Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Greetings once again, dear people.

We rolled into our driveway last evening about dark—returning from our hunting expedition. Unfortunately, that’s all we did over there on the other side of the state—a lot of HUNTING. We were never successful at FINDING in the form of achieving the objective of harvesting something that could be cut up and put in a freezer. But we can tell about getting close.

The passage of today’s reading is truly a gold mine of Biblical advice for doing life the way God intends—within the context of a FALLEN WORLD. And recognizing that TRUTH is of vital importance—that this is indeed a FALLEN WORLD. It was no insignificant mishap when our original ancestors “blew it.” SIN is a big deal in the view of a Holy God. The “Cross of Christ” dramatically proves that. There is no other antidote for the SIN problem.

Thano is on an airplane right now. We delivered him to PDX a few hours ago. He’s spending a week of his vacation with extended family near Spokane.

Lots of work is looking at me. Better get busy. Blessings.

Love, Dad/Ray.

Every kid likes a new toy. I guess I’m no exception—I like new stuff too. But life and experience has taught me that there is a down-side to this persistent human hang-up. New stuff that is given any kind of use simply cannot remain new stuff. Nor does the new excitement that goes with the new stuff remain new excitement for very long. This can apply to a new doll, a new toy truck, a new bike, a new car, a new piece of property, a new girlfriend, a new marriage, and even a new faith or conversion experience. The best we can do in view of this built-in degeneration problem is to maintain what is valuable and desirable in a condition as close to new as possible.

Let me quote here verses 9 and 10 of our reading to set the context clearly before us. “Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your OLD SELF with its practices and have put on the NEW SELF, which is being RENEWED in knowledge in the image of its Creator.” I’ve capitalized what I judge to be key words. Do you get the point? The NEW SELF, left to itself, will naturally run down and wear out just like any other self. But since the Creator of the NEW SELF is God Who is supernatural and Who does not run down or wear out, he offers a kind of miraculous maintenance program to those who will continually set their minds on things above (3:2) and “grow in grace and KNOWLEDGE of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18) through His inexhaustible Living Word. So in summary, it is not enough to simply replace the OLD with the NEW; the NEW must constantly be RENEWED.

Think about it. I highly recommend that every Bible believer adopt this as an ongoing routine and lifestyle.