PASTOR’S PERSPECTIVE: “SIN: Refine Our Sins or Remove Them?”
In the First Epistle of John, the Aged Apostle is writing to his little children in the faith, seeking to teach them to experience the Word of Life, just as he and the other Apostles did during “the days of His flesh”. He encourages them to join in the partnership and fellowship that enables them to follow Jesus, just as they did, letting His Eternal Life be manifest in their lives. Jesus, the Eternal Life who existed in the beginning with the Father, and became flesh and dwelt among us, walking a divine life, as the Sinless Righteous Son of God, is our Example and Enabler. Jesus choose the Vine and the branches as the metaphor of life and fruitfulness for the Christian life. Being in Him, as the branches are to the vine, shows how His life can flow through us, producing fruit, more fruit, and much fruit. (See John 15). John calls this kind of relationship as a Walk in Life. It is also a Walk in Light. Jesus was light, and in Him was no darkness at all. When we are empowered by His Person, Presence, and Power, through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we can walk as He did. Just a real as when Jesus commanded Peter to walk on water (Matt. 14:28-29), and He miraculously empowered him to do so, so with us! Jesus said, “He that commits sin is a slave to sin, but those who know Him, intimately, knowing the Truth, is set free” (John 8:34-36). Such a relationship makes one “free indeed!” John in I John chapters 1 and 2 indicates that knowing Him as “life” and “light” results in waling in “Liberty” from sin. This is a subject that needs to be emphasized to Christians today! It is true that our sins have been “removed from us as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12); and that “our sins have been cast into the depths of the sea” (Micah 7:19); and that they have been “cast behind God’s back” (literally “between His shoulder blades” Isaiah 38:17; and that they are “remembered against us no more” (Isaiah 43:25/Heb. 8:12), every Christian knows that in daily practice, that sin is still our besetting issue. Even the great Apostle Paul called himself “as miserable wretched man” and asked “who will deliver me from this body of death” (Rom. 7:24). Every Christian can identify with Paul’s confessed dilemma. Josh Billings vividly describes the catch-22 that describes most Christians when it comes to their battle with daily sin. He says, “The hardest sinner of the whole lot is one who spends half his time sinning and the other half in repentance!” Most Christian find themselves praying like the Ancient Roman writer Seneca, who prayed “Oh that a hand would come down out of heaven and deliver me from my besetting sin!” The writer Goethe, described this dilemma when he wrote the following poem- “Two spirits dwell at odds within my heart; And each from the other would gladly part; One seems with a single urge possessed; To keep the friendly earth within my heart; The other draws me forth in a willful quest; Of visions to an inner world apart!” We live our lives like Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking Glass, describes the Lock running around looking for the right key, asking “won’t someone please unlock me?” That unlocking key is to be found in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jerry Bridges, in his book Disciplines of Grace, says “Preach the Gospel to yourself. Face up to your own sinfulness, then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and Righteousness”. But just knowing Jesus, through saving faith in His work on the Cross, though the basis of forgiveness, is not enough for victory alone, it must be applied to daily life, availing ourselves to His Person, His Presence, and His Power through a divine incarnation of Christ in us, our only “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Paul calls this a mystery! That is the only answer to the failure of Christianity to deal with the sin problem in a practical way.
A.W. Tozer addresses the failure of modern Christianity to provide relief for the Christian today. He wrote, “Religion today is not transforming people, rather it is being transformed. It is not raising the moral level of society, it is descending to society’s own level, and rationalizing that it has scored a victory, because society smiling accepted its surrender!” “Christian Liberty is freedom from sin, not freedom to sin. The abuse of the harmless thing is the essence of sin! A man by his sin may waste himself, which is to waste that which is on earth that is most like God. This is MAN’S GREATEST TRAGEDY AND GOD’S HEAVIEST GRIEF!” When the Angels announced Jesus birth, they said, “You shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). That is what the Hebrew name Jesus means- “Yahweh saves”. But Jesus did not come to just save us from the” penalty of sin”. He came to save us from the “power of sin”, and eventually from the very “presence of sin”. We live in the reality of the first mission of Jesus. That is our justification. “If any man be in Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation” (Rom. 8:1). But Paul asks, “Since Grace abounds, should we let sin abound too?” He answers quite clearly, “God Forbid!” (Romans 6:1) In the Greek it is “me genito”- “may it never be so!” Tozer says that we as Christians need to take a long look at this situation to resolve it. He writes, “We Christians must look sharply at our Christianity. We must make sure we do not refine our sins, without removing them!” Maybe that is what we as Christians are most guilty of- “refining our sins” but not “removing our sins!” On one occasion Charles Spurgeon was visiting Cambridge College. He was shown a bust of Lord Byron on display in the University Library. From one side all the glory of Lord Byron was so apparent. Spurgeon said, “what a man!” The librarian told him to view the bust from the opposite side. Spurgeon gasped, “What a demon!” By design the sculptor has so made the bust. He wanted to show, not only the two faces that resided in Lord Byron, but the two faces that reside in each one of us! Eugene Peterson, author of The Message paraphrase of the Bible, was given a portrait, painted by his Church custodian. It was horrible. Peterson asked why the painter had painted him that way. His response was, “I wanted you to be reminded of what you could look like is the grace of God was not active in your life!” Peterson put it on the wall of his office as a daily reminder. We all need such a portrait! Adrian Rogers described the difference between sin in the life of the sinner and the saint. He said, “The sinner leaps into sin and loves it! The saint lapses into sin and loathes it!” Basically, that is true. Sin takes a toll in every way on the life of the Christian. The Bible says, “The way of the transgressor is hard!” (Proverbs 13:15). David, after committing adultery and covering it up with murder, talks about how he suffered because of it. He wrote “When I kept silent about my sin, my bones wasted away in groaning all day long. Day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped from me!” (Psalm 32:3). Solomon, the wisest man in the world, chose to follow a life of idolatry and immorality. His evaluation was what he wrote in Ecclesiastes. Lesson learned!
The only help for the Christian is to face his sin truthfully and with sincerity. The best book I have ever read on the Psychology of Growth in the Christian life is in a book by W. Curry Mavis. He was professor of Psychology at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. He wrote a great book titled The Psychology of Christian Experience. In it he says that for a Christian to have any progress toward maturity and victory over sin daily, he must be truthful and sincere about his choices and life. He quotes Joseph Goldbrunn, from his work Holiness is Wholeness, “When the soul does not live up to its own truth, the vision of God’s truth becomes clouded. Spiritual wholeness involves our whole thinking, our whole emotions, and our whole will. Without full involvement we have no accurate spiritual perception!” J. R. Sealy concurs. He says, “The one incurable vice is insincerity!” that is not being truthful with ourselves! J.B. Mozley puts it even more succinctly…” The victim of passion may be converted. The thoughtless may be converted. The ambitious may be converted…anyone of these. But who will convert the hypocrite? He does not know that he is a hypocrite. The greater the hypocrite that he is, the more sincere he must think himself to be!” That is the dilemma that the Christian who has blinders to his sin has! Wearing a mask as to who we are, hides the truth from others, but also hides the truth from ourselves, therefore cutting us off from any of God’s daily remedies to our sin problem. Anne Morrow Lindberg dealt with this issue clearly. In her book Gift From the Sea, she writes, “I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in my life, I have discovered is to be insincere. That is why so much social life is exhausting: one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask!” Christians could avoid a lot of spiritual exhaustion by heeding her advice. Shed the masks! My favorite poet of all time, Thomas Stearns Eliot, called this insincerity “the hell of make believe”. In his poem, Murder In The Cathedral, he writes “In the small circle of pain within the skull; You shall travel and tread the endless round; of thought to justify your actions to yourselves; weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave; pacing forever THE HELL OF MAKE BELIEVE; WHICH NEVER IS BELIEF!” The wisest man in the world, Solomon saw this clearly. He wrote, “Keep your heart in all diligence-out of it flows the issues of life!” (Proverbs 4:232). Again, he admitted, “He that covers his sins shall not prosper!” (Proverbs28:13). T.T. Munger agrees- “God has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something God and high. A purpose is the eternal condition of progress and success!” The Christian that longs for a higher purpose and aim than struggling daily with his sin, and trying desperately to cover it up can find help and hope! The story by Max Bearborn, The Happy Hypocrite, tells of a man who falls in love with a beautiful lady. To win her he put on a beautiful mask to hide his hideous nature. He succeeds and she marries him. But eventually his past catches up with him. He is forced to take the mask off and reveal his true nature. But in the interim, due to his love and relationship with his new wife, when he removes the mask, everyone is surprised to find out that his ugly features have been transformed to the beauty of the mask! He therefore becomes the Happy Hypocrite. Paul tells us if we will keep on beholding the unveiled face of our Savior Jesus. Love Him daily. This intimate relationship with Him with transform us from glory to glory, (II Corinthians 3:18). That is what the Apostle John is telling his little Children. Jesus is your answer not only to the penalty of sin, but also the power of sin, and someday the very presence of sin. You have an Advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ The Righteous One! Let Him transform you-daily!
Sermon: PATH OF RESTORATION
Psalm 51
I, A CONVICTED HEART
II. A CONTRITE HEART
III. A CONFESSED HEART
IV. A CLEAN HEART
