Bruce Collins, Evangelist

Meditation for the week of March 15, 2009

 
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
1 Corinthians 15:33 Do not be deceived: "Evil company corrupts good habits."

Tonight, I am going home to an empty house since my wife is babysitting our grandchildren several hours away.  I am not looking forward to being alone but at least the loneliness will be temporary.  God created us in such a way that we need friends and fellowship and partners in this life.  We work better together than we do alone.  Loneliness can be a terrible thing.  We see people in nursing homes that are lonely and generally they are very unhappy.  But having the wrong friends can be worse than being lonely.

The kind of friends that we make will have a great influence on the lives that we live.  Paul tells us that if we associate with evil people, they won’t become like us.  Instead we will become like them and we will have our behavior corrupted.  Recently, I have been meditating on the destruction of Babylon during the tribulation period.  In Revelation 18:4 we read,  "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues.”  It appears that those people who associate with this unfaithful religious system will be judged with her when she is destroyed.  We know salvation is by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus.  But we also know that there are consequences when we make bad decisions.  If we who are saved are in a car being driven by a driver who is drunk, we will be hurt in any accident that occurs even though we are not drunk ourselves.  So the earthly consequences of keeping bad company can be serious.  And the likelihood is that if we keep company with those who are drinking in excess, we will more than likely find it easy to do the same thing.

Christians need to have fellowship with others who believe in the Lord Jesus.  In Acts 2:42, fellowship is one of the things that characterized the very first congregation of believers in Jerusalem.  In 1 Corinthians 11 where the Lord’s Supper is explained, the word together is used five times.  We do this together as a local church and not individually.  But while Christians need each other and do not thrive when we are alone, we are admonished to separate from unbelievers in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18.  We need to make sure that we live our lives in such a way that the unsaved are not able to influence the way we live and worship.

Likewise the Lord intended for a man and a woman to support each other and to compliment each other in the marriage relationship.  However, the Lord makes it clear that a Christian living alone and dedicating his or her life to the Lord is far better than getting married to the wrong partner.  The verse we have mentioned in 2 Corinthians 6 makes it clear that a Christian cannot be married to an unbeliever.  When that rule is violated, disaster results.  But in 1 Corinthians 7:39, marriage is to be “in the Lord”.  In Paul’s epistles, being “in Christ” seems to imply that we are saved.  Being “in the Lord” seems to imply that we are walking in obedience to the will of the Lord.  So not only should a partner be saved, but the partners should be unified in their desire to please the Lord and in their spiritual goals.  That way they can be glorifying the Lord in their marriage while being the help that their partner needs.

Loneliness is a bad thing. However, there is no loneliness like being imprisoned in a wrong relationship.  Whether we are talking about business partners, marriage partners, social friends or the people that we meet with for worship, a relationship from which we can’t get free that keeps us from enjoying the fellowship of the Lord is going to seem like a prison and is going to leave us very lonely.  The Lord experienced ultimate loneliness at the cross when He was forsaken by the Father.  There is no loneliness like complete separation from God who is the source of life and love.  Those unbelievers who end up experiencing eternal conscious punishment after they die may have their friends in that place of torment with them, but I am convinced that they will still experience a loneliness that we cannot fully understand in this life since they will be forever and totally separated from God.

While we all need alone time, none of us wants to be totally alone.  Satan knows how important friendship and fellowship is, so he is constantly trying to destroy friendships that would be a help to us.  He also knows how to tempt us to get involved with the wrong people.  Loneliness may be bad but linking up with the wrong friends may be worse.

Bruce Collins