Walk This Way
- 1 John 1:6 - If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
- 1 John 2:11 - But those who hate a fellow believer are in the darkness and walk around in the darkness; they do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
- Colossians 3:7 - You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived.
- 1 John 1:7 - But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
- Galatians 5:16 - So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
- Ephesians 5:2 - and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
- 2 John 1:4 - It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.
- 2 John 1:6 - And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
- 3 John 1:3 - It gave me great joy to have some believers come and testify to your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it.
- 3 John 1:4 - I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth
Too many people think that being saved is the end, as if being born is the end of life instead of its beginning. They forget the part about growth; they don’t walk in the light.
But why? Why is this failure to walk in the light an epidemic among professing believers today? Isn’t it at least partly because the leaders have been tyrants and Pharisees instead of examples? In the previous post we looked at some teachings with dire consequences— dire, because people actually “walk the walk” and live out the logical conclusions of those teachings. Intended or not, the reality is that people live the way they actually believe.
And this goes both ways. In many cases, the teachers of unbiblical theology do not practice what they preach, even as their followers practice it. So by their actions the teachers demonstrate that they really don’t believe what they’re teaching— or they think themselves above their own laws. And that is the essence of the Pharisee:
They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them. Everything they do is done for people to see... Mt. 23:4-5aBut between these two extremes are many, many people who were saved at a young age, whose adult lives seem to mostly ignore God. Where is the “walk”? What real difference does their faith make in their lives, outside the walls of a church building? Where’s the saltiness (Mt. 5:13)? Where’s the light (Mt. 5:14-16)? What kind of ambassadors never mention the One they represent (2 Cor. 5:20)?
We walk amilessly and wonder why we never get anywhere. We walk in the dark and wonder why we keep crashing into things. We can’t walk in the truth because we either don’t know it or have come to believe there is no such thing. We are thrown out as useless because we have lost our saltiness; we do not “flavor” the world around us.
That’s what is wrong with Christianity today. How to make it right?
Walk this way.