Good evening, Zane.
I don’t think I could over-estimate the importance and value of these two chapters—Galatians 5 and 6. I want to urge you, Zane, to become as familiar as possible with this passage of instruction as it relates so profoundly to successful Christian living. I just can’t imagine anyone being a successful and faithful follower of Jesus who does not embrace these concepts, standards, and disciplines.
I’m looking forward to hearing back from you. What are your plans for Labor Day?
Have a good night. Love and prayers. Tua/Ray.
Human beings are pretty good at coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses for why they are not doing as they know they should. They can become very creative and skilled in the fine art of blame. For anyone wishing to make a break with this kind of unproductive living, and reduce the volume of valid criticisms against themselves, Paul offers this good advice: “Each one should test his own actions.” The rest of the verse reads this way: “Then he can take pride in himself, without comparing himself to somebody else.” Failure to do this can too easily cause one to engage in various forms of self-deception—probably the worst kind of deception available. (It’s bad enough when a person tells his neighbor a lie and he believes it—but worse yet when that person tells himself a lie…and believes it!) Take note of the verse just preceding this one: “If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (6:3). Perhaps I’ll paraphrase this verse in my own words: “If anyone draws the conclusion that he is pretty good because he simply judges himself in comparison with other compromising phony-baloney Christians around him, but fails to measure himself against the standard of Christ and His Word, that person will certainly end up with a distorted and inaccurate view of himself.”
I think it may be good to extract from this chapter a few pertinent self-test questions that could help each of us to gain the best score.