No to answer a fool
Then NOT to answer a fool.
I'm talking with the squabbles and corrections the fact THAT WE ALL SAY EACH OTHER ARE WRONG UNLESS YOU BELIEVE LIKE MY GROUP OF REAL FIRST CHRISTIANS!
Oh. okay. Didn’t think my explanation on the verse was any good, huh? That’s okay. I stand by it though.
Everyone believes different in some ways. But that’s not the core problem. If the minds of each of us are in process of being renewed to think like Jesus does, then we are all somewhere within that renewing and we just WILL have differences because being renewed and fully renewed aren’t the same thing.
So that can’t be what the core problem really is with nasty squabbles.
The problem is the flesh/arrogance/nastiness of one man stirring up the flesh of another man so that he answers in the same foolish/arrogant fleshy way the first man is speaking in.
THAT is the “never” do part of the verse.
Never answer a fool according to that kind of folly he is talking in or you become as foolish as him.
But then it’s not as simple as that because it’s not a quick fix when both men are still carnal. So first has to come the realization that I am the problem (and so is that other man). We are both in the same flesh boat. Yet I come to desperately want to
not be part of the problem, which is hungering for true righteousness inside me. So trust (faith) must lead to
hope in the promise that those who hunger for that true righteousness WILL be filled. I say I believe it but do I ASK for it (you don’t have because you don’t ask). And do I fail to ask for it because I have become convinced, as others say, that it cannot happen until I die and I must be content with only a “positional” righteousness while here on earth?
So I can see that, at the very least, the problem goes on because my lack of trust has led to not hoping in the promise that I can and will be filled.
The verse says, Until we all come to, #1, the unity of the faith (trust) that can move mountains and, #2, the knowledge of Jesus.
Trust and hope is first. We are to come to unity of trust in such promises that we’ve been given.
But we’ve been led to try to tackle #2 without first tackling #1, so we struggle to come to unity of the knowledge of Jesus without the trust first needed to GET us there.
Faith leads to
hope in all the promises which leads to fulfillment in you of those promises which will lead to His
love in us manifesting forth.
These three remain - trust, hope, love. They work in an order.