I can gauge my spiritual life by the degree to which I poeticize the Bible. An instance of that came to light today. I learned that someone I had deeply offended had refrained from telling me my offense until he could deal with it sufficiently in his own heart to avoid sending me a hurtful letter.

I was immediately reminded of Paul’s identical motive in his words to the Corinthians:

I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia….Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say ‘Yes, yes’ and ‘No, no’ at the same time….But I call God to witness against me — it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth….For I made up my mind not to make another painful visit to you. (2 Corinthians 1:16,17,23; 2:1)

Like Paul, my friend chose to bless me when his baser self wanted to hurt me back. In order to pull off that soul transaction, he had to suck up the pain himself, take on my debt himself rather than handing me the bill.

All of which made me take a second look at something Paul said later in the same letter:

[We are] always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also my be manifested in our mortal flesh. (4:10,11)

Nothing poetical or romantic about that.

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