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!
GO ALL IN FOR CHRIST!
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