Tag Archives: sinful desires

ROMANS…THE STRUGGLE – 14

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Paul now introduces his readers to the real problem in the mix. What is it that stirs up so much trouble inside us?  Why do we react so violently when we are faced with God’s holy standards? Why can’t we just obey Him and cut out all the struggle?

“When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

The law! 

Sin is so deeply ingrained in us that we sin naturally but…when God says, “Don’t!”, that’s when our stubborn rebellion kicks in. We see this is in a young child. When we try to stop a child’s naughty behaviour, he/she becomes defiant and does it even more, for example…tantrums when he can’t get his own way. 

So…God’s law stirs up rebellion in us. It triggers our true nature…not just sin but deliberate disobedience because we are rebels at heart. 

Paul found this out to his great distress after he became a believer in Jesus. In his old life, it was relatively easy to obey the law because his obedience was overlayed with his pride, self-righteousness, and self-effort. 

However, when he became a believer, he no longer wanted to please himself. He had a new master but…he did he didn’t know how to tame the old one. The law still played havoc with his old self. The battle lines were drawn but he always came out second best…bruised and beaten because he hadn’t learned how to fight. 

“Well then, am I suggesting that the law of God is sinful? Of course not! In fact, it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, “You must not covet.” But sin used this command to arouse all kinds of covetous desires within me! If there were no law, sin would not have that power. and I died. So I discovered that the law’s commands, which were supposed to bring life, brought spiritual death instead. Sin took advantage of those commands and deceived me; it used the commands to kill me. But how can that be? Did the law, which is good, cause my death? Of course not! Sin used what was good to bring about my condemnation to death…So we can see how terrible sin really is. It uses God’s good commands for its own evil purposes.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭7‬-‭8‬, ‭10‬-‭11‬, ‭13‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Now, that’s a real problem! God’s holy law clashed with Paul’s sinful nature and the result was death. The law actually killed him instead of giving him life! How  could that be?

Paul so badly wanted to obey the Lord but his old nature got in the way. 

“So the trouble is not with the law, for it is spiritual and good. The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. But if I know that what I am doing is wrong, this shows that I agree that the law is good. So I am not the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it. And I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. I want to do what is right, but I can’t. I want to do what is good, but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway. But if I do what I don’t want to do, I am not really the one doing wrong; it is sin living in me that does it.”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭14‬-‭20‬ ‭NLT‬‬

What a predicament! How was he to overcome this one? He had no power over his old nature. It ruled him with a rod of iron. 

“I have discovered this principle of life—that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love God’s law with all my heart. 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. Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭21‬-‭24‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Paul discovered that he would be forever helpless, forever enslaved by his own sinful nature but for one thing…

“Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord…”

‭‭Romans‬ ‭7‬:‭25‬a NLT

To be continued

THEY EXCHANGED THE TRUTH FOR WHAT?

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THEY EXCHANGED THE TRUTH FOR WHAT?

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen.” Romans 1:22-25.

What is the next downward step after ingratitude? Idolatry!

What is idolatry? In its most glaring form, it is the worship of man-made gods. Man in hisSINFUL  simplicity or ignorance gives created things (or even dead people) the credit for having the power to affect their lives. The problem with this kind of idolatry is that human beings cannot conceive of a god who is any different from themselves. So, the gods they create are cruel, unpredictable and downright wicked and are motivated by evil spirits who must be persuaded not to harm their worshippers. Imagine that!

But there is a far more subtle form of idolatry that is rife in the world. We may look down on people who are foolish enough to put their faith in inanimate creatures (anyone in his right mind knows that a block of wood or stone has not power to intervene in a person’s life, even if that object has the shape of a creature), but behind the worship of that idol is the determination to do whatever they want. So, who is the real god? They are!

Have you noticed how sexual promiscuity or perversion is associated with idol worship? It was very much so in Paul’s day. Many of the so-called gods were conceived in lust and were worshipped in sexual orgies, temple prostitution and even worse, publicly having intercourse with animals. Take the “red light” district of Caesarea Philippi in northern Israel where the goat-god Pan was worshipped in orgies involving goats.

Why is there such a focus on illicit sex as a form of worship? Paul gives us the answer. God! God created man in His own image. Marriage was the first human institution after creation. Why? Because the permanent union between a man and a woman in a loving relationship is the best reflection of God’s nature. God is three-in-one, three Persons in a union of love and oneness in their nature and purpose.

God made Adam male and fashioned the female from a part of his body. He separated the woman from Adam and then brought her back to him to be united with him in a sexual union that mirrored the oneness they were to express in their lives together; one man and one woman for life. They were to satisfy each other’s needs through their mutual submission and the intimacy of their lives together. Paul said that this was God’s way of showing the world what Christ’s union with His church should look like.

Where do we see, in the sexual “freedom” that is destroying the world, the picture of God’s nature that marriage was intended to reflect? Satan, in his desire to get the attention and to be worshipped, has distorted one of God’s most beautiful gifts to man and, in the process, brought destruction and chaos into the life of every person who lives that way.

But why did this happen? Paul said it was an exchange. We can’t have God’s way and our way. So, because people want their way, they threw God out and replaced Him with themselves, creating gods like themselves, so that they could do what they wanted in the name of religion. Religion is a cover-up for whatever people want to do.

Some people thirst for power, so they subscribe to a religion which gives them the power to force others, even family members, to do it their way or face persecution or death. Others have perverted sexual appetites which they satisfy in the name of “worship”, but behind it all, is God who, by giving them what they lust for, is actually bringing judgment on them.

Have you ever thought about this? God is so just that He allows people to do exactly what they want, and in the doing, they bring the consequences of their actions down on themselves. Now that’s fair, isn’t it? God has not written His warnings in small print. He always tells the whole truth. Satan is the one who hides the consequences of his hideous suggestions until it’s too late to go back. Then he packs on the guilt and shame!

So why do people make the exchange? Jesus told us why? “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” John 3:19, 20.

What better way to hide evil behaviour? In their religion!

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Prove Them All Wrong

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PROVE THEM ALL WRONG

Dear friends, I urge you as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day He visits us. (1 Peter 2: 11, 12)

Peter spent some time encouraging his readers to understand who they were in God: elect, holy, God’s people, accepted and beloved with a great and glorious future ahead of them. However, they still had to live their lives in the real world where they were rejected, persecuted and falsely accused of doing wrong.

‘Unfortunately,’ said Peter, ‘that’s how it is! Since you are being treated as foreigners and exiles, live like that – remembering that you are not part of this present world system.’ As Paul would remind them, your citizenship is in heaven. God’s kingdom functions on different principles.

The world system is governed by the prince of this world. He has the human race under his influence – and it’s all about looking after number one first, satisfying the whims and desires of the selfish nature at the expense of others. The believer, on the other hand, has been given a new nature, the nature of God who is first and foremost, pure love.

The problem for us is that our old nature is still very much alive within us and wants to drag us in the direction of self-centred lives which leads to self-destruction. It’s war all the way; not war with the devil as we are so often erroneously taught, but civil war within. The spirit, which is infused with the Spirit of God is at war with our fleshly and nature and our sinful desires as war with God’s desires.

If so-called ‘spiritual warfare’ were against the devil, we would always be the losers and the victims of his evil power. This idea negates Jesus’s victory on the cross. Apostle John declared categorically that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3: 8b). Jesus both disarmed and overcame all the evil powers through the cross.

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col. 2: 15)

We do not need deliverance from the devil – Jesus has already delivered us through His death. We need discipline. Our job is to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God and, through the Sprit, to put to death the deeds of the flesh so that we might live to God.

Jesus broke Satan’s power to lie to us. The devil wants to lead us to believe that he is Lord and in control of us. He is not! Jesus is Lord. The Holy Spirit in us leads us to the truth so that we believe what Jesus says and not what the devil says. No one can control our will. We alone have the power to choose and we have the Spirit who enables us to do what we choose.

The battle that rages is us is the battle of our desires. The sinful nature desires to indulge our fleshly appetites. The Spirit desires us to be holy, and living for God. Which one wins? The one we feed, of course. It comes down to the nitty-gritty of what we choose to indulge, the flesh or the spirit. If we indulge the flesh, we will die. We will lose our appetite for God. We will drift from Him until we are right back under the world system and on the way to self-destruction.

It’s not about going to hell when we die. It’s about living in hell now, living a life that has no boundaries, no purpose and no hope. The problem with living in hell now is that we have no appetite for God. Put us in a room full of earnest believers and we will feel uncomfortable and out of place. For a person like that it’s real hell!

What we desire we will do, and what we do we will become. The solution is simple but not easy – focus and grow your desire for God and His kingdom and the desires of the fleshly nature will lose their pull.

David wrote of the Messiah:

Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but my ears you have pierced; burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require. Then I said, ‘Here I am, I have come – it is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.’ (Psa. 40: 6-8)

When you choose to live like that, you will prove all your critics wrong by your godly life!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.