4 posts tagged “sin”
While not talked about a lot in churches, the process of sanctification is important. Pastors (not all the time, but generally) focus on the justification of the sinner, or on the glorification of the Christian at the end of time. The middle period, sanctification, is usually left out.
I had such a period of sanctification over the last month, as usually occurs under a high stress time such as finals. God began tearing sin in my life and putting it right in front of my eyes, and I had to realize how totally wretched I am.
The first incident, or set of incidents, was with my roommates. I usually drink coffee in the evening, and I had obtained a new blend, later known by my friends as the crack coffee, and I had a mug at about 7pm, which is usually ample time for coffee to run my system and get out in time for bed at midnight. However, this blend was much stronger, and I ended up getting to sleep at around 2am. I was so frustrated at one point, because my roommate was quietly talking outside, that I yelled some choice words that I should have not chosen, out of frustration for not being able to go to sleep.
About a week later, while finals were in full swing and Call of Duty 4 was our outlet to rest from studying for finals, I got really frustrated when things didn't go my way when I asked to play, as if I had some moral right to play the video game. I realized my sins of anger and pride quite clearly in that, although I did not learn my lesson about pride until later.
I learned that lesson when I was in the math department studying for both of my math finals, and a girl that was taking abstract algebra, a class my girlfriend was also in, was doing her take-home final (by the way, if any teachers read this, especially math teachers, never give take-home finals, that is horribly evil). She was talking to another professor about how tough it was and how she was only 3 or 4 problems in. And I am sitting at the next table thinking, "ha, my girlfriend is through almost all of it, finally the Christians are winning." And next time I look over, I see this girl breaking down in tears because she is so stressed out about all her finals. And it struck me how utterly prideful I was being. I leaned back in my chair, and said to myself, "I am the worst person ever."
Pride and anger are sins that I have always struggled with on some level, and I have certainly not overcome them. However, I pray that with the enabling grace of God, I might be free from the bondage of my sins, and I look forward to when I can shed this mortal coil and go to be with Jesus. That day can't get here soon enough.
This week, I was listening to a sermon by Mark Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, and a man that I greatly respect for knowing his calling as a pastor and a man of God. He was admonishing the men to be more like the patriarchs of the Old Testament. Now, I know that patriarchy gets a bad rap, but stay with me here. I don't have the time nor the space here to defend the importance of men who are patriarchs. But honestly, it is important. Part of being a patriarch is being farsighted; not thinking in terms of days and weeks, but of decades and generations. When I heard this admonition, it struck me to the core. The calling to pray for the generations after you that bear your name. Not that salvation is generational or associative (unless you count associating with Jesus), but it is clear in the Bible that sin is indeed generational. And so being a patriarch is realizing that your actions of moving towards or away from Christ do not just affect you, but instead that they affect ten and twenty generations of men after you. I realized that I did not want to have my children and my childrens children and their children, etc., suffering under the same shackles of sin that I am opressed and entrapped by. And so I threw myself at the feet of Jesus, and began taking my role as a patriarch seriously. I needed to become farsighted, and make decisions for ten and twenty generations of men that bear my name.
While I was discussing this with my girlfriend, I realized something kind of all of a sudden: In regards to Christian men, we are divided into two distinct categories (I realize it is not this clean, but still its darn close). There are men who act like Lot and men who act like Abraham. Now Lot was still delivered by God in the end, but his life was hardly devoted to God as much as Abraham's was. He went and lived near Sodom (Gen. 13:12), but not to seek the transformation of the city of Sodom, but to indulge in it. I think of all the times where I have been places, not because I wanted to share the transforming grace of the Lord Jesus Christ with the people around me, but instead to indulge in the "pleasures of life." Even if it was innocent and not technically sinning, my heart was in the wrong place, and my sins of omission were great. Then there are another group of men: those who realize that they are not living for themselves, but for the many generations that follow their family line. They share the name of "Abraham," which means, "father of many nations." These men are called to a higher standard, and fall to the feet of the Lord asking for help and power and the ability to see it through. It is not that, in sotierological terms (in terms of their salvation) they are any different. God delivered both of them from many trials and dangers. But their overall legacy is quite different. Lot was literally one who "himself was saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." (1 Cor 3:15) However, Abraham is the father of our Faith, the first man to be found righteous because of his faith. From him spans the chosen people, the Israelites, and then finally the Saviour of the elect, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ. What greater legacy could have Abraham had? And how short did Lot sell himself by indulging in the "pleasures" of Sodom, whatever they may have been.
I want to urge those men who are following the path of Lot: the most peaceful and sombering, and yet Spirit-filled trail lies not with his way. Follow the footsteps of our great patriarch, Abraham, for we are called children of Abraham if we love Jesus (John 8) We are called to a higher standard. Realize that whatever you do affects not only you, but sets a precedent for many future generations to come. Do you want the men of your line to be like you? Most likely not, and I can tell you that I do not want the men from my line to suffer the same entanglements of sin. We are called to a higher standard as men of God. Let us step up, and become farsighted patriarchs, teaching our sons to love the Lord Jesus Christ, and loving our wives (or future wives) and setting a precedent for men around us.
And rest knowing that we must rely on the Lord Jesus, who can do more than we can ask, think, or even imagine. In the name of Jesus. Amen. So help us. Amen.
When the Apostle John approached the Throne of the Most High God in Revelation 4, he describes the most utmost glory of God with the most insufficient of words. He grasps for words, but there are none. In Revelation 4:3, John writes "And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne." What glory! And then he continues, writing that, "Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal."
Before the throne of God, before the Glory of the most worthy and majestic God, we see ourselves. This is what happened to Job in Job 42. He had been beating the drums of his own righteousness and good deeds the whole book. And then God shows up. And in Job 42, he says, "Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes." After a classroom discussion where we tried to unpack this verse, I came back to my room and opened Matthew Henry's Commentary. This is what he says on this verse: "Even good people, that have no gross enormities to repent of, must be greatly afflicted in soul for the workings and breakings out of pride, passion, peevishness, and discontent, and all their hasty unadvised speeches. The more we see of the glory and majesty of God, the more we see of the vileness and odiousness of sin and of ourselves because of sin, the more we shall abase and abhor ourselves for it." This is what Job understood. Finding himself in the presence of the most glorious and glorified God, he threw himself to his face, and repented in dust and ashes.
Why "in dust and ashes"? If we look back to the second chapter of Job, we see that, "he sat among the ashes," after being covered in boils and losing his entire family. Ashes, especially in the Old Testament, are a archetype for mourning. And so Job came in mourning. Also, the phrase "dust and ashes" was a proverbial phrase used to invoke a sense of lowliness and fragility of human nature. The humanity, and the insufficiency of human flesh. This is what Job came carrying. Dragging it to God. Because he knew that God wants "to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes." (Isaiah 61:3)
So let us come to God, repenting, knowing our condition. And he will see us. And take our ashes and mourning away. And give us a crown of beauty. And we will stand in front of the throne of the Most High. And we will look in the crystal lake. And see ourselves. And then look to God, knowing that he is infinitely more amazing and wonderful and glorious than anything else. Especially our sins. And so we can look away from our own depravity, and towards Him who is most worthy. Amen. So help us. Amen.
I was recently at a coffee shop catching up with an old friend who has departed from the Christianity of her parents. My heart bleeds for her, and I have a deep pain in seeing her abandon God for a life of death and loneliness. One of the things has stuck with me, as I asked about the situation with her parents. She said it was ok, but that her parents “Wouldn’t accept my lifestyle.” My retort was, “why should they?”
Why should her parents, who love her deeply, accept the destructive life that she has chosen? Can their love allow them to stand on the sidelines and simply hope for the best? Although this story is about just one particular person, it speaks to our entire culture. Cries such as, “That’s just how I am,” and “It’s a natural impulse,” are plentiful, as our culture strives for a limp-wristed love of a grandmother, who never disapproves of anything and bakes you cookies at the day’s end. Too many people live with the false hope that the perm sky-fairy Jesus won’t condemn them, that he lacks the conviction and hopes everyone can stand in a circle and sing Kumbya. This hope will eventually destroy us.
Our hope that the wrath of God is not coming stems from a pithy saying that is quoted even at Bible studies as Scripture. This quote is that “God loves the sinner and hates the sin.” Oddly enough, this does not appear anywhere in the Bible, but instead is from the mouth of Gandhi, not exactly the most biblical of theologians. Its like we are over here, and our sin is over there, and God looks at our sin and says, “I really hate that, but I love you.” This is no new heresy, but began as early as whenever 2 John was penned. At the time, the Gnostics, and later the Armenians and Manicheans, proclaimed that there was an essential divide between soul and body, so that Death Cab for Cutie would have been yelled at for deciding that indeed, “Soul Meets Body.” This allowed them to say that the body was sinful, but since it did not interact with the soul, it is not dirtied by the actions of the body. There are a few problems with this view. Primarily, it views Sin (big S) as a set of actions instead of a condition. Sin as a condition is a separation from God, who alone is our life. And so our soul is dead, and so it matters very little what happens with our body, since our immortal soul is eternally dead. Also, where does our soul reside during our life? In our body. Our body is our tent in this life, where our soul resides, and so the dirtiness of the body dirties the soul. Furthermore, this boils down the an essential distinction. The question is this: whether we are what we do, or do we do what we are? If we are what we do, then by changing actions, we can change our identity. If we do what we are, our bad actions stem from our badness, and there is no hope. Truly, the heart is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23) and so we do what we are, thus we are left hopeless without the cross.
We also think that hate and love are mutually exclusive. But this is only because our definition of love is not sufficient. We think of love as sentimental, where you are in love and you write love poems to each other and that is it. But true love, fierce love, demands amendment of disgusting things. This is the fierce love of a parent: that they do not accept the life they know is bad for their child. This is the fierce love of a spouse: the anger that is experienced when they see their wife or husband sleeping with another person. The burning anger is only present with the burning love. The soft fluffy bunny love of the grandparents that no one has is a horrible heresy. As long as we see Jesus as the guy strolling through the temple tipping over tables and cages, we will never understand the wrath of God. When we see Christ on the cross, we can understand both the love and the wrath of God. That we would not settle for what is our “character,” but instead what God has for us after he has redeemed us. When we stand at the foot of the cross, we know that we are not good enough. Not only should your friends not accept your problems and sins; you shouldn’t accept your problems and sins, but instead turn to Jesus, as he proclaims, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
