A Reflection on the Path
by LewisIn the first three verses of Ephesians 2, Paul tells the church that they were dead in their trespasses and sins and lists three causes for those failures. Many commentators divide those out as “the world, the flesh, and the devil,” and that makes a lot of sense. Too many times we fail to take the blame for giving in to our desires, and too we are quick to say “the devil made me do it” when all the devil had to do was watch.
But the part I want us to think about for a moment — because it is so amazingly dangerous — is the world. Specifically, Paul writes, those who now make up the church once “walked according to the course of this world.”
In Pilgrim’s Progress the hero, Pilgrim, and his traveling companion Faithful are walking on the path that has been laid out for them and for all who would find their way to the Celestial City (heaven). After a while the path becomes difficult and rocky, but just on the other side of a fence they can see a path that is grassy and much easier, and it appears to go in the right direction.
So they climb over the fence at a stile and resume their journey, walking and talking and simply following the path. As evening approaches they suddenly become aware that they can no longer see the way that they know to be the right way, and as they try to find the way back to the stile in the darkness they stumble and fall and realize that they will have to wait until daylight to carry on. But before daylight comes they are taken captive by Giant Despair and thrown into a dungeon at Doubting Castle. Suddenly, Pilgrim was not making much progress!
How about us? Have we ever decided to step off the path we knew to be the right way just to take an apparently easier way that was offered to us by the world? Have we ever walked according to the course of this world?
May we always stay on the right path, the path called Jesus, and keep our eyes fixed on him.
Under the mercy,
Lewis