Wisdom - Love in Action
if he is thirsty, give him water to drink."
Proverbs 25:21
"In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the Lord will reward you."
Proverbs 25:22
[This is the 20th message in this series]
In this series we are highlighting two-liner verses from the Book of Proverbs.
Two Two-Liners
This is a two-fer, a two in one -- two couplets. We shouldn't separate them as they should go together. Besides, the second couplet doesn't mean anything without the one preceding it.
Love
Jesus taught His disciples to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them.
This is the context of that first couplet, real love -- love in action.
Anyone can love those who are good to them. It is in loving those who are unlovable is where we see what real love is -- this the very heart of God (God's love).
God First Loved Us
Loving our enemies is not as hard as it sounds when you consider that God loved us first. He sent His Son to die in our place when we didn't deserve it. Jesus went to the cross knowing that we are so unlovable. As He was breathing His last breathe, Jesus had to tell Our Father in heaven, to forgive those who were putting Him to death as they do not know what they were doing.
The bad thing about this is that His enemies know exactly what they were doing. They were persecuting (character assassinating) and sentencing Jesus to death (actually assassinating). They were deliberately eliminating Him because He was posing a real threat to their power, influence, wealth and their status quo.
Romans 12:20
The Apostle Paul in writing to the first church in Rome said the exact same thing:
'To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”'
Reputation
Doing good to our friends is routine and merely paying them back for the good they do to us.
Doing good to those who are treating us badly is what a real Christian should be known for.
It typifies the Christian teachings of:
"Vengeance is for the Lord"
and
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good".
Burning Coals
Why do it? Because there is no law for doing good to those who do us bad. There is no response to it.
Galatians 5:22-23
"the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
When we repay evil with evil, the hate, the conflict and the retaliation continues. (It is not a tooth for a tooth, or an eye for an eye. This merely sets into motion the cycle of violence.)
"In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head,
and the Lord will reward you."
Proverbs 25:22
[This is the 20th message in this series]
In this series we are highlighting two-liner verses from the Book of Proverbs.
Two Two-Liners
This is a two-fer, a two in one -- two couplets. We shouldn't separate them as they should go together. Besides, the second couplet doesn't mean anything without the one preceding it.
Love
Jesus taught His disciples to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecute them.
This is the context of that first couplet, real love -- love in action.
Anyone can love those who are good to them. It is in loving those who are unlovable is where we see what real love is -- this the very heart of God (God's love).
God First Loved Us
Loving our enemies is not as hard as it sounds when you consider that God loved us first. He sent His Son to die in our place when we didn't deserve it. Jesus went to the cross knowing that we are so unlovable. As He was breathing His last breathe, Jesus had to tell Our Father in heaven, to forgive those who were putting Him to death as they do not know what they were doing.
The bad thing about this is that His enemies know exactly what they were doing. They were persecuting (character assassinating) and sentencing Jesus to death (actually assassinating). They were deliberately eliminating Him because He was posing a real threat to their power, influence, wealth and their status quo.
Romans 12:20
The Apostle Paul in writing to the first church in Rome said the exact same thing:
'To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.”'
Reputation
Doing good to our friends is routine and merely paying them back for the good they do to us.
Doing good to those who are treating us badly is what a real Christian should be known for.
It typifies the Christian teachings of:
"Vengeance is for the Lord"
and
“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good".
Burning Coals
Why do it? Because there is no law for doing good to those who do us bad. There is no response to it.
Galatians 5:22-23
"the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law."
When we repay evil with evil, the hate, the conflict and the retaliation continues. (It is not a tooth for a tooth, or an eye for an eye. This merely sets into motion the cycle of violence.)
When we repay evil with kindness, the hate stops.
Evil stops. Good wins. Love always win.
Reward
The end of that second couplet says that when we do good to those who do us bad, the Lord rewards us.
How so? Living a life without hatred, without vengeance, without unforgiveness, without guilt is the best life worth living. It parallels the kind of life we will have for eternity. Living the same life on earth is our dress rehearsal, our practice-run to get us ready for eternity.
Evil stops. Good wins. Love always win.
Reward
The end of that second couplet says that when we do good to those who do us bad, the Lord rewards us.
How so? Living a life without hatred, without vengeance, without unforgiveness, without guilt is the best life worth living. It parallels the kind of life we will have for eternity. Living the same life on earth is our dress rehearsal, our practice-run to get us ready for eternity.
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