Colossians 3:16 Tuesday

“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16

A few years ago I was attempting to get the last piece of a frozen fruit salad out of a 13 x 9 x 2 pan as my husband was wrapping up watching the Jay Leno Show, taking off his shoes, and heading to bed. Little did he know at 2:00 a.m. we’d be heading to Kutz and Klinart to repair a severed artery. (It’s a really gross story that involves a five inch blade going through the palm of my left hand, coming out on the other side. Just ask my daughter what the kitchen looked like when she had to clean it up. The triage nurse had to change his scrubs when he examined me.) You should have been there. Anyway, I severed an artery because I mishandled a knife and used it in a way it was never intended.

Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15 to “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.” The word for “correctly handles” here is the word orthotomeo which means “to cut straight.” The reason I went to Kutz and Klinart in Louisville to have my hand surgery is because it is a world-renowned hand clinic, known for its doctors who do impeccable work involving instruments that require exact precision, i.e. scalpels—scalpels that have to “cut straight” to keep from doing more damage; I did not cut straight. Likewise, when we use the word of God as a weapon, we do damage God never intended. We cut like a chainsaw that has a jagged path, that does not lead in any direction.

My sisters, how many arteries have we severed, how many people have we injured, how much damage have we done because someone's mishandled the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God? How many battles are going on right now within the “brotherhood” over who’s right and who’s wrong, what should we do and what we shouldn't? How can we possibly think we can sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in our hearts to God when we can't get along with each other?

I trust that you know the word of God. I trust that it dwells in you richly. I trust that you know for yourself what you believe and why you believe it. Or better yet, I trust you know the One in Whom you believe.

My sisters, if I were to ask you the question, “Do you know that you know that you know that you know?” I trust you could answer with conviction, you do. Could you?

I want us to note once again Matthew Henry's words I quoted yesterday, especially because of the word doctor which, ironically, goes along with today's illustration. "The proper office of wisdom is to apply what we know to ourselves, for our own direction. The word of Christ must dwell in us, not in all notion and speculation, to make us doctors, but in all wisdom, to make us good Christians, and enable us to conduct ourselves in every thing as becomes Wisdom’s children."