“Barnabas and Paul [said] Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you...Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are.”
(Acts 14:14-15;James 5:17)
Taking it in a spiritual setting, I’d like to ask a question. Do you know who lives down the street from you, maybe only a few houses away, even next door? They’re saints who lived in Bible times, from the greatest to the least. There is no “Knob Hill” in Scripture. They were people just like you and me. They were people who speak to our own need. They were not lofty saints but lowly redeemed sinners. This is why it is so important to read the Scripture: you can meet yourself there.
The Bible is careful to portray its characters the way they really were, warts and all; no cosmetics or touch up. They would never allow others to think more highly of them than they actually were. Paul told the man worshiping Corinthians the facts about himself, lest, as he put it, “... any man should think of me above that which he seeth me to be.” He said of himself and Apollos that they were nothing. If you add up 0+0 the answer is 0. Only Christ counts!
I had a man come up to me after a Sunday morning service years ago and say, “You know, you’re not as tall as I thought you were, out of the pulpit.” He knew more than I did, at the time. As I have so often said, “It is important for most of us to be important.”
“Many of us who profess to live in ‘glass houses’ have white washed them.”
(rds)
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