I preached a message the other Sunday evening about learning to judge from God’s perspective and not as the world judges (Isaiah 11:3-4) “He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears, but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth.”
So many of us judge by our ‘natural’ eyes, we judge by what we see and hear and not judge according to what we see and hear ‘in the spirit’, or out of a ‘pure’ heart. Our judgement is often coloured by the lens that we are wearing of our life experiences, our life hurts etc instead of seeing and judging as God sees.
But something that struck me as I preached and was like a ‘bomb’ in the spirit was out of 1 Corinthians 6:7-8 and it reverberated the following day with the power of the revelation that came with it. Take the time to read from the beginning of 1 Cor 6 as it will bring context, but verses 7-8 are these;
“The very fact that you have lawsuits alongs you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong and you do this to your brothers.”
What struck me was the fact that if we have right and wrong between each other, if we have disputes, if we are seeking justification or justice for being wronged etc. we have been defeated already, we have missed the whole point of the gospel already and stepped back into law. We have missed what Christ did on the cross as he lay on a cross that he deserved not to be there, that he was innocent of and yet allowed himself to be put on a cross and judged. We have missed what he did for us on that cross setting us free from the law of sin and death. When we have lawsuits or fights among one another, we are setting in motion ‘law’ again, right and wrong, and it it continues in verses 7&8 “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead we are justifying ourselves, or perhaps wanting justice for being accused or treated wrongly and yet that is what Jesus did on the cross. We are picking up ‘law’ again instead of allowing the Lord to speak to that person, or trusting in Jesus to bring justice to a situation, instead of trusting that God sees everything and he is more than able to speak to someone, to right the wrong that has been done if we were to wait and trust in Him. It is so easy to pick up law and it was a challenge for me the next day as I bought some food and it was cold - do I say something, or do I leave it - Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? And the next day when someone didn’t do what they said they would do - Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? And the next day when someone comes with the pointing of finger at my faults - Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?
Obviously this is a continuing work in each one of us as we learn and grow in the Lord but boy was it like a bomb as the Lord brought revelation on how easily we enter into things that take us from the cross. How easily we pick up things that the Lord is not asking us to pick up and in so doing we enter a battle we didn’t need to enter in.