I’m Entitled
1 Corinthians 6:7 In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?
Have you ever been wronged by someone and wanted revenge and recompense? It’s a pretty natural reaction. When you perceive yourself to be on the wrong end of an injustice, you discover that your own sense of justice is on a hair trigger.
In other words, it doesn’t have to be some big injustice to set us off. Just the smallest wrong, the smallest perceived injustice will do it.
I remember once on a long haul international flight I had a really obese man sitting next to me. And given his size – he really couldn’t help it – he spilled over into my seat. Now, I tried to be gracious, but on a long flight, man I tell you, grace wears pretty thin when your flesh is weak.
So I started thinking to myself, either this guy gets his fat body out of my seat, or he should pay me half my airfare, because that’s how much of my space he was taking up!!!
I can chuckle about it now, but back then … I tell you, my sense of justice, at this perceived injustice, was working on overdrive.
The Apostle Paul was a pretty savvy guy. He was writing to the church in Corinth about this very thing. Now, Corinth was a major commercial centre, at the intersection of trade routes between east and west. It was a fast moving, racy, risqué kind of city, and that culture, as it turned out, was rubbing off on the church. It seems that the people were far more interested in what they were entitled to than they were in living a godly, humble life. So this is what the old Paul writes to them:
In fact, to have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? (1 Corinthians 6:7)
In this day and age we seem to be so concerned with our entitlements and our rights as individuals. It happens in the small things – seats on aeroplanes, shopping trolley rights of way in the supermarket aisles (come on!) – and it happens in the big things. And what God’s saying to us here through Paul is that the moment you insist on your rights, your entitlements, you’ve already lost.
Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? Why not rather humble yourself? Why not rather hang there on a cross and suffer as Jesus did for you, to show His love to the world, than insist on what you’re entitled to?!
Imagine if Jesus had behaved the way we behave when we’re on the receiving end of an injustice.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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