Live Up to
What You Have

Devotional

Truth, Timing, and Obedience

Two verses today, and they contain some of the most gracious pastoral instruction in the New Testament.

Start with the surprise in verse 15. Paul says that mature believers should take the view he has just described, which is the view of a person who admits they haven’t arrived. So maturity, according to Paul, isn’t the sense that you’ve finished. It’s the honest awareness that you haven’t.

Then comes the line that many of us need. If on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you.

Look at what Paul just did there. He has been forceful for an entire chapter, calling opponents dogs and his own credentials garbage, and now he tells the church that if they don’t yet see something the way he does, God will handle it. He doesn’t threaten them, argue harder, or demand immediate agreement. He trusts God to do the convincing on His own timetable.

That’s a model for how we treat people who aren’t where we are yet, and it’s a model most of us need badly. There’s a difference between the truth being clear and a person being ready, and Paul refuses to confuse the two. He states the truth plainly and then leaves the timing to God.

It’s also a word for you about yourself. There are things in your own life that you don’t yet see clearly, and the promise here is that God will make them clear. You don’t have to manufacture conviction you don’t have.

Then verse 16 keeps it from becoming an excuse. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

That’s the balance. You aren’t responsible for light you haven’t been given, and you’re completely responsible for the light you do have. No one gets to use future clarity as a reason to ignore present obedience.

So the question is simple, even if the answer isn’t. What do you already know that you aren’t yet doing? Most of us don’t have an information problem, and we never really did.