Loyalty & Treason are not Necessary Words for a Christian

A few days ago I mentioned both loyalty and treason were bad words. To the normal worldly person loyalty is always a good word and treason is always a bad word. I suggested there are better words.

Here are a few, God, love, truth, obedience, responsibility and humility. With these as our standard as Christians we find that loyalty and treason are not necessary words. I can obey God with love, truth, and humility. If I have a responsibility to my wife, children, church, and nation, I carry them out by obedience to God and love for God and my wife, children, and nation.

You can reply by saying that I am “loyal.” Not even close. Loyalty is an artificially created humanistic emotion. Love is a God authored and created emotion.

The man in the Bible that stands out in loyalty in my mind is Joab. His brother Abishai is a close second. The man who stands out in love and obedience is Paul. There is not a whiff of loyalty about him.

…though I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philippians 3:4-11 (NIV)

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Roots by the River

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