A LESSON IN HUMAN RELATIONS

Last week we began reading the book of Revelation in my local church, the youth fellowship group. The studies are to take as long as it will, there is no dateline for stopping, we will move to other programs after we have read the last chapter of revelation. It is intentionally slow, we don’t want to read it and preach it; we want to read it, enjoy it and live it. Ours is just a journey of discovery. We want to just relish in the word of God, through the book of revelation. And indeed, we are having that already. Last Wednesday, when the coordinator announced that we have reached the closing time, everyone sighed as though they were about to be pulled away from a sweet meal of roasted yam and beans. Apart from the sweet delight that comes from JUST dwelling in the word of God, we are also encountering new revelations. For instance, have you ever thought about the fact that there is a blessing just for reading the word of God? “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” (Find that in Revelation Chapter One)

Yesterday, we were at Revelation Chapter Two. Our eyes were opened to one of the most important revelations in human’s relation! In chapter 2 of Revelation, God was addressing specific issues in the churches. How He approached them is worth considering.

Photo by Ryan Riggins on Unsplash

In each case, He begins by talking about the good things that such churches are doing; to the church in Ephesus, he tells them “I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: And hast borne, and hast patience, and for my name's sake hast laboured, and hast not fainted.”, Before He goes on to mention what they have done wrong.

This is important if you think about this as though it were you who was being corrected.

Imagine I approached you with your result for Character and Behaviour and I begin this way “Mark, you are a liar, you steal plenty of things from the market. You sleep with women anyhow, you don’t have control for how you say the things you want to say. Your life is in danger, you must repent today or else I will call the police for you. Although, of course, you have a heart that wants to care for others”.

If you were Mark and I told you that, the first reaction, most likely, is that you will be angry, rationalize your position and in fact forget the last statement I mentioned which is indeed good. Maybe in the end, we will end up in a deadlock, I would not have corrected you and you would have hated me.

But using the opposite approach is what God uses.

“Mark, you’re a kind-hearted person. You’re gentle and I know you are doing your best to live a holy. However, you need to stop stealing. It isn’t good for you. And don’t associate with thieves, they lead you to steal more. Stealing does not make you a better person. You need to repent of that, so that you may have eternal life”

Wake me up any day, anytime, I will choose the second approach, which is God’s approach if I am to be corrected. There is a temptation, and I have fallen into it several times, that in our bid to correct others we begin by totally “cutting away” their noses to prove we are right. This hurt. It hurts the person which makes them resistant to what you are about to say, no matter how important. In many of those cases, we are just trying to prove we are right or we know it, but not correcting this person out of love. This is not the Christian way!

Revelation 2 lays a simple template for us. God has a model for correcting His loved ones. He corrects them lovingly.

Also, notice that He hid nothing from them, He did not in an attempt to be “loving” forget to mention and rebuke them of their sins. Love corrects all wrong. And Love does it lovingly.

May we find the grace to correct others in Love, especially in an age where everyone wants to prove a point and show that they know the truth better than others.