Why focus on our sin if we are forgiven?
Before my trip to Destin, I had been focusing a lot of my posts on the book, "Respectable Sins: Confronting the sins we tolerate" by Jerry Bridges. I have finished the last six chapters, but rather than comment on them specifically and individually, I want to focus more on why I think it's important that we not take any of our sins lightly even though we know we're forgiven. In my John Stott Bible Study subscription this morning, I was inspired by this passage:
So, in practice we should constantly be reminding ourselves who we are. We need to learn to talk to ourselves, and ask ourselves questions: ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you know the meaning of your conversion and baptism? Don’t you know that you have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection? Don’t you know that you have been enslaved to God and have committed yourself to his obedience? Don’t you know these things? Don’t you know who you are?’ We must go on pressing ourselves with such questions, until we reply to ourselves: ‘Yes, I *do* know who I am, a new person in Christ, and by the grace of God I shall live accordingly.’
On 28 May 1972 the Duke of Windsor, the uncrowned King Edward VIII, died in Paris. The same evening a television programme rehearsed the main events of his life. Extracts from earlier films were shown, in which he answered questions about his upbringing, brief reign and abdication. Recalling his boyhood as Prince of Wales, he said: ‘My father (King George V) was a strict disciplinarian. Sometimes when I had done something wrong, he would admonish me saying, “My dear boy, you must always remember who you are.”’ It is my conviction that our heavenly Father says the same to us every day: ‘My dear child, you must always remember who you are.’
The reason we should focus on eliminating even small sins from our lives is not because we are trying to earn something for ourselves or because we need to beat ourselves up for what some might describe as "minor" sins. No. We know we are forgiven and we will never be perfect in this flesh. Nevertheless, ALL our behavior is significant because of Whom we represent and who we are as His children. As believers, our lives, our actions and all our choices -- even in the smallest things -- should be salt and light to the world around us, demonstrations of His love and mercy, always pointing others to the Light. We are to be lighthouses to others. Our God given responsibility as His adopted children is to glorify Him in all we do. We must always remind ourselves Whose ambassador we are. But the first mistake we seem to make as human beings is to often make everything about ourselves in one way or another; to be internally, instead of externally, focused. I know I do it on a daily basis. God, forgive me.
That is why a book like "Respectable Sins" is so valuable to me. It reminds me to think about the sins I don't even notice in myself, the sins I dismiss as insignificant by my lack of attentiveness to them. But no sin is insignificant to our Holy God. Read the Old Testament commandments (not just the Ten). God had boundaries and guidelines for the smallest details of the lives of His people. The Law was given that we might know our need of Christ as Savior because if we fail in one aspect of God's Law, we fail in all. Jesus came and fulfilled the Law for us. But that reality should be the motivation for our obedience, it should not give us a sense of relief that our obedience, even in small things, is unnecessary. To respond that way to God's grace is the definition of "cheap grace." It matters greatly how we live our lives because we are to represent the transforming power of the cross to the world around us.
I say all of that with such humility because I know without a doubt that I do not obey God completely in everything I say and do. I am not professing to be the living embodiment of these convictions. I'm openly confessing my own sin and rebellion. But I want to be changed. I don't want to live in denial or in ignorance of my condition. I want to feel convicted of my sinful nature. I do not dare to stand before God on my own merit. To me, that is not beating myself up. The more convicted I am of my sin, the greater my humility is before God and the greater my gratitude for His provision in Christ. I don't ever want to have the attitude of "I think I'm doing pretty well."
I don't know how we can be as thankful as we should be for Christ's sacrifice on our behalf if we take our sin lightly. Our sin, our rebellion, our selfishness nailed Jesus to the cross. Even our "minor" sins. How can I love Him with my whole heart, mind and soul and take any sin lightly?
The last six chapters of Bridges' book focused on the weeds of anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue and worldliness. He concludes with a chapter entitled "Where do we go from here?" I hope my posts have made you want to read this book. I will conclude this post with a portion of what he writes in this final chapter:
If you have stayed with me this far, you know that we have worked through some pretty bad stuff. We have looked in detail at many of the subtle sins we tolerate in our lives. At times, this may have been painful. I hope it has, because that means you have been honest enough and humble enough to admit the presence of some of these sins in your own life. And in this, there is hope. Remember, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" (1 Peter 5:5).
The opening statements of the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:1-7) should encourage you. The poor in spirit and those who mourn are those who are conscious of their own sinfulness. Because of this, they are meek and merciful in their attitudes and actions toward others, and they hunger and thirst for the righteousness that they realize they have not yet attained. Their whole demeanor is exactly opposite that of the proud, morally superior, self-righteous person. Yet Jesus said that they (not the self-righteous people) are the ones who are blessed.
In telling His parables, Jesus created the characters to make His points in a most forceful way. Consider the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple (see Luke 18:9-14). In the eyes of the Jews, the contrast between a Pharisee and a hated tax collector could not have been greater. And in the parable of the prodigal son (see Luke 15:11-32), the son's dispicable actions would have scandalized His Jewish audience. Yet in the two parables, it is the self-righteous Pharisee and the self-righteous older brother who receive the implied condemnation of Jesus. Meanwhile, the tax collector goes away justified, and the repentant prodigal son is received into the warm embrace of his father. Does this not tell us something about how much God hates the sin of self-righteousness and how He responds graciously to a humble and contrite spirit?
...In Luke's account of the sinful woman who washed and anointed the feet of Jesus (7:36-50), Jesus said, "He who is forgiven little, loves little" (verse 47). The opposite is also true, as Jesus clearly indicates in verses 41-43; that is, he who is forgiven much, loves much. Simon the Pharisee did not realize how sinful he was and how much he needed to be forgiven, so he loved little or actually not at all. The sinful woman realized how sinful she was and how much she had been forgiven, so she loved much...The apostle Paul wrote that it is Christ's love for us that constrains us to live for Him (see 2 Corinthians 5:14-15). Such love for Him that will drive out our love for the world can only be a response to the deep, heartfelt sense of His love for us.
So we need to be honest and humble enough to admit our subtle sins in order to experience the love that comes through the forgiveness of those sins. But we must also face them in order to deal with them. The worst sin of all, in practical terms, is the denial of the subtle sins in our lives. We cannot deal with them until we admit their presence. The first step in dealing with any sin is to acknowledge it and repent in one's attitude toward it. This doesn't mean we will make rapid progress in getting those sins out of our lives. The flesh doesn't give up that easily. Rather, to use Paul's term, these subtle sins must be "put to death" (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5). Furthermore, we have developed habits of sinning. We have developed habits of ungodly thinking: anxiety, self-indulgence, critical attitudes, gossip, and the like. So where do we go from here? How can we apply the overall message of this book?
...Remember that our progressive sanctification -- that is, our putting off sin and putting on Christlikeness -- rests on two foundation stones: the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Always look to Christ and His perfect righteousness for your standing and your acceptableness to God. Remember, if you are united to Christ, God sees you clothed in His perfect righteousness. And always look to the Holy Spirit to enable you to deal with sin in your life and to produce in you the fruit of the Spirit.
The world around us watches us even as it ridicules our values and rejects our message. We may think our subtle sins are hidden from their view, but in some way they see them. They pick up our self-righteousness, our anger, and our judgmentalism. They think of us as "holier-than-thou" people or else they see us as hypocrites who do not practice what we preach. Dealing with our "acceptable" sins in humility and honesty can go a long way in dispelling that image. Finally, let me repeat the words of 1 Peter 5:5: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
So, in practice we should constantly be reminding ourselves who we are. We need to learn to talk to ourselves, and ask ourselves questions: ‘Don’t you know? Don’t you know the meaning of your conversion and baptism? Don’t you know that you have been united to Christ in his death and resurrection? Don’t you know that you have been enslaved to God and have committed yourself to his obedience? Don’t you know these things? Don’t you know who you are?’ We must go on pressing ourselves with such questions, until we reply to ourselves: ‘Yes, I *do* know who I am, a new person in Christ, and by the grace of God I shall live accordingly.’
On 28 May 1972 the Duke of Windsor, the uncrowned King Edward VIII, died in Paris. The same evening a television programme rehearsed the main events of his life. Extracts from earlier films were shown, in which he answered questions about his upbringing, brief reign and abdication. Recalling his boyhood as Prince of Wales, he said: ‘My father (King George V) was a strict disciplinarian. Sometimes when I had done something wrong, he would admonish me saying, “My dear boy, you must always remember who you are.”’ It is my conviction that our heavenly Father says the same to us every day: ‘My dear child, you must always remember who you are.’
The reason we should focus on eliminating even small sins from our lives is not because we are trying to earn something for ourselves or because we need to beat ourselves up for what some might describe as "minor" sins. No. We know we are forgiven and we will never be perfect in this flesh. Nevertheless, ALL our behavior is significant because of Whom we represent and who we are as His children. As believers, our lives, our actions and all our choices -- even in the smallest things -- should be salt and light to the world around us, demonstrations of His love and mercy, always pointing others to the Light. We are to be lighthouses to others. Our God given responsibility as His adopted children is to glorify Him in all we do. We must always remind ourselves Whose ambassador we are. But the first mistake we seem to make as human beings is to often make everything about ourselves in one way or another; to be internally, instead of externally, focused. I know I do it on a daily basis. God, forgive me.
That is why a book like "Respectable Sins" is so valuable to me. It reminds me to think about the sins I don't even notice in myself, the sins I dismiss as insignificant by my lack of attentiveness to them. But no sin is insignificant to our Holy God. Read the Old Testament commandments (not just the Ten). God had boundaries and guidelines for the smallest details of the lives of His people. The Law was given that we might know our need of Christ as Savior because if we fail in one aspect of God's Law, we fail in all. Jesus came and fulfilled the Law for us. But that reality should be the motivation for our obedience, it should not give us a sense of relief that our obedience, even in small things, is unnecessary. To respond that way to God's grace is the definition of "cheap grace." It matters greatly how we live our lives because we are to represent the transforming power of the cross to the world around us.
I say all of that with such humility because I know without a doubt that I do not obey God completely in everything I say and do. I am not professing to be the living embodiment of these convictions. I'm openly confessing my own sin and rebellion. But I want to be changed. I don't want to live in denial or in ignorance of my condition. I want to feel convicted of my sinful nature. I do not dare to stand before God on my own merit. To me, that is not beating myself up. The more convicted I am of my sin, the greater my humility is before God and the greater my gratitude for His provision in Christ. I don't ever want to have the attitude of "I think I'm doing pretty well."
I don't know how we can be as thankful as we should be for Christ's sacrifice on our behalf if we take our sin lightly. Our sin, our rebellion, our selfishness nailed Jesus to the cross. Even our "minor" sins. How can I love Him with my whole heart, mind and soul and take any sin lightly?
The last six chapters of Bridges' book focused on the weeds of anger, judgmentalism, envy, jealousy, sins of the tongue and worldliness. He concludes with a chapter entitled "Where do we go from here?" I hope my posts have made you want to read this book. I will conclude this post with a portion of what he writes in this final chapter:
If you have stayed with me this far, you know that we have worked through some pretty bad stuff. We have looked in detail at many of the subtle sins we tolerate in our lives. At times, this may have been painful. I hope it has, because that means you have been honest enough and humble enough to admit the presence of some of these sins in your own life. And in this, there is hope. Remember, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble" (1 Peter 5:5).
The opening statements of the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:1-7) should encourage you. The poor in spirit and those who mourn are those who are conscious of their own sinfulness. Because of this, they are meek and merciful in their attitudes and actions toward others, and they hunger and thirst for the righteousness that they realize they have not yet attained. Their whole demeanor is exactly opposite that of the proud, morally superior, self-righteous person. Yet Jesus said that they (not the self-righteous people) are the ones who are blessed.
In telling His parables, Jesus created the characters to make His points in a most forceful way. Consider the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the temple (see Luke 18:9-14). In the eyes of the Jews, the contrast between a Pharisee and a hated tax collector could not have been greater. And in the parable of the prodigal son (see Luke 15:11-32), the son's dispicable actions would have scandalized His Jewish audience. Yet in the two parables, it is the self-righteous Pharisee and the self-righteous older brother who receive the implied condemnation of Jesus. Meanwhile, the tax collector goes away justified, and the repentant prodigal son is received into the warm embrace of his father. Does this not tell us something about how much God hates the sin of self-righteousness and how He responds graciously to a humble and contrite spirit?
...In Luke's account of the sinful woman who washed and anointed the feet of Jesus (7:36-50), Jesus said, "He who is forgiven little, loves little" (verse 47). The opposite is also true, as Jesus clearly indicates in verses 41-43; that is, he who is forgiven much, loves much. Simon the Pharisee did not realize how sinful he was and how much he needed to be forgiven, so he loved little or actually not at all. The sinful woman realized how sinful she was and how much she had been forgiven, so she loved much...The apostle Paul wrote that it is Christ's love for us that constrains us to live for Him (see 2 Corinthians 5:14-15). Such love for Him that will drive out our love for the world can only be a response to the deep, heartfelt sense of His love for us.
So we need to be honest and humble enough to admit our subtle sins in order to experience the love that comes through the forgiveness of those sins. But we must also face them in order to deal with them. The worst sin of all, in practical terms, is the denial of the subtle sins in our lives. We cannot deal with them until we admit their presence. The first step in dealing with any sin is to acknowledge it and repent in one's attitude toward it. This doesn't mean we will make rapid progress in getting those sins out of our lives. The flesh doesn't give up that easily. Rather, to use Paul's term, these subtle sins must be "put to death" (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5). Furthermore, we have developed habits of sinning. We have developed habits of ungodly thinking: anxiety, self-indulgence, critical attitudes, gossip, and the like. So where do we go from here? How can we apply the overall message of this book?
...Remember that our progressive sanctification -- that is, our putting off sin and putting on Christlikeness -- rests on two foundation stones: the righteousness of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. Always look to Christ and His perfect righteousness for your standing and your acceptableness to God. Remember, if you are united to Christ, God sees you clothed in His perfect righteousness. And always look to the Holy Spirit to enable you to deal with sin in your life and to produce in you the fruit of the Spirit.
The world around us watches us even as it ridicules our values and rejects our message. We may think our subtle sins are hidden from their view, but in some way they see them. They pick up our self-righteousness, our anger, and our judgmentalism. They think of us as "holier-than-thou" people or else they see us as hypocrites who do not practice what we preach. Dealing with our "acceptable" sins in humility and honesty can go a long way in dispelling that image. Finally, let me repeat the words of 1 Peter 5:5: "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
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