What influences you most?
Does someone’s title or status make any difference to how you treat them? Clearly showing respect for everyone is appropriate and recognition of someone’s role is always the right thing to do. Yet the idea that we should give a person extra attention because they ‘appear’ to be influential is a mistake because their influence may be a bad one: it surely depends what they say and do!
On Sunday morning we heard from the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians that the apparent ‘status’ of the church Elders made no difference to him. His assertion that “God does not show favouritism” (or judge by external appearance as another translation puts it) is an important principle all through the Bible.
We saw from the account of how King David was chosen in the Old Testament that God taught the prophet Samuel this important principle:
“People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Sam 16:7)
In a culture obsessed by appearance and in which ‘influencers’ make a great deal of money simply by endorsing (or not!) particular products, its easy to forget that its what’s inside that really matters.
Much more to the point, it is vital for us to remember that the key influence in our lives must be God’s Word! Paul wanted the Galatian Christians to know that anything or anyone who contradicts the Lord Jesus is a very bad influence indeed and must be ignored because that way leads to hell! He wanted everyone to be concerned more about what the Lord Jesus has said and taught His apostles to say than anything else. Only the Gospel of Grace is true! Thankfully the church Elders he describes did that – and so should we!
Spencer Shaw