What is Your Attidtude Toward Sin?: Success or Obedience

1 Peter 1:16 states that “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” We understand and know…wait a minute. We actually don’t understand but we do know in our heads that holiness is basic and foundational in the Christian life. The real question and why don’t we experience it more in daily living? By the way, I’m including myself in this question. Why do we, Christians, find ourselves constantly defeated in our struggle with sin? Hopefully, we are at least aware and know of the struggle even though we can’t quite wrap our lives around it. We know that there is a battle with the flesh, that selfish sin nature that we all have since Genesis chapter 3. We know that this world is constantly drawing us away from our devotion to God as we float in our idolatry of pleasing ourselves with all those “good” things we find ourselves consumed with. And yes, we know about the evil one, who puts are those lies in our head, telling us we are pretty good people, as he leads us unaware to our demise. So why do we and why does the church, Mount Zion Baptist Church, so often seem to be more conformed to the world around us than to God?

I find that my problem is that my understanding (okay, listen up, this is key) or I could say my attitude toward sin is more of self-centeredness. You say, “What does that have to do with it?” Think about it, because of the world’s affect on us, especially in our western word here in the U.S., we find that we are more focused on our own “success” over sin than we are actually over the fact that my sins and yours has offended and grieved the heart of God. We hate failure, even in our struggle with sin. Why is this? Well, because we have been conditioned (the world) to be success-oriented, and it doesn’t even enter our mind that primarily it’s offensive to a holy God.

Plumer notes, “We never see sin aright until we see it as against God.” Think about that for a minute and let the truth of that statement sink in as you reflect on it as it relates to our own lives.  He goes on to state that “All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught…Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul and Judas each said, ‘I have sinned’: but the returning prodigal said, ‘I have sinned against heaven and before thee’; and David said, ‘Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned’ (Plummer, 557). Do you see the difference in the understanding and attitude towards sin?  It seems to us, like it’s no big deal but they lead to opposite ends of the spectrum. One is God centered, while the other is man-centered and American Christianity has been man-centered for the last few decades.

What’s the answer? It’s not our sacrifice or legalism and doing more to try and have the favor of God (man-centered). David had the right attitude and understanding when he said, “For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise (Psalm 51:16-17). Let me try and explain that for us. You see, God wants our heart and that means we willfully walk in obedience not our success at doing church. Obedience is oriented toward god; success is oriented toward self. You say, “Isn’t that the same thing?” NO! It’s a matter of the heart, our attitude and although it seems like such a small difference but what appears small over time and distance moves you farther and farther away from God. Think about it, it has been this subtle, self-centered attitude or wrong understanding that has been and is the root of many of our difficulties with sin. So until we are willing to deal with it honestly before God, we will not walk in obedience and holiness. Yes success is a by-product of obedience but see that the difference is orientation. Success is orientated at self (man-centered) and obedience is orientated at God (God-centered).

So let’s chew on this biblical truth and on living an obedient, holy life, and then we will experience the joy of success over sin (did you see the orientation in that last sentence?). Let us begin this journey with looking at all our sin as an offense against a holy God, instead of only as a personal defeat over it.

Bibliography

Plummer, William S. Psalms. Edinburgh, Scotland: Banner of Truth Trust., 1975.

How's Your Holy?

In most our Sunday school small group classes this month we have been looking at holiness. That’s really something that isn’t talked about an awful lot in most churches today. I mean our life is hard enough as it is and who can be holy anyway - right? Of course, we want to be a good person and better ourselves and for the most part we don’t do the really bad sins, our sins are the respectable ones. We got the blood and have been saved and pastor (that’s me) tells us that any righteousness or good that we have was given to us by Jesus and so holiness is not so much a requirement and something I need to think about too much. That’s where we tend to go wrong and where we are so good at justifying our sin in failing to grow in holiness.

Kevin DeYoung, in his new book, calls it our hole in our holiness. In other words, “the hole in our holiness is that we don’t really care much about it.” ^[1] He rightly goes on to say that “too many sermons are basically self-help seminars on becoming a better you.” ^[2] However, in realty, the gospel is not about our good, trying to be good or being better. Any good we do and our morality without heralding what Christ has first done for us on the cross is another gospel.

Holiness comes first from Christ sanctifying us by Him giving of himself (Hebrews 7:27; 9:14) as our sacrifice once for all (Hebrews 9:28) on the altar of the cross. Jesus became our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7) and took our place (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18) and bore our sins (1 Peter 2:24) and became for us a source of eternal food (John 6:53) which meets our deepest needs and gives us eternal life.  

With that said, and all that He has done He also tell us, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16). And the wonderful thing is, He doesn’t tell us to do anything that He doesn’t expect to do for us through Jesus Christ. It’s all through that wonderful word called GRACE! Paul said it best in 1 Corinthians 15:10  where he says, “by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” There’s a whole lot of grace in that verse, did you see it?

Again, DeYoung makes a good statement here: “My fear is that as we rightly celebrate, and in some quarters rediscover, all that Christ has saved us from, we are giving little thought and making little effort concerning all that Christ has saved us to.” ^[3]

So how can we know that there are holes in our holiness? I think the Scripture gives us one way that we could possible know. 1 Peter 3:15 says, “but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.” Did you read that real carefully? If so, ask yourself when was the last time someone asked you about your hope? Of course that hope is the hope we have in our salvation. And because of what He again did for us, we are to live holy lives. In other words, we live so contrary to the world that they obviously see that there is something different about us – we’re holy!

Jesus said it best: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). So how bright is our light? That light is the holiness of Christ that was graciously given to us by God because Christ lived the life we could not live and paid a debt we could not pay. When we serve Him and allow Him to work in and through us our light shines like a city on a hill that cannot be hid (Matthew 5:14).

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^[1] Kevin DeYoung, The Hole in Our Holiness: Filling the Gap Between Gospel Passion and the Pursuit of Godliness (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012).

^[2] Ibid.

^[3] Ibid