Obedience is the Pathway to Holiness

Romans 8:12-13

So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Pastor John Piper had a two-part sermon about (10) years ago that hit me hard. Often times I find myself traveling back to those sermon to listen to it again and remind myself of one of the things that I believe Christians should constantly be working towards, namely killing the sin that still lurks in our hearts and lives. (If you are interested you can find the sermons -- HERE)

Here are some of the take-aways that I've been thinking about over the past week.

What Is This Putting to Death of Sin?

The answer is that you suffocate the sinful deeds of the body. You cut off the life-line, the blood flow. Deeds of the body come from somewhere. Jesus said, "The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. (19) For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. (20) These are the things which defile the man; but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man" (Matthew 15:18-20). Sinful deeds have a life line that must be cut.

In other words, there is a condition of the heart that gives rise to the "deeds of the body." It's a heart issue. We must cut off the hands and gouge out the eyes, not literally – that would do no good – but with that kind of violent heart-work. You kill the bad fruit by severing the bad root.

What's the bad root of "the deeds of the body"? You can see it in Romans 8:7. "The mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God; for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so." The root of "the deeds of the body" that have to be killed is the flesh that is hostile to God and unwilling and unable to submit to him. Verse 12: "If you live according to the flesh you will die." Flesh is the great enemy here. And it's an enemy because it is insubordinate and hostile to God. It doesn't like God and does not want to be told by him what to do.

So to kill "the deeds of the body" that this enmity produces, you have to cut the life-line. Pinch the air pipe. Stop the blood flow. Deeds must be killed before they happen by severing the root of hostility and insubordination that rejects God.

If you try to survive as a Christian in any other way than "by the Spirit," you will not survive. You will die. Until you believe that life and fighting sin is war – that the stakes are your soul – you will probably just play at Christianity with no blood-earnestness, no vigilance, no passion no wartime mindset. (HERE)

We may learn hence, that we are never secure from the greatest sins, till we guard against those which are thought the least; nor, indeed, till we think no sin is little, since every one is a step toward hell. | John Wesley

Paul tells us again in Romans:

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. | Romans 12:2 (ESV)

These are not passive words from Paul.  This is a call to action.  "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind". But how does this really happen?  The answer is wrapped into the source of the command. Christians are transformed by the renewal of their minds which takes by living and abiding in the word. With the Holy Spirit's help, it is the responsibility of every Christian to be Holy (1 Peter 1:16).  Sin, therefore, for Christians is a choice and we are responsible and accountable for avoiding sin.

Obedience is the pathway to holiness, and the Holy Spirit gives us the ability and capacity to be obedient.

God's word must be so strongly ingrained into our hearts and our minds that it becomes the dominating force behind the choices that we make. If we are not filling our minds with the truth (the Bible) how can we expect to make good decisions when the moments of temptation come?  If the word of God is the sword of truth how will we be able to use it as it's intended (an offensive weapon) if we don't keep it close to our hearts and meditate on it day and night?

For His Glory,

Jason

We Choose Love...Because Love Wins.

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. | Romans 12:19-21 (ESV)

When we are wronged by others responding with crossness comes easy. When our wives yell at us, it's easy to be harsh with them in return. These are the natural ways in which our flesh desires to respond, but in doing so...a seed of sin is planted in our hearts...and that seed will begin to fester and grow into bitterness, resentment and hatred in our hearts.

This is ultimately what Paul is attempting to get us to understand here, when he says, "love your enemies". We choose love, because love wins. We choose to respond in humility, because humility overcomes. When we choose evil or sin, we are "overcome" by that choice and it leads to our destruction. We are robbed of the joy we would have otherwise received from God if we were to instead respond as Christ responds to us, in love.

We choose love, because love wins.

For His Glory,

Jason

The Mystery of Marriage

Take the mystery of marriage. In Genesis 2:24, right after the account of how woman was created, Moses (the writer of Genesis) says, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Now when the apostle Paul quotes this verse in Ephesians 5:31, he says, “This is a great mystery, and I say it refers to Christ and the church.” And, with that as his clue, he unfolds the meaning of marriage: it’s a symbol of Christ’s love for the church represented in the husband’s loving headship toward his wife; and it’s a symbol of the church's glad submission to Christ represented in the wife’s relation to her husband. | John Piper - Male and Female He Created Them in the Image of God

Why Marriage?

Marriage is a temporary institution for this age until the resurrection of the dead. The essence of its meaning and purpose is to represent Christ’s relation to the church. But when the reality comes, the representation as we know it will be laid aside. And there will be neither marriage nor giving in marriage in the age to come. And those who have been single and devoted to the Lord will sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb as full fellow-heirs of the grace of life. And according to their devotion to the Lord and their sacrifices they will be rewarded with affections and relationships and joys beyond all imagination.

John Piper | Male and Female He Created Them in the Image of God

Courageous Headship

Courageous Headship

 

Renewing Our Repentance

"God has already forgiven all our sins once-and-for-all through the death of Jesus Christ. Why then do we need to keep on asking for His forgiveness? The answer, of course, is that we are not perfect, and never will be in this life. We keep on sinning. We break God’s commandments every day, in thought, word, and deed. And although all our sins have been forgiven – past, present, and future – sin still has a way of disturbing our fellowship with God. It interferes with our intimacy with Him, estranging us from His holiness. When we sin, therefore, our personal relationship with God needs to be restored. The Puritans called this “renewing our repentance.” It means asking God to take the forgiveness He has already granted through Christ’s death on the cross and to apply it freshly and directly to our sins."

Philip Graham Ryken

He is Jealous.

[God] is a jealous God. Throughout the Bible He uses the marriage relationship to set for the union of Himself and His people Israel in the Old Testament and that of Christ and the church in the new. In either case He calls unfaithfulness adultery. In Jeremiah He says, 

“Turn O backslidden children…for I am married to you.” 

The book of Hosea is built on this theme. In the New Testament we read that the believer is married to Christ (Rom. 7:4). Paul wrote to the Corinthians, 

“For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (1 Cor. 11:2). 

And James puts it bluntly, 

“You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore is a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (Jas. 4:4).

Vance Havner -- Repent or Else, Revell, p. 54.

Some Thoughts on Idolatry

“All the sin that men commit is what they do in the service of their idols: there is no one act of sin, but what is an act of service to some false god.” | Jonathan Edwards -- Men are Naturally God’s Enemy

Idols are our functional saviors, or to say this differently idols are what we use in our lives to supplement (or replace) the living and true God. We use our idols to save us from the realities of life in a sinful and fallen world. They offer us pleasure, distraction, hope and other benefits but the interesting thing about idols is that they cannot deliver on these promises. Regardless of this fact, people still rely on idols and their false promises, anyway.

Tim Keller says the following about idols:

"Idols are often good things. That's right, I'm not talking about little statues we bow down to each morning. I'm referring to normal every day things which function as gods in our lives. They have our allegiance and we rest our sense of security on them. As John Calvin noted, our hearts are factories of idols. Not that we create idols, but we turn good things into idols. The problem is not “out there”, but “in here” [our hearts]."

Take a look at Genesis 1:26-31. This is a story of creation [before the fall]. These verses show us how God created everything, including man and woman...and then gave Adam and Eve dominion over all creation and commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it. God did this both for their joy and for his glory.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

Genesis 1:26-31 (ESV)

But now the bad news. Because of sin, even the things which God gave to mankind for our joy are now often times turned into idols instead. We see a number functional saviors in the verses from Genesis above and the sad reality about idols is that instead of bringing people the joy which they were created to find in God's provisions and blessings...they instead begin to entrap or enslave people and keep them from experiencing true joy.

Here are a few functional saviors (idols) found in the verses in Genesis:

Religion: We see in these verses that God blessed Adam and Eve, he had a relationship with them, and they saw value in their relationship with God. But sin destroyed their relationship and sin's destructive nature is still destroying our relationships with God, today. People make efforts to replace a genuine relationship with God with something else. Religion is a great substitute…where true connection with and faith in God are replaced by our leanings towards ritual and legalism which can provide us with a false sense of assurance.

Marriage: Marriage is also a favorite idol for many people. We see in the Gen. 1:26-27 how God created and then blessed the bond between man and woman. However, many people today don’t see marriage as a way to glorify God and instead look to marriage to become a refuge from loneliness, economic insecurity and hopelessness. Single people often think that life would be tolerable if they were married and many married people live in fear of their marriages ending so they don’t take the necessary steps to make that relationship healthier and more godly. And to some, marriage -- which was ordained by God as a covenant between a male and a female -- has become another way for people to rebel against God's holy design for this sacred relationship.

Sex: We live in a culture that has, without question, turned sex into an idol. God divinely connected sex to marriage…but it has been disconnected from marriage by humanity. People think that sex will offer them enough pleasure to overcome the pain and/or boredom of their lives. People think sex will offer them  intimacy, but they forsake its intended intimacy through perversions and objectification of various kinds. And the sad reality is that sex, outside of God’s divine plan, often destroys the very relationships people so desperately desire.

Children: Also connected to marriage by God, and increasingly disconnected from marriage by people, are children. God told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, but this was always intended to happen within the confines of a marriage relationship. Apart from children being born outside of the marriage covenant, many parents today also seek love from (rather than giving love to) their children. They seek to fulfill their own failed goals through their children lives and by doing so they place intolerable burdens on their children, destroying them as a result.

Control: God commanded that Adam and Eve subdue and have dominion over creation. However, this was always supposed to happen under God’s authority. Instead, we try to play God and make everything bend to our authority. Because of sin, we crave control (Genesis 3:16). Fear drives many of these efforts as we feel unable to handle unexpected events or circumstances which fall outside the realm of our “control”. Control destroys relationships. Control is fueled by pride and our resistance to trust God. We were created to be dependent but sin drives us towards independence and control.

Creation: Because of sin, people often make a god out of God’s creation. People begin to worship the created things instead of the creator (Romans 1:25). Sin causes our idol making hearts to twist God’s command of stewardship for his creation into a neo-environmentalism, where the environment and/or animals become more important than people made in God’s image. People often times look to their pets to fill the desire of their hearts for God's unconditional love. No doubt we are commanded to care for the environment and animals, including our pets, but unfortunately many people give these things an ungodly and unhealthy status in their lives.

Work: is another functional savior for many people. Sin entices people to seek independence, security and safety through their work. For many, work provides an ultimate meaning for them that only God was intended to have. God works, and he calls us to work as a means of providing for our families and ourselves.  However, God never intended for us to work as a means of obtaining our righteousness or self-worth. We were created to have our identities firmly-rooted in Christ, not our personal accomplishments, achievements or recognition.

“A true hope looks forward to the obtaining of happiness in no other way but the way of the gospel, which is by a holy Savior, and in a way of cleaving to and following him.” | Jonathan Edwards in Charity and Its Fruits

As the verses we read in Genesis show us, all created things were given to Adam and Eve (and us) by God and he called them very good (Genesis 1:31). However, because of sin, we continue to elevate created things to inappropriate levels in our lives. Instead of receiving these things as blessings and pointers to God…we instead put them in the place of God in hopes that they will provide us satisfaction, security, pleasure and even salvation. Anything that has become a functional savior in our lives will only be returned to its rightful and godly place if we make efforts to seek & find our significance, meaning, security and satisfaction in Christ alone. This will only happen if we choose to believe in the supremacy and sufficiency of Christ as both Creator and Redeemer. As Jonathan Edwards argues, “only when we see Christ as sufficient to bestow all the happiness we need, will we forsake other means to secure earthly happiness.”


Some more (audio) resources on Idols:

http://www.1031sermonjams.com/media/idols.mp3

http://www.1031sermonjams.com/media/americasidols.mp3