropriate for fairness (fairness and justice, and fair justice). An important reason why this society is confusing and corrupt in these days is that the fairness has disappeared. As the instance, in order to receive a prize, you have to study, exercise, artistic activities, or good deeds well, but there are many cases students often ask only for a prize while not doing what they need to do, or even certain conferrers sell it by receiving money. If only the hands of conduct are clean, there is no special significance in fact either taking a prize or not. Any person would have to try just to keep one’s clean soul in the living with God like Enoch in the Old Testament.
You cannot score the life for yourself whether it had righteous living or not. A student’s score has to be graded by the teacher. Likewise, only the Lord judges the life in fairness. Nevertheless, if you think you lived a righteous life, also you need to be proud of yourself. But if you are living now as sinner, you wouldn’t be able to display oneself comfortable to others. Even though a person had committed a mistake, that insists that he did well with his head upright is because either he is a man of burnt conscience or is still deceiving himself. Those are foolish and pitiable, really poor persons. It’s not that you are righteous person because you do not have fault, but you can be righteous by being able to see the wrong of own self. Nobody is complete without fault among all people. David the king has been admired a lot as a great person, but he had committed big faults of adultery and murder in a time. He really did great mistakes, for he committed two things of the Ten Commandments. Because of that, he had to wet his mattress with tear of repentance. Nevertheless, he also was able to dare to present his own righteousness.
Those who want to see God must go close to God. Those who want to receive God’s mercy must live practicing in God’s mercy. If you want to be perfect, you have to live hard following the Lord’s perfection. Doing that is not intended to grade the result of how much you have done well or not. Furthermore, the matter of result is not to be determined by one’s own will and evaluation. All people have to do is just live according to God’s words. That is, it means that all you have to do is obey God silently. Then someone might ask back like this. “How could you obey unconditionally without knowing?” It’s not for scientists to study because they know everything. On the way of searching hard continually with the spirit of inquiry, they again discover new facts. The principle of success in life following God is the same as if the case of scientists’ study.
Some people asks cynically, “Where is God?” No matter how hard they look with such the thinking, they would never find God. Material tangible objects are found by using any physical ways. But God is the Spirit, so unless you worship with spirit and truth, you will never find Him. To worship with spirit and truth refers to the life itself of reading, listening, and following God’s words, the Bible, within the Spirit of God. It is Christ Jesus who showed and taught that life in person. And man was called ‘who are weary and burdened’ by Jesus, in Matthew 11:28.
Even whomever is tired of hard life, if those move toward Jesus Christ will gain hope. Everyone who takes refuge in the Lord can be protected safely, for God’s will is firm and the Lord’s words are true. Don’t you want to make your life shine rightly? In order to take off the name of the sinner and be reborn again as a clean one, believe and obey in Christ who is Logos, the Word. Let’s make Christ’s lessons receive to be a spiritual food of our life.
(Written by Koonoh, Pastor of JDO Presbyterian Church in Korea, on Dec 12th 2021)