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Daily Devotionals
Daily Open Windows
We have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. (2 Corinthians 5:16 NLT)
The first and primary thing is the absolute necessity for knowing one another after the Spirit. “The love of Christ constrains us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him”; “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh.” That means that as far as we can see, we have not made what we are by nature the final basis of our relationships, of our expectations, of our judgments, of our appraisals, of our valuations. It does not mean that we are oblivious of one another‟s human nature. It does not mean that what we are in the flesh never strikes us; that we are to be totally insensible to the defects of one another‟s nature. No! We shall always be sensitive. It is probably true that the more spiritual we are, the more sensitive we become to what we are by nature and to what others are by nature. Perhaps we shall suffer all the more because of the defects and imperfections, the strengths and the weaknesses of one another naturally.
Men of the world have but a very, very minute degree of the difficulty that Christians have of getting on with one another. They seem to be able to ignore and ride over one another‟s difficult parts and make-up. It seems that Christians are much more alive to that sort of thing than others, and are touched by it more keenly. Of course, we can explain that along two lines. If we become spiritually sensitive the flesh is sensed very much more quickly; what is not spiritual registers itself upon spiritual sensitiveness. There is also the fact that we have an adversary to reckon with who is always seeking to make a lot of the imperfections and brings them up and hits us with them. He is at work in this matter of seeking to upset the relationships of the Lord‟s people. He never tires of that. Not knowing one another after the flesh does not mean that all that realm will cease to exist for us, but it does mean that we shall look beyond that realm and we shall steadily seek grace and the help of the Holy Spirit to cultivate and develop a determination to look through what we are by nature to what there is of the Lord Jesus and of the Holy Spirit in one another, and keep our eyes upon that.
From: Filled Unto All the Fullness of God - Chapter 10
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