Sin Wants To Destroy You....

 ".. that they should repent, turn to God and do works befitting repentance." (Acts 26:20). 

"Testifying to Jews, and also to Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ." (Acts 20:21). 

"Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance." (Matt. 3:8). 

"He who covers his sins will not prosper, But whoever confesses and forsakes them will have mercy." (Prov. 28:13). 

"Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin." (Ezek.18:30). 

God had warned Cain: "Sin wants to destroy you but don't let it!" (Gen. 4:7). God always precedes judgment with a warning.  There might come a time when we seek repentance with tears and it is hard to come by as in the case of Esau. We must heed the warning and take it seriously and know there is a time to repent! Today is the day of salvation!  Also, we can never look upon repentance as a finished work but should as an ongoing, continuing solution.  Just like we "keep" the faith, we "renew" our repentance.  We cannot ever say that we "had" faith if we do not "keep" the faith!  Likewise, we are not just "filled with the Spirit" once but continually!  God gives us a regular time to reflect on our sins when we partake of the Lord's Supper and we should take it seriously and not tolerate our pet sins.  Paul urges us to "examine ourselves" as a form of assurance of our salvation. 

We must realize that sin is spitting in God's face, offending his holiness, insulting his person, rejecting his truth, contradicting his truth, repudiating his justice, resisting his grace, nullifying his grace, contradicting his wisdom, and outright rebellion against His authority.  We need to "listen up" when God speaks to our hearts lest we turn a deaf ear to his voice and become spiritually hard of hearing.  We cannot excuse ourselves or rationalize our sins to justify ourselves.  This is a time as Socrates said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." If we do not know ourselves, how can we know God!  Also as the Greeks said, "Know thyself!"  

We cannot alter the truth of God to make ourselves look better or to blame others for our problems or sins.  We are all culpable and accountable to God and shall give an account of ourselves at the Judgment Seat of Christ for how we lived according to the grace given us. We must not water down the gospel message or dumb down it either to exclude the call to repent!  There will come a time when we violate even doing something when we know better and our own conscience judges us.  God is patient with us not willing any should perish and this means our salvation!  If we got what we deserved, we would be in hell! 

Now, Paul had a unique view of weakness: he would boast of his weakness so that the power of Christ would rest on him.  God's power is made perfect through our weakness.  The more we acknowledge our weakness and the more we depend upon the grace of God, the more glory we bring to God. Weakness to God is letting him get things done through us and depending upon him to use us.  Our righteousness is God's gift to us, not our gift to him. The problem is that most people will not admit their weaknesses and give a sham they are strong or masquerade as mighty in the faith when it is weak.  We need to be strong in faith not in self-confidence. We don't need self-esteem as much as God-esteem. It is also not how big our faith is, but how big our God is. Obedience must be viewed as the measure of faith: "By faith Abraham obeyed..." 

We need to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith as God said, "Look unto Me and be saved...." Our focus is on him when we admit our weakness and need for him but many people are so self-confident and think they are so righteous they see no need for God.  Remember how Peter began to sink in the water when he got his eyes off Jesus? Well, we must focus on our Lord and give him authority over our lives and see things from his perspective. 

Now, I have mentioned but not defined or expounded on repentance itself. First, is it granted by grace when we believe (they go together as in believing repentance and penitent faith) according to Acts 20:21. They are linked just as works of repentance must follow to prove its genuineness. (Acts 26:20).  It is a complete and radical change of mind, will, and emotions toward our sin; not just a change of heart of opinion.  We must renounce our sins and begin a new life with Christ at the helm. We must turn from our sin and towards a walk with God. It is the missing ingredient to our faith because most preachers shy away from preaching on this topic.  It is more than just feeling sorry but actual control and change of direction.

We must become radicalized for God!   We must see the seriousness of our sin: rebellion, independence, faithlessness, lovelessness, and irresponsibility. We do a complete turnaround, about-face, or a 180 and this is more than a New Year's resolution, AA pledge, or turning over a  new leaf!  There can be no genuine repentance without saving faith! They go hand in hand or they do not save!   That is what Judas lacked though he was sorry for what he had done and betrayed innocent blood!  Soli Deo Gloria!

The Mystery Of The Proverbial Apple

What actually happened in the Garden of Eden?  There is a pseudepigraphical book, The Life of Adam and Eve, but I am not referencing that.  The first temptation of mankind in the perfect environment shows that we cannot blame our surroundings or call ourselves victims of circumstance.  Even if everything was perfect, we aren't and are vulnerable to sin; we would do the same as Adam and Eve and therefore confirm ourselves in sin to stand in solidarity with Adam, the head of the human race.

God had placed two special trees in the Garden of Eden:  the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam knew not their purposes.  God put one off-limits because Adam may not have been mature enough for it yet and He intended him to learn these things at a specified time or in the fullness of time, or whenever!  But this is merely speculation and we shouldn't second-guess God.

Eve wasn't looking for trouble, she was just curious, probably that a serpent could talk, or maybe she was too naive to think anything unusual. I wonder how much Adam had told her since she added to God's Word says, "And don't touch it."  It was referring to the forbidden fruit, whatever it was, we don't know for sure.  NB:  Temptation is not sinning (Jesus was tempted of the devil too), but when we yield it brings forth the fruit of sin.  Doubt often extends with augmentation or exaggeration and this leads to lies and distortions of truth.  Satan saw her coming and said, "Hath God said?" immediately calling God's Word into question and planting the seeds of doubt in her vulnerable mind (for the devil seeks whom he may devour).

The temptation went like this:  Eve was confused about the Word of God, then doubted it, then believed Satan, then she finally disobeyed God took of the fruit and gave some to her husband who then joined her willingly, for he was with her.

The question is not so much the act itself as the motive: why do it?  God looks on the heart (cf. Prov. 21:2).   Satan gave her incentive in promising,  "You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."  This sounds awfully tempting and alluring to anyone to be a god and today people seek to be gods rather than godly.  But it's the big lie of Satan.  The insinuation was that God was holding out on her!  Was she missing out on something that she deserves to have? Remember, Adam was nearby and failed to inform her and interfere, for he didn't dare cross her and chose to be on her side through thick and thin, even death.

God said that Adam was guilty of "listening to [Eve]."   They weren't choosing good vs. evil, for they were innocent, they were choosing to disobey God and actually, their own wisdom, delights, wills, enjoyment, fulfillment, and purpose apart from God's. They rejected God's plan!  People still do things their own way:  "We all like sheep have gone astray, we have all turned each to our own way" (Isa. 53:6).  We are like the Israelites in Judges who had no king and each did what was right in his own eyes.

This prototype sin that we all have confirmed ourselves in went as follows according to scholars:
Adam rejected God's authority, doubted His goodness, disputed His wisdom, repudiated His justice, contradicted His faithfulness, and spurned His grace. But haven't we all done that too? The point of Adam's sin was that he only had one simple rule to obey to keep in good standing with God and enjoy a life of paradise on earth,  and he couldn't keep that; what does that tell you about man-made rules, religion and our nature?  If he couldn't keep one simple rule, what makes him think he can keep any?

This worldly scandal had eternal implications--it changed the course of human history! They were expelled from paradise--the Garden of Eden for their own good (lest they eat of the tree of life and live forever in sin).  This was mercy.  God is also a God of judgment and must do something about the sin committed as promised ("the day you eat it, you shall die").  There would be no second chance or redo!  But God again in mercy delayed the culmination of death some 930 years, but the process of death began while they commenced to aging and growing old.

All in all, this episode wasn't just a phase they went through, but the suffering had just begun and the earth was now cursed for Adam's sake and Eve's pain in childbearing would begin.  They finally learned the great lesson of life of cause and effect and even though they tried to blame others, they had to admit that it was their own fault and they had failed God. God has been against the blame game ever since (cf, Isa 58:9).   Finally, the whole failure of freedom should be called "Edengate," or perhaps more appropriately:  "Applegate."   Soli Deo Gloria!  

Our Birthright

"Sin wants to destroy you, but don't let it.." (cf. Gen. 4:7). 
"... Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it"  (Gen. 4:7, ESV).

Ever since Adam, we have inherited the old man himself, known as the old sin nature.  It is a virus, and if it were yellow, we'd be all yellow!  Someone said that sin is man's declaration of independence from God; true, we try to be good without God in the picture and in our belief system.  When we fail to account for God in our reckoning we become corrupt and there is no limit to how corrupt; for "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?" says Jeremiah 17:9.  It doesn't matter how bad we are but how bad off we are since all have sinned and it doesn't matter whether you drowned in six feet or six hundred feet of water, you're dead in sin!  God simply doesn't grade on a curve, though we may seem like saints compared to the likes of Saddam Hussein or Adolf Hitler.  A scientist extraordinaire, Albert Einstein, who instigated the Manhattan Project, said that it is "easier to denature plutonium than the evil nature of man!"

It is said that nature forms us, sin deforms us, schools inform us, prisons reform us, but only Christ can transform us--that's the wonder of the gospel message, in changing lives.  We all share solidarity in Adam and must be set free from the power of sin by the cross of Christ.  In salvation we are free from the power of sin by the living Christ, the penalty of sin by the crucified Christ, and the presence of sin by the coming Christ, it is said.  We get a new birthright in Christ as members of the family of God in salvation.  We are not as bad as we possibly can be or utterly depraved as unbelievers, but as bad off or totally depraved, meaning every part of our nature--our will, intellect, and emotions or heart--are affected by this sin virus.  We have no power over sin, except through the Holy Spirit.

What is sin? When we fail to do what is required and leave God's will undone, and do what is forbidden!  When we miss achieving the standards of God's law and fall short we sin--sin is universal--as they say, "Nobody's perfect!" or "To err is human!"   Sin is defined as a want of conformity to or transgression of the law of God.  It is further added that it is any thought, word, action, deed, or omission contrary to God's nature and incompatible with it.

Sin is lawlessness, it's faithlessness, it's trespassing, and we must call a spade a spade;  if we call it by any other name we make it more dangerous, such as labeling poison as "Essence of Peppermint!"  Paul lumps all men to together in that they are all in the same boat, as it were, and have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God (cf. Rom. 3:23).  It is because of sin that we deserve to die and the death principle is already a work in us.

It is important to understand that we are still sinners as believers per Gal. 2:17 and we are not basically good, but we are evil in our natures through and through with no vestige of good remaining from the fall.  It is assumed people are inherently good, but we are all flawed and have feet of clay.  There is no sliding scale and we are all in the same boat of condemnation, in that we are at the mercy of God and there is no hope but by His grace.  It is important to note that sin is only possible if there is a God because it is defined in terms of God:  as Albert Camus said, "The absurd is sin without God."

It is ironic that the more lively sensed of sin, the less sin, and the closer you approach God, the more aware of it you become!   C. S. Lewis observed:  You must see how bad you are to be good, and you don't know how bad you are till you've tried to be good!  It's like quitting cigs, you don't know how addicted you are till you try to quit!  The evil of sin is that it enslaves and estranges for a double whammy!  In conclusion, we must realize that we are not sinners because we sin; no we sin because we are sinners [it's our inherent nature to sin], as theologians like to say.   Soli Deo Gloria!

Are You Free?

 "Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin,.." (Acts 13:39, NIV). 

As Christians, sin needs no longer lord it over us ("For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace," per Rom. 6:14).  The psalmist proclaims:  "Let no sin have dominion over me" (Psalm 119:133).  When we sin we do not demonstrate our freedom but prove our slavery.  We are free to live in the Spirit and have new power to overcome sin by faith, not bondage to the old sin nature.  We do not have the right to live as we see fit or do what is right in our own eyes as libertines or Antinomians.

Only Christians can defeat sin and live above it because the unbeliever is a slave to sin and his sin nature.  To state the Augustinian formulae:  The believer has the ability to sin, and the ability not to sin; the unbeliever only has the inability not to sin; while Adam had the power to sin and the power not to sin, Christ has the inability to sin.  Sinners are "voluntary slaves" and are "free" to choose their own poison, so to speak.

 What is the victory that overcomes the world?  Our faith!   If we walk in the Spirit we shall overcome the flesh and not fulfill its desires and cravings.  How do we walk in the Spirit?  Keeping short accounts with God of our sins, shortcomings, and failures.  As Christians, we are "dead to sin" and "alive to righteousness!"  When one is dead to something he is no longer under its power or authority.

Some believers sincerely that they have and need a "free will" (this doctrine is not mentioned in Scripture and neither is the terminology--some deduce it from the fact that we have the ability to make choices).  Martin Luther said in his treatise, The Bondage of the Will, that we don't need a free will, but wills made free!  He saw a so-called "Babylonian captivity" of the church and deplored how Erasmus of Rotterdam, who wrote In Praise of Folly, said that man has a free will--too "grandiose" a word to describe our will.   This doctrine was debated in the 1500s and the doctrine of the freedom of the will was a hot item among theologians. Augustine said that we are free, but not freed (no play on words, but that we are not coerced). That is, that we have the power of choice, but God has not given us "liberty."

We are in slavery to our old sin nature and in bondage until Christ sets us free:  "If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed."  I was set free in Christ--I didn't become a believer solely of my own free will--some people become Christians against their will, but God changes them or convicts them.  They say that if you came to Christ on your own, you probably left Him on your own too. God is always at work within the believer's heart to make him willing:  "For God is at work within you both to do, and to will of His good pleasure," (Phil. 2:13).  He can make the most stubborn and stony heart into flesh and make the unwilling, willing.

Real freedom is knowing Christ and the victory He can give over sins ("You shall call His name Jesus because He shall save His people from their sins," Matt. 1:21). "Submit yourselves, therefore, unto God, resist the devil and he will flee from you," James 4:7.   As believers we don't have to be pushed around by the world, the flesh, and the devil;  we can have victory in Christ.  Soli Deo Gloria!