Diversions

You may have heard the quote from Robert Murray M’Cheyne, “I have discovered that the seed to every known sin dwells within my heart.” Have you ever considered that in your own life? And if you recognize that to be true, as I believe it is of every human being, have you considered the great grace and mercy of God that we don’t act on every seed of sin that we could? Just prior to God’s judgment of the world in the Flood we read, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5 ESV). Although the Flood destroyed many evil people, it did not remove evil from the earth. Two chapters later, although God promised not to send another such judgment, He still said, “the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (8:21). It is only by God’s sovereign control over mankind that sin is restrained at all.

John Owen, in Overcoming Sin and Temptation, lists some of the Scriptural examples of God preventing sin from being carried out:

• Pharaoh’s army was wiped out by the sea as they tried to overtake the Israelites (Exodus 14).
• Sennacherib’s army was destroyed by an angel of the Lord so that Jerusalem would be delivered from him (1 Kings 18-21).
• The people of Babel were made unable to understand one another’s language so they could not complete their act of pride (Genesis 11).
• The men of Sodom were struck blind so that they could not seize Lot (Genesis 19).
• Joseph’s brothers intended to let him die, but God arranged for him to be sent into Egypt instead, where he eventually was able to save their lives (Genesis 37-46).
• Peter was delivered from prison and from Herod’s revenge by an angel (Acts 12).

We could add Jonah, David and Nabal (1 Samuel 25), Abimelech and Sarah (Genesis 20), and many others. Psalms 57 through 59 reveal some of the ways God intervenes to control evil, by letting people fall into their own traps (57:6), breaking their teeth and blunting their arrows (58:6-7), trapping them in their pride and consuming them (59:12-13). Though people often ask why God allows evil, the fact is that He prevents evil more often than not. Owen writes,

“If we will look to our own concerns, they will in a special manner enforce us to adore the wisdom and efficacy of the providence of God in stopping the progress of conceived sin. That we are at peace in our homes, at rest in our beds, that we have any quiet in our enjoyments, is from [God] alone. Whose person would not be defiled or destroyed—whose habitation would not be ruined—whose blood almost would not be shed—if wicked men had power to perpetrate all their conceived sin?” (349).

Not only does God restrain evil in the unconverted world around us, but He restrains it within our own hearts and lives.

“When you have conceived sin, has God weakened your power for sin, or denied you opportunity, or taken away the object of your lusts, or diverted your thoughts by new providences? Know assuredly that you have received mercy thereby. Though God deal not these providences always in a subserviency to the covenant of grace, yet there is always mercy in them, always a call in them to consider the author of them” (351).

God may send an arrow of conviction to the conscience. He may remind us of His love and mercy and kindness. He may bring to mind the blood of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. He may reveal the shame and reproach of sin. His methods of working in us are unlimited. “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13). 

But still we may not always pay attention. We may perhaps ignore His Word and forget His grace. We may choose to submit again to our old slave-master sin. Yet for the believer, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1), because “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).

© 2019 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.

Sowing the Eternal

Peter Kreeft’s book Back to Virtue has some good thoughts that are worth mulling over:

“God often withholds from us the grace to avoid a lesser sin because we are in danger of a greater sin. To avoid pride, he sometimes lets us fall into lust, since lust is usually obvious, undisguised, and temporary, while pride is not” (168).

At first glance, this doesn’t seem to make sense. Why would God allow one type of sin in order to keep us from another type? It almost seems to contradict James 1:13-15 (ESV), “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” James makes it clear that sin always begins and ends with self, not God.

So if self is the problem, why would pride be worse than lust? After all, it can be pride that says “I deserve this pleasure” or “I can handle this temptation.” But I think the greater danger is the pride that says “I successfully fought that temptation by myself,” and thereby denies God all the glory. He is less concerned about sins that cause us to cry out to Him for mercy and grace than about sins that make us think we don’t need Him. I can safely say that I don’t want to go back to the days when sin hardened my heart and drew me away from God. With a softer heart each sin hurts more, but it causes me to run to Him and not from Him.

Kreeft quotes Samuel Smiles:

“Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny” (169).

There was a time when certain sins became so habitual that I’m sure it started to change my character, though I didn’t realize it at the time. Disdain for people, hiding my sin, building walls around my heart and my life—these weren’t harmless decisions. And reversing the process had to start with breaking down those walls to let others see that my true character was not what it appeared to be. Only from that place of vulnerability and accountability could I then break down the habits and cease the acts and thoughts underneath (or at least start to make progress against them). “For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:8).

Another good quote from Kreeft:

“We are promised the great and inconceivable gift to see God face to face, just as he is... It is what we were made for, our ‘pearl of great price,’ our ‘one thing necessary’. If we only knew, we would eagerly sacrifice anything and everything in the world for this” (171-172).

That reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s comments about us “fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us” (The Weight of Glory). I confess I would like just a glimpse of that infinite, eternal joy so that the things of earth would “grow strangely dim,” but I suppose that would negate the need for faith and hope. If we could see exactly what was coming, we wouldn’t have to trust that God will one day make all our obedience worthwhile.

Recently I have returned to an old practice of praying through the armor of God (Ephesians 6:13-17) before I start my day. It is a reminder to me that I can’t do this alone. I have also found encouragement from Isaiah 41:10:

“Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

God will strengthen us for the battle if we will keep turning to Him. He will help us and protect us by His grace and for His glory. And when we do fall, as we often will, it is His righteousness that upholds us and not our own failed attempts at righteousness.

“I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness...” (Isaiah 61:10).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

In the Light

I’ve been thinking about sin lately, and I’m not the only one. It so “happens” that the sermon at our church this week was on 1 Corinthians 10:1-13. Just a few days ago, Desiring God posted this article by Garrett Kell, If They Fell,So Can You, which is well worth reading.

What factors may cause us to give in to temptation?

• We don’t recognize something as sin, such as the more subtle sins of pride, gossip, or envy.
• We may have adopted the world’s standards in regards to sexuality, relationships, and money.
• We let ourselves become vulnerable through fatigue, stress, and busyness.
• We have slacked off in pursuing God through Scripture, prayer, and worship.
• We have become relationally isolated from fellow believers.
• We keep our sin secret due to fear and shame.
• We feel unique because we can’t see the sins that others struggle with.
• We judge our private sins to be less of a problem than someone else’s visible sin.

The solution to all of those is abiding in community with the Body of Christ to keep one another accountable. Together we pursue God and bring truth to light—the truth about God and about ourselves.

Another recent article by Jared Wilson on The Gospel Coalition quotes Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together:

“He who is alone with his sin is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final break-through to fellowship does not occur, because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy. The fact is that we are sinners!”

Wilson goes on to say, “I know people are mean, I know people are judgmental, I know people act weird and get messy and cause problems and are really inefficient for the ways we normally like to do church—but if we believe in the gospel, we don’t have a choice any longer to live in the dark. How about we stop being shocked to find sinners among the ‘pious’ and start shocking the fearful with grace?”

I wonder what the church would look like if this were the common experience? I’ve seen it happen on a small scale among a few friends, and it always makes me long for more. It’s hard to live in true Christian community if we’re all hiding secrets from one another. Dare we risk walking in the light?

“But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7 ESV).

© 2018 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated all images are copyright free from pixabay.com.

Freedom

I wrote the following post for our denomination's blog for Prayer Emphasis Month.

After memorizing Romans 8 last year, this year I jumped back a couple chapters to memorize Romans 6. Verse 6 in the ESV says, “We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.” Although we all cling to that fact that our sin is forgiven because of the cross of Christ, it is harder to grasp the idea of freedom from sin’s slavery.

This world is filled with all sorts of temptations, and sometimes they seem too powerful to resist. Just one more doughnut; just one quick glimpse at that picture; just a few minutes playing that game; just a little fib… And before long we’re exclaiming with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). The fact is that Jesus Christ has already delivered us, but we haven’t yet learned how to live as overcomers and freed men and women.

Many of us can probably quote 1 Corinthians 10:13, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” We want to believe that, but it seems like when temptation comes it is easier to ask for forgiveness than to look for the way of escape. Thomas Chalmers wrote of “the expulsive power of a new affection.” He explained that we won’t choose to turn from sin unless we are turning toward something better—toward the only One who can deliver us. Unfortunately, sin often appears to offer a quicker “fix” than seeking God.

So what is the solution? It is a lifelong process of 1) believing and remembering that God has delivered us from the power of sin, 2) seeking a closer relationship with Him through the spiritual disciplines, 3) praying for the way of escape before temptation arrives, and 4) making no provision for the flesh to choose sin. There is no quick cure because the world, the flesh, and the devil will do everything possible to derail our good intentions. Thankfully, whenever we do fail, we can turn again to the cross of Christ and the One who is ready and willing to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

© Dawn Rutan 2016. 

Take Heart

In my “year in Romans 8” I just made a new connection. Verse 15 (ESV) says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry ‘Abba! Father!’” I suddenly wondered, since Paul has spent several chapters talking about flesh vs. spirit why didn’t he say “you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into sin”? Going back to 6:16-18, he wrote,

“Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.”

So the short answer to the question is that Christians are in fact set free from the slavery of sin. Paul reiterates this in 8:9, “You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him.”

We also need to remember chapter 7 and Paul’s extended commentary that “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (v. 19). Even the great, miraculously converted, Apostle Paul struggled with sin. A few theologians try to say that this chapter refers to his pre-conversion struggle, but there is no evidence for this. After all, Paul wasn’t struggling when he actively participated in the persecution of Christians. He said of himself, “as to righteousness under the law, blameless” (Philippians 3:6). His wrestling with the flesh was a reality even when he understood and preached the grace of God.

So then why does Paul say “slavery to fall back into fear”? John explains that in 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.” If you put Paul and John together, you don’t just have half the Beatles. What you have is a reminder we all need at times:

Christians, though we are free from slavery to sin, we still wrestle with it and fall into it. The difference is that we no longer need to fear God’s punishment because we are His beloved children. His love and forgiveness are lavished upon us, and we can turn back to Him every time we fail.

I’ve started reading The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, and he had some good thoughts on the problem of temptation:

“When a man of good will is afflicted, tempted, and tormented by evil thoughts, he realizes clearly that his greatest need is God, without Whom he can do no good. Saddened by his miseries and sufferings, he laments and prays. He wearies of living longer and wishes for death that he might be dissolved and be with Christ. Then he understands fully that perfect security and complete peace cannot be found on earth.” (Twelfth Chapter)

“So long as we live in this world we cannot escape suffering and temptation... No one is so perfect or so holy but he is sometimes tempted; man cannot be altogether free from temptation... Yet temptations, though troublesome and severe, are often useful to a man, for in them he is humbled, purified, and instructed. The saints all passed through many temptations and trials to profit by them, while those who could not resist became reprobate and fell away. There is no state so holy, no place so secret that temptations and trials will not come. Man is never safe from them as long as he lives, for they come from within us—in sin we were born. When one temptation or trial passes, another comes; we shall always have something to suffer because we have lost the state of original blessedness...

“We should not despair, therefore, when we are tempted, but pray to God the more fervently that He may see fit to help us, for according to the word of Paul, He will make issue with temptation that we may be able to bear it. Let us humble our souls under the hand of God in every trial and temptation for He will save and exalt the humble in spirit...

“Some, guarded against great temptations, are frequently overcome by small ones in order that, humbled by their weakness in small trials, they may not presume on their own strength in great ones.” (Thirteenth Chapter)

We can draw encouragement even from temptation for several reasons:

1) The struggle proves we are Christians. Non-Christians don’t struggle with sin because they don’t recognize it as sin. “If it had not been for the law, I would not have know sin” (Romans 7:7).

2) The struggle shows if we are growing in Christ. Our enemy doesn’t want us to grow, and wants to cause us to despair, so he turns up the heat. “Consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility against Himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood” (Hebrews 12:3-4).

3) The struggle reminds us of our weakness and humility. While we don’t know if Paul was specifically referring to sin as his thorn in 2 Corinthians 12:9, it is still true that “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness.”

4) The struggle reminds us to turn to God. If there were no battles, we would not need Him as our Defender and our Refuge. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

5) The struggle spreads God’s comfort to us, and through us to others. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). [I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I had not recently experienced it.]

6) The struggle reminds us of what is truly important. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8-9).

7) And one day the struggles will be over and God will be glorified. “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To Him be the dominion forever and ever” (1 Peter 5:10-11).

So take heart, brothers and sisters in Christ, in the world we will have tribulation, but He has overcome the world (John 16:33).

“The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him” (Romans 8:16-17).


© 2015 Dawn Rutan.

Keep Fighting

As happens to me periodically, I’ve received similar messages from multiple sources in recent weeks. The first source was Tim Keller’s book Prayer. He was talking about the Lord’s Prayer and the fact that the provision of needs and deliverance from temptation are daily prayers, not just occasional or spur of the moment prayers. Soon after that Ron Thomas made a similar comment during his Sunday school lesson on Genesis 3, as he urged us to frequently ask ourselves “Where are you?” Most recently, I read John Piper’s short book Sanctification in the Everyday, in which he writes about fighting sin. He says that he learned to fight sexual temptation with aggressive, conscious, daily opposition. However:

“What I realized was that I was not applying any of this same gospel vigilance—what Peter O’Brien calls ‘continuous, sustained, strenuous effort’ against my most besetting sins. I was strangely passive and victim-like. I had the unarticulated sense (mistakenly) that these sins (unlike sexual lust) should be defeated more spontaneously.”

I’ve found the same to be true in my life. Until these themes converged upon me, I’d never really considered the need to pray regularly for deliverance from evil even though that was part of the Lord’s Prayer. At some subconscious level I believed that frequent repetition of the Lord’s Prayer or any other prayer would become rote and useless. But, like Piper, I also mistakenly believed that temptation didn’t need to be fought until it arrived, so I wasn’t terribly proactive about it. I had a vague idea of what I would do when temptation came, but that’s about it. I’ve repeatedly read 1 Corinthians 10:13 (ESV), “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” For whatever reason, I assumed that meant I didn’t need to look for the way of escape until the temptation came.

I began to learn the truth over the last year out of a sense of desperation as I pleaded with the Lord to protect me from temptation, because I knew I was too weak to fight it myself. These recent messages have helped to solidify and verbalize what experience has shown to be true. It also gives fresh meaning to Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:7-11, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you… How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” And James 4:2, “You do not have, because you do not ask.” When a child asks for something that they want and need, parents are delighted to provide. So also God wants to provide for us, but He won’t force us to take something we don’t yet want or know that we need.

God wants us to be victorious over sin, but so long as we are trusting in ourselves to fight temptation when it comes, we will continue to be disappointed. We have a real enemy who wants to keep us feeling helpless and defeated, so we need the power of our Savior to set us free. He’s already done the hard work of defeating sin and death, but we have to learn a daily reliance upon His strength rather than our own. It’s not often that God provides instantaneous deliverance from a temptation, though there are those who have found freedom from drugs and alcohol and the like. Most of the time it is a slow growth in learning to depend on Him, and that doesn’t come until we realize our own weakness.

The fight against sin is not one we are meant to battle in our own power. This battle isn’t going to be quick and easy, but we are assured that one day we will see the ultimate defeat of our enemy. Until then we need to keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep putting on the armor of God, and keep fighting all day every day. “Will not God give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night?” (Luke 18:7).

“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.” –Ephesians 6:10-11

Keep Coming Back

I’ve been reading a book by a well-known author and learned that this person experienced the same temptation that I have (and no, I’m not going to be any more specific than that!). Upon reading that, my thought was, “Ah, I’m not the only one. Even X has been there and has fallen to that temptation.” But even as I thought that, and again in Sunday’s sermon on Hebrews 4:14-16, I was reminded that it is even more important and earth-shattering that Jesus “in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (ESV). While I know that to be true, my brain makes a couple objections: 1) Jesus was God, so of course He didn’t give in to temptation. 2) Jesus never had to deal with the personal guilt and shame of having sinned.

It’s rather baffling to consider how Jesus could be fully God and fully man and what that actually means as far as His experience of temptation is concerned. Hebrews seems pretty clear in stating that Jesus knows exactly what we go through. And presumably He knows it even more fully because He experienced “every” kind of temptation, whereas we are usually tempted in just a few areas. We could also make the case that since “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin” (1 Peter 2:24), therefore He experienced all the sins that each one of us have committed, along with all the guilt and shame those sins created. (Ed Welch explores this idea further in his book Shame Interrupted.)

To borrow a couple thoughts from an email from Pastor Matt:

“…while it’s true that he did not have to deal with sin as a sinner, with all the compounding complications and consequences of past sins, he in other ways experienced temptation even more than we do in that he experienced it all the way. Whereas we all have given in to temptation, he never did and so endured the full length of it. Not to mention the fact that the tempter seems to get more aggressive the more we’re living for God and no one ever lived so completely for God than Jesus, which would indicate that the severity of his temptations was stronger than any other human ever experienced.”

C.S. Lewis explains:

“Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is… A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later… Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full extent what temptation means” (as quoted in http://www.desiringgod.org/sermons/draw-near-to-the-throne-of-grace-with-confidence).

So the evidence mounts that Jesus was not only fully human, but perfectly human. He lived the perfect life we were meant to live before the Fall. And so His sinlessness in the face of every temptation should bring us greater comfort than the sinfulness of our fellow man. Because He faced temptation, He knows what we go through every day. And because He resisted temptation completely, He is worthy to be our intermediary before the Father.

Those who have fallen prey to temptation can indeed empathize with our guilt and shame, and perhaps they can even give us some tips for resisting temptation. But they cannot absolve us of sin and make us righteous before God. They can have compassion on us in our sin, but they cannot give us the forgiving mercy and sanctifying grace we need. Jesus not only cleanses us from the effects of sin, but He can also protect us from temptation or strengthen us to endure it. In 1 Corinthians 10:13, Paul does tell us that our temptations are “common to man,” but the real encouragement is found in God’s faithfulness to protect His children.

In this life we’ll never perfectly obey, but I believe progress is possible. I find that the difference comes in allowing failure to drive us back to the throne of grace rather than farther away as our enemy intends. When we know that grace and mercy are readily available, we can come back with confidence.

A beautifully encouraging picture is painted by C.S. Lewis in the book Yours, Jack (p. 94):

“I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience et cetera doesn’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be very muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes are in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present to us: it is the very sign of His presence.”

What more can be said but—

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).