Day Forty-Five
The Metaphor of Our Spiritual Fitness
“A word fitly spoken and in due season is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”
Prov 25:11 Amp
There are many words spoken today ostensibly in the Name of Jesus. But unless they are words also spoken at His prompting, in His nature, character, authority, and in obedience, they are not “fitly” spoken!
_Fitly_: for a small word it bears great importance. Its use in the Proverbs Scripture above implies something from God that is given out at the appropriate time. Just as you and I are given and increasingly filled with the Living Word, at the divine moment – we have the opportunity to share that word. But it is even more than that. You see as believers – “we are becoming ” the apples of Gold in frames of silver!
The “apples of gold” refers to us bearing the image and likeness of Christ. Symbolically, He is, “like an apple tree” among the trees of the wood in Song of Songs 2:3. He refreshes us with apples: SoS 2:5. And under the apple tree He awakens us, SoS 8:7.
As we increasingly perceive Him through His word we are transformed into His own image in every increasing splendor (2Cor 3:18) – and the image of the apple covered in gold speaks to this likeness of His life and the image of His deity operating in us (in our spirit).
Yet His likeness (Spirit) in us is surrounded by our own vessels of flesh (earthen furnaces/vessels) and His word and promises continuously work on purifying us like silver purified seven times over. As His word resides in us and is loosed within us it does a purifying work. It renews our mind, it sanctifies us, and causes our soul and body to be preserved sound, complete, and blameless at His coming.
With the impact of His word and truth and life in us, we become qualified… “fit” if you will, to give His response to the situations of life. At that moment, we are not spouting platitudes, giving our own opinions, nor callously giving some kind of mechanical response. In fact, if we are “right” in Him – then it is the very word of God, backed by His character and heart, that is coming forth from us – to bring life, to even expand life in that very situation.
But this divine response has not come without a great cost. It comes in fact, because of the cost! First, the cost that the Lord paid on the cross for us, and then the willingness of the person to lay down his life as a living sacrifice (die) – that the word of God can be brought to bear in him, then through him, then from him – for God’s purposes and timing.
This is the inherent meaning behind the “apples of gold in settings or pictures of silver.” It is the Lord’s own saints, His Body, being transformed, carrying forward His response/His word in His divine timing – that lives would be changed, people set free, wounds bound up, and that the love of the Living God would be applied to needy hearts!
That is our charge – to be those very things for His glory! To carry His word as apples of gold in settings of silver, as He would carry it – in love.
Insolomonsporch's Blog 