Seeing
ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned
love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently.
1 Peter
1:22
Notice that
this passage says that you have purified your souls through obeying the truth
by the Spirit. Without the presence of the Holy Spirit residing within you, you
can not accomplish anything. We have to be led by the spirit; we have to have
the Holy Spirit abiding within us. Remember Christ spoke to the disciples prior
to His departure and said that you will
receive power when the Holy Spirit comes; we, through the Spirit have the
ability to overcome and be victorious on this earth. It is also through the
Spirit that we can love unconditionally; we can help our enemies, and be kind
to those who show no kindness towards us. This passage emphasizes the fact that
I should be able to tell your spiritual makeup, by the way you fervently love
one to another. To be fervent means that you are passionate, eager, zealous
about something, I should be able to see all those traits in your lifestyle as
a Christian. Remember, greater man have no love than this, that he lay down his
life for his friends!!!!!! That is Jesus showing his fervent love for us! This
is the same love we are to show and will show through the aide and presence of the
Holy Spirit… The bible declares that everything
is possible through Christ… This has a new meaning for us today as we walk
in love; we can love our biggest adversary through Christ, we can smile in
times of frustration and adversity through Christ and we can turn the other
cheek even in the most daunting of all challenges through Christ… These traits
can be displayed when we are of Christ because we are no longer thinking and
acting according to the worldly standards… You have to have a purified soul in
order to obey the truth of what God is speaking to your spirit… You have to
have your life focus and desires refined by the fire of the Lord which will
remove the dross from your life… This verse speaks to the process of
sanctification which we all must go through as we grow and advance in the knowledge
of Jesus Christ… Peter is speaking about the development of the body of Christ;
he is speaking to the continual growth that must take form in our lives… He
says, see that you love one another with
a pure heart, but before that, he starts off by saying that we have
purified souls! Let us recognize that evil is our intent when we are brought
into this world; the fleshly desires are things that we are born with through
the fall of man in the Garden of Eden! We must go through a transformation in
order to fulfill the will of God… Our souls must be purified daily because our
desires naturally are filthy! We don’t desire to do the best we can, but we do
desire to pleasure ourselves in the sins of this world. Peter is telling us to
acknowledge today that we aren’t perfect and can only approach perfection
through the Love of God and His Holy Spirit! Naturally we don’t extend love to
our enemies, we don’t lift a hand to someone who has stabbed us in the back and
we don’t care to go the extra mile for someone who does not appreciate it!
These are the feelings that we demonstrate naturally… Seeing you have purified your souls by obeying the truth means that you
have said that I deny my flesh and have immersed myself in the word of God…
This can only be done by allowing the spirit to take hold of your soul and
purify the damage done by our natural desires! See that you put the Spirit of
God within and allow it to work through you! Jesus had to in order to lay down
his life on the cross; we must do the same if we want to be able to do the
things that God has called us to do!
BE BLESSED!!!
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