CrossLife Church- Pflugerville, TX

The Best of the Bunch

How do you pick out the best apples? When you cart through the produce section at your favorite grocery store, and you’re shopping for individual apples, which ones get your attention first?

Let’s start with the ones that you notice aren’t as colorful or firm, but drab looking and mushy. You stay away from those. Also, you avoid the much smaller ones that haven’t matured well, and another one that some kid took a bite out of. Those would all be your last picks.

Fortunately, you have a lot of good picks. You look for the colorful, shiny apple. Firm, sealed well in its apple skin without any scratches or bite marks. You grab a few and put them in your bag.

Those are “firstfruits,” a Bible term meaning the best of the bunch. 

The apostle Paul and his apostle friends served bunches of church people. Honestly, some of them were difficult to get along with. Some were, shall we say, a bit sour. Some were spiritually mushy. 

Paul could have logged a long list of complaints about the churches and the people in them as he tried to work with them, but instead, here’s what he tells them on behalf of himself and other apostles.

“But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers and sisters loved by the Lord, because God chose you as firstfruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth” (2 Thessalonians 2:13). 

Paul thanks God for his Christian “brothers and sisters” in his church family, and do you see precisely why? Because each of them is “loved by the Lord.” 

When you love the Lord, then you love who the Lord loves. And who does the Lord love? This is one of our CrossLife values. We say “Jesus loves everybody, and we do, too.”

God also chooses people to believe in him and be saved. So Paul calls believers “firstfruits.” The biggest, most beautiful, most appealing, most promising, best apple of the bunch. That’s you and all believers.

That’s the reason we love. That is the “why” behind our mercy and kindness. Not them. Not us. But God is the reason.

PRAYER: God, you have saved me to be the best apple of the bunch, the firstfruit of your saving work. I appreciate your grace, and pray that you and your grace to me are my best reasons for loving others. Amen.

TAKE THE NEXT STEP: Walk through today’s verse, 2 Thessalonians 2:13, and pause to meditate on 3-4 key words that get your attention. How do they help you believe that you are loved, and commit to loving others?