Best if used by [Date]

That’s something familiar to those of us who purchase food.  We go grocery shopping and we pick up the box or the package and look for the expiration date, the best-if-used-by date.  I know that I’ve sometimes assumed whatever I was purchasing was fairly fresh and haven’t checked, only to discover once I was home that it was just expired or had one more day—which is translated into “use immediately.” 

Obviously most things will last longer than the expiration date, otherwise the companies that sell the products would have far more law suits.  But the dates serve a purpose, otherwise they wouldn’t be legally required. 

How many other things in life might we apply expiration or best-if-used-by dates, things that we might not think of as perishable or something that might spoil?  Clearly, the fashion industry implies expiration dates on their clothes. 

How might this apply in the Church?  Are there things that “go out of date”? 

What about habits and attitudes and beliefs?  Do these spoil after a certain amount of time?  Are there things that are sustained, without any spoilage?  Things that time and the elements have no effect on? 

Developmental science indicates that we grow and change.  Our bodies mature as well as our brains and our abilities to handle certain social circumstances and relationships. 

The Apostle Paul wrote that “when I was a child I thought like a child, I acted like a child, but when I became a man I put childish ways to rest.”  We grow out of certain behaviors, or should.  We grow beyond certain beliefs, or should.  We grow up in the faith, mature into a gracious spirit.  Of the faithful saints I have know personally, those whose faith deepens into a rich, substantive and generous posture toward life and others there is something powerfully attractive about them.  They may hold some of the same beliefs about doctrine and living, but their manner toward others is persuasively kind and gracious.  There’s something about the legalism that many espouse at one point or another that expires, seems to go out of date—not necessarily the faith undergirding the attitudes, but the way in which they are applied. 

These spiritual grown ups understand that there are responses to situations that expire, though many of us try to preserve them and keep them fresh, things like anger that begins to spoil in the heart and has a “best-if-dealt-with” date to it.  These saints practice forgiveness and reconciliation, which are non-perishables. 

In what ways have you grown up spiritually?  Are there spoiled beliefs or attitudes or applications of doctrine that have a best-if-used-by date that you’re keeping in the cupboard of your heart and faith?  Are there resentments or some bitterness that you’ve held onto for long enough and need to toss it out with the other garbage that stinks and spoils in your life?  Do you have a good supply of the imperishable forgiveness of God that has unlimited shelf-life and ought to be utilized frequently—especially when it comes to dealing with the perishables of righteous indignation. 

One of my favorite and most convicting passages is Matthew 18 in which Peter asks Jesus whether he must forgive someone seven times and Jesus comes back and says not seven, but seventy-seven.  His point wasn’t that after 78 infractions we are allowed to ignore forgiveness.  His point is that it has no expiration date.  Forgiveness is not only always appropriate, but necessary—for the other, but most certainly for the forgiver.  Matthew 18 goes on with a parable of Jesus that reminds us that if there shouldn’t be an expiration of our forgiveness since it should always be grounded in God’s endless (date-free) forgiveness.  Indeed, God’s forgiveness has an endless “best-if-used-TODAY” identification.  Because God knows that anything that remains unforgiven in the human heart not only spoils, but spoils everything else as well.

© Stephen Carl