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It’s Time to Stop Hiding Behind Our Sinful Nature
Discussion Thought of the Day:
22 I love God’s law with all my heart. 23 But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. 24 Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? 25 Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.1 So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. 2 And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. 3 The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. 4 He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. Romans 7:22-25, 8:1-4 (NLT)
4 Don’t say, “That’s the way I am—it’s my character.” It’s your lack of character. Esto vir!—Be a man!
125 Since faith brings the Holy Spirit and produces a new life in our hearts, it must also produce spiritual impulses in our hearts. What these impulses are, the prophet shows when he says (Jer. 31:33), “I will put my law upon their hearts.” After we have been justified and regenerated by faith, therefore, we begin to fear and love God, to pray and expect help from him, to thank and praise him, and to submit to him in our afflictions. Then we also begin to love our neighbor because our hearts have spiritual and holy impulses.
“Pastor, I can’t help it, I am just a poor, poor sinner.”
That response is a conditioned response, it is what pastors and priests have taught people to say. It is the response to sin of a generation where the sacraments have been diminished. Where absolution is not really heard and understood in the heart and the mind.
But what it does pick up on, is the law that convicts it, the passages that say, “no one is good”, “all have sinned”, and a focus that never is taken off of the doctrine of justification. People have heard all about, they know what it is, well as far as we can’t save ourselves, we are dead in sin and God delivers us. But they don’t hear the so what – how this absolution, how this declaration that we are righteous changes our lives.
With on the “what”, people (and I include pastors and priests as people – we are really) will make the what the end of the story. We still sin, God still forgives. We aren’t perfect, we’re just forgiven, and people will turn that into permission to keep on sinning.
We believe that works can’t save us, we know that nothing we do merits salvation, and we stop (and encourage people to stop ) there. That’s enough, trust in God and you will be saved people believe.
When we allow this, o what a great disserve we do! It would be like telling a convict the charges against them are overturned, but not unlocking their cell door, not removing the handcuffs, nor giving them clothes that identified them as something other. We have to share the complete gospel, all of the mercy, reveal to them the wonder of His love.
They’ve been not only declared righteous, but the Holy Spirit dwells in them, making them holy. sanctifying them, empowering them to live the baptized, repentant (transformed ) life. Our people don’t need to live in secret, hiding behind their sin or their propensity to sin. They can be encouraged to live in the freedom that Christ has given them.
That is what the third quote, from the Lutheran Confessions, is telling us. That the Spirit creating life in our hearts, is creating the impulses to do that which isn’t sin, impulses to love God, impulses to love our neighbor, impulses to trust Him more and more, and because we trust Him we are driven to reach our and serve those around us, meeting needs from physical to emotional to spiritual.
This is how Paul, distraught over his sin, finally comes to the realization (and needed to remember it daily) that justified, we can set aside that sin, and follow the Spirit. Does that mean we won’t sin on occasion? No, but it changes what drives us, what impulses we want to follow -and as time goes by, as we explore the depth of God’s love revealed in Christ, those impulses bring us great joy.
This is what St. Josemaria talks about when he challenges us to be men, not those who hide behind the weakness of character, who justify sin by saying that is who they are.
It is a challenge to live life as God intended, walking with Him, focused on Him, but even when we fail, He has, He is the answer. The Christian life is knowing this and living in light of it.
Heavenly Father, have mercy on us, your children!
AMEN!
Escriva, Josemaria. The Way (Kindle Locations 177-178). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Tappert, Theodore G., ed. The Book of Concord the Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Philadelphia: Mühlenberg Press, 1959. Print.Apology of the Augsburg Confession Article IV
Why Teaching People to Obey God Isn’t Nearly Enough…..
Devotional?Discussion Thought of the Day:
16 The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. 17 When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted. 18 Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.” Matthew 28:16-20 (NAB)
280 You know that you will never lack God’s grace, because he has chosen you from all eternity. And if this is what he has done for you, he will grant you all the help you need to be faithful to him as his son. Go forward, then, with assurance and try to respond at every moment.
As I continue to see debates about faith and works online, as I continue see to people demand full obedience to one commandment and not another, I am saddened. For people hyper-focus on the law, and debates about it, much as the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and Herodians did in the age of Christ.
Because of this, I know quite a few people who leave the church, dismayed either because of hypocrisy, or because of a burden that they are expected to keep, that they cannot on one hand. On the other, they are dismayed because despite what scripture says, they don’t see the life of those claiming to be believers to be all that different. There are the same kind of sinners, justified not by the blood of Christ, but because of their own justifications, they still go about life, unchanged, and in chains to sin.
My contention isn’t that we need to teach people to obey the commandments, or to simply live free of them. My contention is that we don’t do nearly enough in teaching people to obey God. We go about it wrong in teaching them to obey, and when we reduce it simply to God’s commands, we do something even worse.
First let’s deal with “obey”. In the very well known passage called the great commission, about half of my translations use obey, some use observe, and a few older translations use keep. I think the idea of obey comes from that old KJV era use keep, but they in doing so, they cause a problem. The word in Greek comes from the word to watch over, to guard, to treasure, to protect. As I have noted before, the keep in a castle was the place of the greatest possible defense, the final point of resistance, the place where children and wives were kept, along with the treasure.
Guard them, treasure them, doesn’t make as much sense when we combine it with command. or at least it seems awkward. But consider how much the psalms rejoice in God’s law, in His commandments. (for example in Psalm 119) Consider the opening of Proverbs 7,
1 My child, remember what I say and never forget what I tell you to do. 2 Do what I say, and you will live. Be as careful to follow my teaching as you are to protect your eyes. 3 Keep my teaching with you all the time; write it on your heart. Proverbs 7:1-3 (TEV)
1 My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you; 2 keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; 3 bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. Proverbs 7:1-3 (ESV)
I put the two translations here for a reason, there is something more to commandments than what meets the eye. Normally we think of commands as God’s law, the Decalogue, what are referred to as the Ten Commandments.
I would contend that we would be less confused if we replaced commandment with a synonym, commissioned (we call it the Great Commission, don’t we?) But we have a slightly different meaning. Commissioned doesn’t reduce what is taught to the “do’s and do not’s”. It beings out the scope to include all God has ever commanded about you, as well as what He has commanded you.
For instance, the declaration of our righteousness, the work of Christ’s life, lived with one mission.
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has chosen me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free the oppressed 19 and announce that the time has come when the Lord will save his people.” Luke 4:18-19 (TEV)
it includes His work in completing what He began in us, and in the Holy Spirit’s work in transforming us. It includes the entire covenant – promises as well as regulations. That is why spending time heaing and meditating upon what God has commissioned brings such joy, not just bondage to a law. (btw, the commission concepts works with the Decalog/Ten Commandments) as well, including what some dismiss as the prelude – the key to understanding it.
This is why the joy is so complete, for what God has commissioned for you and I is wondrous. It is the full measure of His love, not just His plans for our lives. It is that we are to become His worksmanship (Eph 2:10), a people He made for His own.
Teach His people, those He has claimed in baptism this Truth, for they are His disciples, His children. And the joy will be unsurpassed. As they treasure what God has called and commissioned into their lives, the obedience will follow, naturally and assured of His empowerment.
Godspeed!
Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). The Forge (Kindle Locations 1137-1140). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
How Should A Christian Behave? A Look at the Third Use of God’s Law
Devotional/Discussion THought of the Day:
23 ‘Everything is permissible’; maybe so, but not everything does good. True, everything is permissible, but not everything builds people up. 1 Corinthians 10:23 (NJB)
11 Some of you used to be of that kind: but you have been washed clean, you have been sanctified, and you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God. 12 ‘For me everything is permissible’; maybe, but not everything does good. True, for me everything is permissible, but I am determined not to be dominated by anything. 1 Corinthians 6:11-12 (NJB)
117 “What do I have to do to maintain my love for God and make it increase?” you asked me, fired with enthusiasm. Leave the “old man” behind, my son, and cheerfully give up things which are good in themselves but hinder your detachment from your ego… You have to repeat constantly and with deeds, “Here I am, Lord, ready to do whatever you want.” (1)
For those unfamiliar with the terms in this devotion, please feel free to ask me to define them, if I don’t do so enough to explain them. This topic is a valuable one… and I would hope I explain it okay.
In regards to God’s law, there are basically three ways it is active in this world.
The First Use of God’s Law is what we call “civil use”, that is, the law of God which is seen in natural revelation, and is seen in its basic form in all cultures, and in all religions and a-religions. Example, pre-meditated murder is wrong in almost every culture. Some cultures make exceptions like abortion, euthanasia or the killing of enemies can be seen, but the basic idea, “Thou Shall Not Murder” is universally recognized.
The Second Use of God’s Law is found in both general (natural) revelation and specific revelation. It shows us that breaking these laws results in brokenness that is beyond our scope to heal. We need a deliverer, a savior, a healer, a Way out of the debt we have got into, a way to make reparation. God’s revelation of Himself, what we call the Bible, provides that way to freedom.
It is the Third Use of God’s law that confuses people. How does God’s law work in regards to those who have been washed cleaned, made holy, counted as right in the eyes of God? does it have any force, any effect? It was fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and St. Paul tells us it cannot be used to condemn us. So how does God’s law apply to the people of God? How should a Christian think of it? Or maybe more simply, how does someone who is God’s child behave?
Some would have us pay it no heed, since it’s power over us was broken at the cross. Some would have us enslaved to it again, mandating that we fulfill every single letter, if we are to be completely “faithful”. The latter would allow people to sin at will, the others create a system filled with guilt and shame. Both lead to hypocrisy and condescending pharisaical attitudes. Often these two options go against each other, theological treatises point out the other’s errors.
It isn’t rocket science folks.
Scripture is pretty clear about it. Look at the two Bible passages in red above. They set a pretty simple standard, even as they recognize the freedom we have, having been cleansed by Jesus.
Look at what will benefit your life? Look at what builds up, what does good.
Which means we have to have some standard of determining what is good, what is beneficial, what builds people up.
Look to Christ, there is your answer. Look to the love He shows you, the course He reveals in the scriptures that reveal Him. Look deeply into how He fulfilled the law, by loving YOU. By sacrificing all He was, so that you could be God’s child. Look at the kind of life you would live, if you followed Him, if you sought Him in every relationship, in every moment. he’s defined that in His law of love, in the example of His life which fulfilled it.
That is how to have a good life. Simply do what is best… and ask God to help you see that as you walk with Him.
His law? It helps draw a picture of it, but it isn’t the life. The law indicates what a life lived in a relationship to God would look like…..it maps the journey we walk with the Spirit dwelling with us.
So walk with Him… and enjoy the journey!
Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). The Forge (Kindle Locations 614-617). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Simul Iustus Et Peccator (simultaneously justified and sinner) Not a Justifiable reason for sinning
Devotional?Discussion THought of the Day:
30 And do not make God’s Holy Spirit sad; for the Spirit is God’s mark of ownership on you, a guarantee that the Day will come when God will set you free. Ephesians 4:30 (TEV)
1 What shall we say, then? Should we continue to live in sin so that God’s grace will increase? 2 Certainly not! We have died to sin—how then can we go on living in it? 3 For surely you know that when we were baptized into union with Christ Jesus, we were baptized into union with his death. Romans 6:1-3 (TEV)
12 So then, dear friends, as you always obeyed me when I was with you, it is even more important that you obey me now while I am away from you. Keep on working with fear and trembling to complete your salvation, 13 because God is always at work in you to make you willing and able to obey his own purpose. Philippians 2:12-13 (TEV)
20 God has raised from death our Lord Jesus, who is the Great Shepherd of the sheep as the result of his blood, by which the eternal covenant is sealed. May the God of peace provide you with every good thing you need in order to do his will, and may he, through Jesus Christ, do in us what pleases him. And to Christ be the glory forever and ever! Amen. Hebrews 13:20 (TEV)
59 If you respond to the call the Lord has made to you, your life—your poor life!—will leave a deep and wide furrow in the history of the human race, a clear and fertile furrow, eternal and godly.
In the last month I’ve seen an alarming trend. It is what I call the “Romans 7 defense”
People defending their sin, and even their intent to sin, by quoting the passage about the things we don’t want to do we, do, the things we do want to do, we don’t. They stop there, They don’t admit that being in that situation is a wretched, horrible, and wrong.
I’m a sinner, I can’t help it, so why should I?
Ill just go on as if nothing ever happened, and being a wretch is our normal state. Right? “It’s just the way I am wired….” (funny, that excuse doesn’t fly for the sins we aren’t as appreciative of…) Or the new favorite (said by at least 3 people recently) “I just don’t have a filter”
While they would deny trying to justify themselves, they will try an excuse themselves from their sin. After all, it isn’t murder, or perversion, or gossip. Or I will here, “well I know its wrong, but it is not as wrong as xxx”. The basic line, is a claim that since we can’t save ourselves, we don’t have to struggle to live as saints, right? Those considered theologians will argue that there is no “3rd use” of the law. Why is it, we want to make not just the norm of the Christian life, but the goal, a life of wretchedness?
But Scripture teaches differently, it calls us to have a mind like Christ Jesus. Scripture reminds us of being bound to Christ, by being transformed by the Spirit. It instructs us that we are given the desire and the power to leave God pleasing lives. The author of Hebrews even makes that his parting blessing.
Why would these passages, and so many more in the Epistles and the OT prophets, describe a life lived in love and peace, if God just was satisfied with sin-dominated lives?
Why not live life where we are not satisfied with the wretchedness. Where like Paul we recognize the struggle, and then focus our attention on His work in our lives. Cleansing, Healing Justifying, Indwelling, Empowering a life where we have that attitude of Christ.
He broke the bonds of sin, why do we settle for staying in the prison?
The way out of this isn’t disciplining ourselves to stop sinning. The answer isn’t found in having an accountability partner, (those can help) or even knowing God’s mercy will cover those sins. The way to hear the author of Hebrews prayer for you to be answered is simple, keep hearing of God’s love, His mercy, His faithfulness. Strive to be aware of the Holy Spirit’s actie presence in your life, know Christ’s presence as well.
Grieve over your sin, and that of the world, and look to Christ, where there is no condemnation, but there is mercy and love.
Live in Christ Jesus.
And when sin, confess and be cleansed….. but look to Christ for the power not to sin anymore….
(1) Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). The Forge (Kindle Locations 436-438). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
