“Be Not Lukewarm in Your Zeal.”

“Be Not Lukewarm in Your Zeal.”

A noteworthy exhortation! Most people are apt to think that if a person is zealous, he is certainly not lukewarm. But that is a mistake. The exact opposite is written here!

The explanation is that everything is relative (comparatively)! When someone who is lukewarm in his zeal compares himself to someone who is more slack and lazier than he, he thinks of himself as a zealous fellow. But if he compares himself to someone who is boiling hot (for example, the apostle Paul), then his zeal becomes sheer lukewarmness!

When we think seriously and deeply about all that the Father and the Son have done for us—all the glory to which they have invited us—and the fact that none of us knows how long our time of grace will be, we must come to the acknowledgment that the only thing that makes any sense at all is to be desperately zealous to love and serve Him who loved us first, and so incredibly and exceedingly much, as well as to be zealous to attain to all that He has called us to!

Then everything else becomes as nothing, even less than nothing! Then Paul’s words apply, “But one thing I do . . . .”! And Jesus’ words, “One thing is needed . . .”!