Love Expects the Best of Others, Part 2
David W Palmer
(1 Corinthians 13:7 TLB) “If you love someone, you will … always expect the best of him …”
(2 Corinthians 5:16–17 NLT) “So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! {17} This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!”
If God begins to visualize and describe a different picture than that of us having been recreated a perfect new man in Jesus’s image; and if he begins to verbalize that we really haven’t changed, then we are doomed. The Holy Spirit can actualize within us what we and God agree we are—the new man in Christ, not the old sinful nature; it died with Jesus on the cross; we buried it at baptism:
(Romans 6:4–6 NKJV) Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. {5} For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, {6} knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
The Holy Spirit urges us to put off the old nature that God killed in Jesus at his crucifixion, and to align our thinking to this truth. Then he directs us to put on the new holy nature that God created in Jesus at his resurrection. Yes, people sin; yes, at times they allow their old nature to live through them again; and yes, their flesh sometimes dominates their spirit (the apostle Paul calls this a carnal Christian (See: 1 Cor. 3:1-4)). But we will not help God’s objective in others if we drop our faith in their transformation; God will never vary from his faith in their transformation, any more than he will give up on believing that we are the new nature in Christ.
The Holy Spirit exhorts us to expect the best of other born again believers, and to see them as he does; he tells us to stop “evaluating others from a human point of view.” Jesus wants us to agree with him and his achievements in the new birth; he wants us to believe and confess: “Anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun” (2 Cor. 5:16–17 NLT). Our Lord wants us to be clear that born again believers in, and followers of, him are a new creation—the new nature that he created, which is perfect—just like him. Our responsibility is to put off the old [crucified-with-Jesus] nature, and to put on the new:
(Ephesians 4:24 NLT) Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy.
To this, the Holy Spirit adds that we should only think on good things, and he warns us to only speak that which imparts grace—or we will be giving place to the devil and grieving the Holy Spirit:
(Philippians 4:8 NKJV) “Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.”
(Ephesians 4:27, 29–30 NKJV) “Nor give place to the devil. ... {29} Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. {30} And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
Like God does for us in expecting the best of us, the Holy Spirit wants us to do for other born again believers. He wants us not only to expect the best, but also to actively invest our faith into believing that the new birth worked in them; and then only to speak about them and into them words from God that impart grace to them. In other words, he wants us to declare over them, and speak to and about them, with wor
