When Being Positive Isn't
Theme of the Week: Only One Way?
Philip Ryken
Friday, March 21, 2008
 1 of 1
Key Bible Verse:We will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ Ephesians 4:15. Bonus Reading:Luke 18:9-14
When some people hear the words "absolute truth," they immediately think of someone who is proud and self-righteous, someone who wants to tell everyone else what to think but doesn't want to listen. Is that a total misconception, or is there some truth to it? And wouldn't we be more effective in our witness if we had both a stronger commitment to theological truth and a more obvious commitment to sacrificial love?
The English apologist G.K. Chesterton once commented that we are living in a time when people are timid about the truth but confident about themselves. His point was that as followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to have exactly the opposite attitude. We should be confident about the truth, and therefore bold in our defense of God, his Word, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. But we, of all people, should know better than to be confident about ourselves! We should know how sinful we are, how prone we are to misunderstand things and thus to fail in living out the truth. We should know what a mystery it is that God's infallible, inerrant truth has been entrusted to fallen, fallible people. We should know that our own grasp of the absolute truth is far from absolute.
—Philip Ryken in Only One Way?
My Response: How might I show friendship and respect to someone whose values I reject?
Thought to Apply: Self-righteousness is a loud din raised to drown the voice of guilt within us.—Eric Hoffer
Adapted from Only One Way?, edited by Richard Phillips (Crossway, 2006) by permission.
Copyright © 2008 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity. 1 of 1
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I need Your Spirit's power, Lord, to defend the truth of Your Word while I live out the love of the gospel.
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