Choose to Bless Others
The idea of “blessing” in the New Testament is expressed by a Greek word which we have brought into our English vocabulary as “eulogy.” Eulogies are typically delivered at funerals and provide close friends and relatives with the opportunity to speak well of the dearly departed. After a funeral even someone who had never met the guest of honour would have a clear sense of that persons character, qualities and achievements. You wouldn’t know about their weaknesses and failures because it’s considered very bad taste to speak critically of a person on such occasions.
The idea of blessing others, then, is specifically tied to the way we speak. Most of us are quite subject to the human tendency to grouching and murmuring and whispering and back biting and slandering. But God calls us to a higher standard. He empowers us to replace all of that with blessing. More generally, though, we may legitimately think of blessing as bringing good or favour into the lives of others. This broadens blessing from just the way we talk to the way we act.
If you really want to bless each other, take a look at the “one another” commands in the Bible. We’ll go to Colossians 3 for a quick example. “Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. (Colossians 3:12-14 NKJV)
Imagine a local church fellowship where this kind of attitude characterized every person who was part of it. Imagine a Christian family in which each member acted out of tender mercy toward the other members. If we were kind, humble, meek and patient. If we were to bear with one another, forgive one another and when we accidently felt some hurt, we were quick to forgive each other because of the overarching theme of love which permeated the personality of each individual and the relationships between them.
This is challenging enough for most of us, but do you know the context of all the commands to bless others, is not about blessing others in our natural or spiritual families. The command to bless is always to bless our enemies. As believers I would like to think that we don’t identify other people as our enemies, but the fact is that some identify us as their enemies. You can look up other instances on your own, but we’ll let Romans 12:14 illustrate the point. There we read: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.”
I feel personally blessed because I work in an environment where everybody around me is a believer, the people above me, the people below me, the people sideways from me. Most of my social life is really church life. Even our next-door neighbours and several others on the street are Christians. I confess I live in a kind of bubble, but I was chatting recently with someone who has quite a different experience.
This lady had to call the police on a couple of occasions about things like alcohol-fueled-violence going on with her neighbours. Right now, she is trying to figure out the best response to one neighbour who insists on cutting across the corner of their lawn when he pulls into his driveway. A muddy hole is developing especially now that it is spring and the ground is soft. He knows she and her husband are Christians. They have loaned him tools and helped him in other little ways, but for some reason, he’s doing this. What should they do? What would you do? How do we bless people like this?
I wish I had all the answers for you. All I can do is urge you to look at the context, take into account what is really harmful and what is merely irritating. It’s not uncommon for fearful people to push others away with obnoxious behaviour and language. They may have drinking buddies, but they don’t necessarily have real friends. So the challenge for us is to bless them. Jesus willingly spent social time with people like this. Is that an option? Would that be right? Is this where we should start? Maybe we can’t do anything more than to bless them with the presence of Christ in our lives. If we really believe that we are God’s people, that God’s Spirit dwells in us, that His power is here to change the world then we will act accordingly and we will reach out positively even though it is totally foreign to us.
As we use our influence to draw others closer to Christ, we’ll avoid any behaviour that would drive them away. We’re careful not to trip others up through our attitudes, through our actions, through our words, through the way we dress, through our humour (I mention that, because it is one of my own big weaknesses) or anything else which, while perhaps harmless in itself, can prevent others from seeing the Lord in us.
We don’t want to cause others to stumble on the path of life. We want to represent Christ well and by doing so, we want to bless them.
Ron Hughes
© April 2009
