I’m breaking the silence and starting the blog back up again. Sorry to those who actually follow the blog that it has been some time since any of use posted but I’m back and ready to hopefully offer some of my thoughts from break.
Have you ever been stuck in a rut of sin? It seems like there is no way out. You tell God “I’m never doing that again!” You repent so hard and become so emotional over it you feel like there is no way you could ever do it again. Then two days later you do it again.
We have all had these situations with whatever sin it is that so easily entangles us. It sucks when we keep falling in the same patterns of sin because the Holy Spirit has given us a regenerated heart and so we hate sin and don’t want to do it again and want to do what is pleasing to the Lord.
But what if the way that we approach it is all wrong? What if the way that we approach defeating sin is what contributes to our continual failure?
It always seems to me that my mindset when I try to overcome sin is: don’t do this. Whatever it is just don’t do it. Sounds easy right? That is like the old trick: don’t scratch your nose for 10 minutes. Right when you say that your nose itches right?
There is one big problem with this mindset: it is just another form of religion!
While you may not think that your salvation or favor rest upon this, it is exactly what the Pharisees would do. They would read the Law and it would say things like: “Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery”. So they would pour their energy and their effort into not doing these things. The problem is that when you pour all of your energy into fixing your behavior, you neglect the heart problem of sin.
Jesus experienced this with the Pharisees in Matthew 15. The Pharisees come to Jesus and are all up in arms because his disciples didn’t wash their hands before they ate, which was tradition. Jesus then rebukes them and tells them that it is not what goes in a person that defiles them but what comes out of them. The disciples, confused by what Jesus had said, asked him what that meant. His reply was:
“Are you also still without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled? But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.”
Jesus makes it clear that there is a deeper problem with our sin than just the outward actions: our hearts.
Our hearts are the root of all of our sin, and putting our focus on stopping one way for our heart to act out its sinful desires will not change our heart.
Only one thing changes our hearts: the worship of God.
Later on in Matthew Jesus tells a lawyer what the greatest of the commandments is: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind.
The answer to our besetting sin isn’t to stop doing it, it is to worship Jesus. When our hearts begin to worship Jesus, He changes our hearts so we naturally stop our sinful habits.
The Christian life isn’t a life of behavior modification, it is one of walking and worshipping the Creator God who loves us and died for our sin in Jesus.
So our goal in our Christian life shouldn’t be: don’t do this, don’t do that. The Pharisees were great at that, but they lacked the love and worship of God. Our goal in life should simply be to worship Jesus. That is what fixes our heart problem.
Austin Thomas
I lead a Bible study for UDA men that meets Tuesday nights at 8pm in the bottom floor of Martin. If you have any questions or comments, please email me at: athomas7@iastate.edu
{ 0 comments }
