Any spirit that communicates settling, resting on your oars, taking it easy, instead of pressing on, aggressive pursuit of the purpose of God, the plan of God, the mind of God, the mission of God, day in day out, week in, week out, month in month out, and so on and so forth, Paul is saying should be jettisoned.
Any thinking that reflects arrival, that you have reached the pinnacle, that you know all there is to know, understand all there is to understand, and have done all there is to do, is wrong, is what Paul is saying.
Paul is talking about a point of view here. And what differentiates one person from another is the point of view, which dictates your self-evaluation, self-judgement, and how you evaluate others.
From verse three of this chapter, Paul started a take-down on his own human credentials.
The corollary in our time is to think that your degree makes you something, your academic prowess makes you something, that your successful business makes you something, that your successful family life makes you something, or the country you are born in, or even your skin color, or the financial access you have.
All these and much more are what people can point at as making them distinct and making them better than others, as part of their self-image, even though we are supposed to be like Christ, and Paul has expressed Christ's magnificence in the previous verses.
And Paul says that not having the right attitude towards Christ and His things means our priorities are out of sync.
And an error means we miss the mark, and the longer we go without the correction of being shown the errors of our ways, the more dangerous things become.
So instead of waiting for disaster to strike, we can pray that God would show us the error of our ways, the error of our thinking.
So we can pray, God reveal to me the error of my ways.
The point is that what you do flows from the point of view you have, just as Jesus said what defiles comes from the heart (Matthew 15:18-19).
In the previous verse, Paul said that he is striving towards the upward call of God in Christ. In another place, he said we are struggling against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12). But the striving (stretching forward) and the struggling (resisting) go on at the same time.
This is similar to Jesus saying Follow me (PURSUIT) (Matthew 9:9), and also saying Watch and pray that you would not fall into temptation (STRUGGLE) (Matthew 26:41).
The instrument for watching, I believe, is the word of God, which is the light on our feet (Psalm 119:105). But you need preachers of the word that would bring forth the light of the word, starting with the foundation of Christ.
Without this foundation and focus on Christ, errors inevitably compound, hence there has to be course correction in the form of discipline from the Lord. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that this discipline is so that we would share in God's holiness (Hebrews 12:10), or God's error-freeness.
Let's focus on "point of view" and "think." Anyone who wants to draw near to God without a change in his thinking does not understand as well as he should.
Anyone who wants to go to church, without a clear agenda to experience the washing of water by the word (Ephesians 5:26), washing away junk thinking, and restoring right thinking, gaining the right point of view, that person is wrong.
With that in mind, we can begin to understand when Paul calls some people "dogs," "mutilators of the flesh," "evil workers (Philippians 3:2)."
The only things these people are doing are preaching and proclaiming pseudo-truth, which damages the point of view of the people and would inevitably lead them into error.
James wrote that teachers would have stricter judgment (James 3:1).
The false teachers would suffer at the end of time, but those who come under their influence will suffer now.
Lies are darkness, which means you would not see where you are going, and there are consequences to that.
For example, a teaching that focuses you on the things of this world, or on righteousness by works, degrades the souls, because it degrades the search, the striving, from the upward call of God in Christ Jesus to competition among men.
It corrupts the soul.
From Addiction to Freedom by Favour Oyinloye
Nature Song
