A People Set Apart | Men's DevotionalSample

Leaving the “Mere” Behind

If it walks, quacks, swims, and flies like a duck—it’s probably a duck.

It’s nice to know there are certain defining characteristics we can rely on to separate things…at least some things.

In several of his letters to the churches, the apostle Paul scribbles out lists of good and bad characteristics that more or less define those who follow Jesus and those who do not. Perhaps the most famous of these is in Galatians 5:19-26, where Paul contrasts a life lived by the flesh to a life led by the Spirit.

Usually, it’s easy enough to separate ourselves from the “bad” lists. Although, from time to time, there are troublesome descriptors that come a little too close for comfort—at least if you are a man like me.

But, on the whole, Paul’s descriptions of lives lived apart from salvation are difficult for Christians to identify with.

In his letter to the troubled church in Corinth, however, Paul hits a little too close to home in his description of “worldly” living.

The church there and then (not unlike the church here and now) was suffering from division and infighting. There were elitist groups who thought they were better than others based on anything from “elevated attitudes” (read permissiveness) toward sin; to wealth; to spiritual gifts; and even to who had introduced them to Christ or baptized them.

These attitudes (totally unrelatable, right, men?) had led to a church that was divided, fighting, and even taking each other to court.

Hardly Christlike behavior. Nothing that looks Spirit-led or transformed. Nothing inviting to those watching.

Paul calls them out. And the shots he fires strike near home for every believer.

To a church boasting about being better, not only than the world around them but even better than each other, Paul tells them they are simply worldly. Evidenced by jealousy and quarreling. You walk, quack, swim, and fly. Ducks, the lot of you!

It probably doesn’t take long to remember a time when either of those two things cropped up in your church.

The things that characterize us as “worldly”—the opposite of filled with and led by the Spirit—are those things that we find all too prevalently in our own churches and lives.

We may want to see ourselves one way, but we have to ask: do we quack?

Prayer: God of transformation, thank You that Your work in us is never done. Forgive me for the times when I mistake my transformation as further along than it is. Help me see and hear myself in reality, and invite You to work where You need to. Amen.

Reflection: Where do jealousy and quarreling find purchase in your life and your church? What is something that can be done about that, even today?