Ephesians 4:28 - Sharing on heavenly steroids

"The [one] stealing no longer be stealing, but rather be laboring, working with [his] own hands the good, in order that he may be having to be sharing to the [one] having need.

-Lying.  And stealing.  These are the default settings for a world adrift without God - leaders, students, law enforcement, business owners - they are all caught up in it.  Take what is not yours, don’t work if you don’t have to, beg, cheat, lie, steal.  The nations actually live in compounds, carefully esconced behind these high-walled enclosures topped with barbed-wire and shards of glass as protection against those who would come in and take that for which somebody else labored.  Burglar alarms, home monitoring, security cameras, padlocks and safes and trip wires - all these are measures developed to deter those who would take what belongs to someone else, Stuff for which they themselves did not work.  What is yours is mine.

-Each of us, we emerge from the womb with an acute, well-developed sense of ‘mine!’ - so innate is this, unfortunately, that most of us require patient instruction from an early age in the nuances of sharing and to acquire the awareness that what is yours is not also mine.  Unchecked, this trait can easily blossom into a callous disregard for both my fellow man and for honest work.  I will readily cut corners and do what I can to avoid having to work, up to and including reaching out and taking things for which I have not worked, even when they belong to someone else, all the moreso if I become convinced that my theft (and laziness) will go undetected or unpunished.

-Note the reason cited here for working... in order to have something to share.  To share with those in need.  Yes, sharing is a heavenly transaction, and it flips the equation on its head.  What is mine is yours.  Here is where the early church shone, blazing like the midday texas sun.  There was not one needy person among them (Acts 2.44-45, 4.32-35).  Nope - not even one.  They shared all things.  All.  Things.  That’s what the Scripture says.  One person’s excess was (for) another’s lack.  It was sharing on heavenly steroids.  And yet no welfare state, this.  Each and every member was expected to work, and contribute as they were able.  I work as hard as I can - yes to take care of and provide for my family, but beyond that NOT so that I can enlarge my barns, accumulate more and bigger and cooler stuff and spend more on me and mine, but rather so that I can share.  What if the body of Christ still did this, really did this?  Do you think the world might stop and take notice and say, ‘Look how they truly love one another’?