For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. (1 Cor. 2:11)One of the things I see often is people judging the thoughts and motives of another person with absolute certainty. To them, they are self-evident. The text I quoted is a rhetorical question. Paul is not asking for a show of hands on who knows another person’s thoughts. He is saying that we cannot know the thoughts of another person. We could know if he told us, or we could know if we had his spirit. We could also know if God revealed his thoughts to us. Until then, we must not judge the thoughts of another person. We guess! We guess wrongly and act on our guess as if we were right.
There are several reasons why obedience seems hard. I will comment on some of them and then speak positively on how obedience is easy. We think: 1) Obedience is an infringement on freedom. Since we are free in Christ, and obedience is somehow contrary to that freedom, we conclude that obedience is not good. Yet we know it is good. Thus, we become confused about obedience and are not single-minded. 2) Obedience is works. We who have been justified by grace through faith are opposed to works; therefore, we are opposed to obedience. 3) We have tried to obey and have failed—frequently. Therefore, the only solution is to disobey and later confess to receive forgiveness. It is easier to be forgiven by grace than to obey by effort. 4) We confuse obedience to men with obedience to God. Although these are sometimes one and the same (see Romans 13, 1 Peter 2-3, Ephesians 5-6, Colossians 3, and Titus 2), sometimes they are not the same (see Colossians 2:20-23, Mark 7, 1 Timothy 4:1-5, a
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