Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as a wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire.” - Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680

The dry times in the lives of Christians are enlightening and revealing. Those who, like a candle, have but a casual and comfortable relationship with Jesus Christ tend to flame out once the winds of adversity come.

In contrast, those whose passions are fueled by an unquenchable fire deep within are driven by the same winds to seek the face of God and pursue him even though it seems futile. Though the winds may blind us, God remains faithful to give us sufficient vision for the next necessary step.

Rabbi Zusya said that on the Day of Judgment, God would ask him, not why he had not been Moses, but why he had not been Zusya.” - Walter Kaufmann

We know, as Christians, that God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of Christ, but in our quest to facilitate that we often focus on an esteemed believer and try to be like him or her. Some of us may even create a visual image of what we imagine Jesus must have been like and pattern ourselves after it.

But this is not what God desires. Each of us is to be a unique display of what God originally intended a person to be; that is, as Christ is formed in us we begin to reveal Christ in a manner impossible for anyone else. It is not that Christians should be the same but that each of us should be reflecting who we might have been had sin never been a part of our lives.

Let advertisers spend the same amount of money improving their product that they do on advertising and they wouldn’t have to advertise.” - Will Rogers

There’s a message here for local churches. If we were to spend as much energy - and even money - on doing church as Scripture tells us to do church, we wouldn’t have to advertise or have special programs or promotions to get the attention of the lost. We would be so attractive that they would be drawn to us without us having to go out of our way to make them notice us.

The church needs to go to the lost, but she needs to go in ministry and mission, not with marketing and machinations. We need to show them our love for God, one another, and them, not just talk about it.

Bad artists always admire each other’s work.”
- Oscar Wilde

It is tempting, of course, to think of Hollywood and their fawning all over one another’s work, but this mirror works for Christians, too. How often are we guilty of blindly praising or defending pastors, teachers, or theologians of our own denominational or doctrinal ilk? Not only would the world hold us in higher regard if we were graciously honest in disagreeing with our friends, but our theological opponents would also take us more seriously.

Sometimes our heroes are just wrong, even about important things. Ryrie, Piper, Calvin, Wesley, Stanley, Swindoll - you name someone and they’ve had their errors. Why pretend otherwise?

No Comment:

We talk about the American Dream, and we want to tell the world about the American Dream, but what is that dream, in most cases, but the dream of material things? I sometimes think the United States for this reason is the greatest failure the world has ever seen.” - Eugene O’Neill

The control man has secured over nature has far outrun his control over himself.” - Ernest Jones

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.” - John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

The real danger is not that computers may begin to think like men, but that men may begin to think like computers.” - Sydney J. Harris

Now, honestly, I could care less about dispensationalism as a system: it didn’t die for my sins and I won’t be rewarded in heaven one day for being dispensational. What triggered my untoward response (if that is what is was) to this individual was the hubris that had produced such an aggressive, unloving, and arrogant post.

I was told by the individual that I am not mature or, at least, that he will shield me so that I might appear to be more mature than I really am - or than I seem to be. I don’t know: it’s all rather confusing.

But here’s the thing: why is it that we feel compelled to demolish the studies and theological belief systems of others when the gospel or anything critical is not at stake? And here’s another thing: why is it so difficult to ignore the provocations of someone who seems to be a puffed up fool troll?

I long ago gave up the former quest (to disprove others) and determined instead to understand their positions . I did this in the hope that I would thus be less inclined to diminish the sincere efforts of others to develop a belief systems that they believed to be true. I don’t see how tearing something down can be edifying.

More importantly, I don’t think God is nearly so concerned - if he is at all - about our theological systems as we are. Oh, I suppose one could say that Jesus attacked the belief systems of the Pharisees - except he really didn’t. Jesus was angered not by their beliefs but by their behaviors, not by their arguments but their attitudes.

Perhaps we feel superior to others if we can convince ourselves that we can successfully demolish their positions, even if it might mean undermining some of their confidence and stability at the same time.

But more troubling to me, I suppose, is why I cannot spit out the hook that some self-righteous trolls bait with obvious venom. It is obvious to me that they only want to debate, not learn, and that they get all lathered up by arguing ad nauseum over things. Nevertheless, I get sucked in time and time again, perhaps operating under the delusion that I’ll forewarn someone else of the insidious - or insipid - vitriol they’re about to encounter.

But, hey, am I my brother’s keeper?

Well, yes, I suppose I am, but most of my brothers at Theologica as well as here are quite capable of taking care of themselves and eschewing the adolescent, mendacious nonsense that such posts reflect.

I know all the proverbs that address such provocations; why is it so difficult for me - and, perhaps, for you - to ignore it and keep seeking Christ? Why do the heavy stones and weighty sand keep pinning me down?

Or, as my critic might say, why am I so immature?

Here’s the passage in the NASB:

14 For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
15 For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
16 But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good.
17 So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not.
19 For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want.
20 But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
21 I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
22 For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,
23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
24 Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.

Of the two interpretations mentioned above - the interpretations of this passage are, indeed, legion - I hold to the former: Christians wrestle with and often subdue, by the grace of God and the Holy Spirit within, the sin nature or sin principle within them. Contrary to the teachings of David Needham, Dwight Edwards, Neil Anderson, and others, we are responsible for our sins and we are the culpable agent in the perpetration of our sins.

In a discussion at Theologica regarding Christian sins, a young man who has taken the humble screen name of Seraphim declared, “My question is, is it YOU that is sinning after you are saved?” (shouting with all caps in the original). He follows the misguided theology of others in absolving himself of responsibility for sin, adducing vv. 18-20 as support for his position.

The errors and absurdities of such a position are too numerous to address here - or any place else, if stewardship of one’s time is important - so allow me to target one thing: the notion that because we do not willingly do something we are therefore not responsible for it.

To cut to the chase and restate the title of this post, sin as presented in Rom 7 can best be understood as a compulsion or, in everyday language, an addiction.

Those who have suffered or are suffering from any type of compulsion will understand what I am saying. Compulsions, by definition, are repeated behaviors designed to meet some perceived need and are neither willed nor intended by the individual. Such addictions are ego-dystonic: they are not desired by the individual and are experienced as intrusive, i.e., as originating from within but not as a conscious decision that one has made.

This, I think, is the facet of personal, indwelling sin that Paul discusses in Rom 7. Sin can have the quality of being an unwanted but seemingly irresistible power, whether obsessive (thoughts) or compulsive (deeds). Many sins are volitional, of course, and we sadly but willingly accept full responsibility for our choice. Sins born out of our addiction to sin, however, feel foreign and as though we are not responsible.

But we are responsible, even as a drunk driver is responsible for the destruction that might be birthed by his addiction to alcohol. Addictive sin is our sin and no one else’s. We have an addiction; it is our addiction by virtue of our previous connection with Adam’s race even though we are now members of the Second Adam’s race. We have been born again but, as Paul says, we have this experience or life in a physical body not suited for the task. Our bodies are psuchikos, not pneumatikos, as will be the case in our future, glorified state.

Our psuchikos or soulish bodies are the traveling clothes handed down from Adam, not Christ, and as such they continue to possess the consequences and tendencies of Sin - not “sin,” which is an act - but “Sin,” a principle that remains within us. We are whole beings, not divided up like some sort of living pie into various functions and forms. And as long as we remain in this soulish bodies, our struggle with Sin will continue.

Happily, there is no condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus, for he has saved us from the consequence of Sin: eternal death. And even in this lifetime God has given us his Holy Spirit so that, even though Sin remains within us, we might be freed from the intractable pull of our incorrigible addiction to Sin.