So perhaps one sense in which sexual sin is more terrible (ala 1 Corinthians 6) is not that it constitutes a more heinous offense against God than, say, pride or gossip or selfishness do. Rather, might it not be that sexual sin is singled out because it is more dangerous to those who choose to participate in it? Jones has put forth a daring piece of argumentation, based on much indisputable evidence, for just such an interpretation. What if sexual sin was especially liable to blind us from honest self-examination, and to harden us to the point that we are unable any longer to perceive and approve of the most beautiful moral goods in the universe? What if it is in fact that case that only the pure in heart will see God? Then it would seem that we can never be too hasty to listen to Paul’s recommendation: “Flee from sexual immorality, for every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.” The danger in delaying from obedience here is more serious than we can ever possibly imagine.Read the whole thing.
Showing posts with label Sin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sin. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
The Intellectual Danger of Sexual Sin
Nick Nowalk, whose quotes have graced this site before, writes a frightening essay on the significance of sexual sin for the right thinking of individuals, and likely, even modernity. Here is his conclusion:
Monday, May 09, 2011
Questioning Azazel
In Leviticus 16, the word Azazel is used four times. In fact, Azazel is only used four times in the entire Bible, all in Leviticus 16. This wouldn’t be too big a deal, except that this chapter describes the ritual process surrounding the Day of Atonement. Yes, that Day of Atonement, the one that Jesus ultimately fulfills once and for all on the cross.
On the Day of Atonement, two goats are selected. The high priest casts lots and one goat is set aside for the Lord, and the other goat is set aside for Azazel. Huh? Who or what is Azazel?
It turns out that there are three or four major options. The first option takes the original Hebrew word and breaks it up into parts, one part meaning “goat” or “goats,” and the other part meaning “to go away.” This is where the idea of scapegoat comes from, the Goat that Went Away. The second major option is that Azazel is the proper name for a demon of the wilderness, maybe even the Devil himself. Apparently, an increasing number of scholars today are leaning toward the second option, which is why the ESV Bible renders the proper noun Azazel rather than using the generic word scapegoat as the NASB or KJV does.
This brings to light one of the most difficult things I have faced as I have gone through the last six years of theological education, namely, the Bible often seems to create more questions than it answers. Most certainly, the Bible asks more questions than the average church attendee wants to think it does. The Bible is not a bunch of pithy sayings used to comfort people or bang people over the head with. It is the written word, the revelation of the Living God, who is infinite, and therefore infinitely complex.
I am not advocating some pomo idea that the Bible can hold contradictory truths and that be OK. Instead, I am recognizing that we look through a glass darkly and there is much we don’t understand. God is infinite and explodes all the boxes we try to put him in. His Bible, his word is the same way. It reveals an infinite God and exposes a bunch of questions along the way.
So, what to do? How do we handle all these questions? Some days I attack them with relish, believing wholeheartedly what my friend loves to say, “Apparent contradictions are theological goldmines.” Other days, I can waver in my faith and wonder how there can be so many disparate views and understandings of the same passage.
It is at those times that I have to stop and center myself on the truths in the Bible that are rock solid, the truths that are the core of my faith and are so solid no question can assail their walls.
The Resurrection.
Paul understood the crux of this when wrote to the Corinthians, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” A few paragraphs later he added the oft quoted, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’”
The core reality that I hold on to is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no other truth like this truth. There is no other defining reality that separates the sheep from the goats like this reality. There is no other historical event upon which belief determines the eternal destiny of souls. That Jesus Christ be raised is the defining moment in history upon which everything balances.
So, while I still question Azazel, I remember that my faith is not dependent on who or what that term refers to. I can worship a God who is complex and deep, whose words are wrought with layers of meaning, and rejoice in both the complexity and the simplicity of who he is.
On the Day of Atonement, two goats are selected. The high priest casts lots and one goat is set aside for the Lord, and the other goat is set aside for Azazel. Huh? Who or what is Azazel?
It turns out that there are three or four major options. The first option takes the original Hebrew word and breaks it up into parts, one part meaning “goat” or “goats,” and the other part meaning “to go away.” This is where the idea of scapegoat comes from, the Goat that Went Away. The second major option is that Azazel is the proper name for a demon of the wilderness, maybe even the Devil himself. Apparently, an increasing number of scholars today are leaning toward the second option, which is why the ESV Bible renders the proper noun Azazel rather than using the generic word scapegoat as the NASB or KJV does.
This brings to light one of the most difficult things I have faced as I have gone through the last six years of theological education, namely, the Bible often seems to create more questions than it answers. Most certainly, the Bible asks more questions than the average church attendee wants to think it does. The Bible is not a bunch of pithy sayings used to comfort people or bang people over the head with. It is the written word, the revelation of the Living God, who is infinite, and therefore infinitely complex.
I am not advocating some pomo idea that the Bible can hold contradictory truths and that be OK. Instead, I am recognizing that we look through a glass darkly and there is much we don’t understand. God is infinite and explodes all the boxes we try to put him in. His Bible, his word is the same way. It reveals an infinite God and exposes a bunch of questions along the way.
So, what to do? How do we handle all these questions? Some days I attack them with relish, believing wholeheartedly what my friend loves to say, “Apparent contradictions are theological goldmines.” Other days, I can waver in my faith and wonder how there can be so many disparate views and understandings of the same passage.
It is at those times that I have to stop and center myself on the truths in the Bible that are rock solid, the truths that are the core of my faith and are so solid no question can assail their walls.
The Resurrection.
Paul understood the crux of this when wrote to the Corinthians, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” A few paragraphs later he added the oft quoted, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’”
The core reality that I hold on to is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is no other truth like this truth. There is no other defining reality that separates the sheep from the goats like this reality. There is no other historical event upon which belief determines the eternal destiny of souls. That Jesus Christ be raised is the defining moment in history upon which everything balances.
So, while I still question Azazel, I remember that my faith is not dependent on who or what that term refers to. I can worship a God who is complex and deep, whose words are wrought with layers of meaning, and rejoice in both the complexity and the simplicity of who he is.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Seeing Sin Rightly
Two things came together yesterday to cause this post. The first was a paragraph quoted by Alan Jacobs on his common-book website, More than 95 Theses, and re-tweeted by my friend. Here’s the quote:
If a man lusts in his heart, what are the consequences? If a man yells at his children or struggles with pride or wastes time when he should be working or is not grateful to the Lord for all the good gifts he has received, how does he feel the weight, the significance of his sin?
If a woman gossips to her friends or doesn’t return the five dollars the clerk mistakenly gave her at the checkout counter or doesn’t honor her husband or isn’t thankful that the Lord has sustained her family for another day, how does she feel the force of her sin?
The reality, I think, for Christians in this modern era, is that we don’t, no, we can’t, comprehend the hideousness, the disgust, awfulness of our sin, until we understand that sin is hideous, disgusting, and awful. How often have you heard someone cluck about so-and-so, “He won’t really wake-up until he hits bottom”? The point is that modern people seemingly have to be confronted with dire consequences of sin before they realize the seriousness of the sin. A woman has to divorce her husband before he realizes that his addiction to pornography is hideous. A man has to go to jail before he realizes that cheating on taxes is a breaking of Jesus’ command.
The second thing was reading from the first chapter of Leviticus. Note the use of the personal pronouns in these verses.
He shall kill the bull before the Lord.
I had previously thought the priest did all the killing. How do I know it is the sinner and not the priest? Because of the pronouns. “He shall kill the bull before the Lord, and Aaron’s sons the priest shall bring the blood….” In the first paragraph God says, “When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord…. If his offering is a burnt offering….He shall bring it to the entrance…, that he may be accepted….He shall lay his hand on the head….Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.”
Aaron’s sons aren’t doing the killing, they are catching the blood and flinging it against the alter, but the sinner is doing the slaughter. Keep reading in this chapter and see how in each case the sinner kills the animal, except for turtledoves and pigeons, where the priest twists off its head. (I talked with the BCS OT professor and he tentatively agreed with me. Granted, Hebrew pronouns can be difficult, but it seems that the sinner leads the animal, kills it, and from then on the priests do all the rest of the ritual work.)
When was the last time you slit an animal’s throat?
So, putting these things together, it seems that the sacrificial system had a built-in way to help people feel the hideousness, the disgust, the awfulness, the weight of sin, in a way we moderns can’t comprehend. Some animal really had to die when they committed sin.
The truth, for a New Testament Christian, is that someone had to die when we sin as well. This One’s death was hideous, disgusting, and awful. The weight of his death brought darkness upon the earth for hours and tore the veil between the people and the Holy of Holies. The weight of his death broke open graves and caused the dead to walk alive. The force of his death changed the reality of the universe from that point forward. His death is the determining factor for the fate of humanity.
Jesus is the spotless lamb upon whom believing Christians placed their hands and drew the knife across his throat.
Praise God.
Hate sin.
“The Lenten season is devoted especially to what the theologians call contrition, and so every day in Lent a prayer is said in which we ask God to give us ‘contrite hearts.’ Contrite, as you know, is a word translated from Latin, meaning crushed or pulverized. Now modern people complain that there is too much of that note in our Prayer Book. They do not wish their hearts to be pulverized, and they do not feel that they can sincerely say that they are ‘miserable offenders.’ I once knew a regular churchgoer who never repeated the words, ‘the burden of them (i.e. his sins) is intolerable’, because he did not feel that they were intolerable. But he was not understanding the words. I think the Prayer Book is very seldom talking primarily about our feelings; that is (I think) the first mistake we’re apt to make about these words ‘we are miserable offenders.’ I do not think whether we are feeling miserable or not matters. I think it is using the word miserable in the old sense — meaning an object of pity. That a person can be a proper object of pity when he is not feeling miserable, you can easily understand if you imagine yourself looking down from a height on two crowded express trains that are traveling towards one another along the same line at 60 miles an hour. You can see that in forty seconds there will be a head-on collision. I think it would be very natural to say about the passengers of these trains, that they were objects of pity. This would not mean that they felt miserable themselves; but they would certainly be proper objects of pity. I think that is the sense in which to take the word ‘miserable.’ The Prayer Book does not mean that we should feel miserable but that if we could see things from a sufficient height above we should all realize that we are in fact proper objects of pity.”While this quote is really directed at the reception of the Prayer Book, what is says about modern people is worth noting. How much of the reality that modern people “do not wish their hearts to be pulverized,” and “do not feel that they can sincerely say that they are ‘miserable offenders’” is because we, modern people, do not feel the horror, yes, horror of sin.
If a man lusts in his heart, what are the consequences? If a man yells at his children or struggles with pride or wastes time when he should be working or is not grateful to the Lord for all the good gifts he has received, how does he feel the weight, the significance of his sin?
If a woman gossips to her friends or doesn’t return the five dollars the clerk mistakenly gave her at the checkout counter or doesn’t honor her husband or isn’t thankful that the Lord has sustained her family for another day, how does she feel the force of her sin?
The reality, I think, for Christians in this modern era, is that we don’t, no, we can’t, comprehend the hideousness, the disgust, awfulness of our sin, until we understand that sin is hideous, disgusting, and awful. How often have you heard someone cluck about so-and-so, “He won’t really wake-up until he hits bottom”? The point is that modern people seemingly have to be confronted with dire consequences of sin before they realize the seriousness of the sin. A woman has to divorce her husband before he realizes that his addiction to pornography is hideous. A man has to go to jail before he realizes that cheating on taxes is a breaking of Jesus’ command.
The second thing was reading from the first chapter of Leviticus. Note the use of the personal pronouns in these verses.
The LORD called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When any one of you brings an offering to the LORD, you shall bring your offering of livestock from the herd or from the flock.
“If his offering is a burnt offering from the herd, he shall offer a male without blemish. He shall bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting, that he may be accepted before the LORD. He shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. Then he shall kill the bull before the LORD, and Aaron’s sons the priests shall bring the blood and throw the blood against the sides of the altar that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. Then he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces, and the sons of Aaron the priest shall put fire on the altar and arrange wood on the fire” (Leviticus 1:1–7).What shocked me was that the person who leads the male animal from the herd to the tent of meeting is the sinner. The person who lays his hands on the head of that animal is the sinner. The person who takes the knife in his hand and with a nervous jerk tries to slice the animal’s throat, feeling its warms blood spill out over his hands and the animal jump and kick and try to get free, all the while getting weaker as its life-blood drains away into the priests pot.
He shall kill the bull before the Lord.
I had previously thought the priest did all the killing. How do I know it is the sinner and not the priest? Because of the pronouns. “He shall kill the bull before the Lord, and Aaron’s sons the priest shall bring the blood….” In the first paragraph God says, “When any one of you brings an offering to the Lord…. If his offering is a burnt offering….He shall bring it to the entrance…, that he may be accepted….He shall lay his hand on the head….Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord.”
Aaron’s sons aren’t doing the killing, they are catching the blood and flinging it against the alter, but the sinner is doing the slaughter. Keep reading in this chapter and see how in each case the sinner kills the animal, except for turtledoves and pigeons, where the priest twists off its head. (I talked with the BCS OT professor and he tentatively agreed with me. Granted, Hebrew pronouns can be difficult, but it seems that the sinner leads the animal, kills it, and from then on the priests do all the rest of the ritual work.)
When was the last time you slit an animal’s throat?
So, putting these things together, it seems that the sacrificial system had a built-in way to help people feel the hideousness, the disgust, the awfulness, the weight of sin, in a way we moderns can’t comprehend. Some animal really had to die when they committed sin.
The truth, for a New Testament Christian, is that someone had to die when we sin as well. This One’s death was hideous, disgusting, and awful. The weight of his death brought darkness upon the earth for hours and tore the veil between the people and the Holy of Holies. The weight of his death broke open graves and caused the dead to walk alive. The force of his death changed the reality of the universe from that point forward. His death is the determining factor for the fate of humanity.
Jesus is the spotless lamb upon whom believing Christians placed their hands and drew the knife across his throat.
Praise God.
Hate sin.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
The Lie
Way back in the day when I was in a small church youth group, the youth pastor repeatedly taught on what he called "The Lie." He would quote Romans 1:24-25, "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen." He was a wise man. I remember very little about high school youth group except for this: The Lie is that something or someone other than God can satisfy.
In America, or at least in the world I live in, everything screams at me to find satisfaction in something other than God. I am a huge Apple fan, and to some extent have bought the line that I will be happy if I have the latest iPhone or MacBook Pro. But what about magazine covers, billboards, movie trailers, TV commercials? Do they not all scream the Lie? If you look like me you will be happy. If you own me you will be happy. If you eat here you will be happy. If you watch me you will be happy. If you read me you will be happy.
Now, I know that dressing, eating, watching, and reading are not sins in themselves. The Lie comes in when we believe that dressing, eating, watching, and reading will satisfy more than God does. That is the Lie, that something or someone other than God will satsify. As soon as we believe it, we have exchanged the truth about God for the Lie.
My current pastor has a favorite phrase which teaches a similar truth, in fact it might simply be the flipside of the same coin: God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him. In other words, when we worship God as the most glorious of all beings, then he also shows himself to be the most satisfying. Glorifying God and delighting in God are one thing.
The reality which is opposed to the Lie is that God alone can satisfy. The Psalmist, in Ps 81:11-16, said something very similar to Paul:
11 “But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.
12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to follow their own counsels.
13 Oh, that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!
14 I would soon subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe toward him,
and their fate would last forever.
16 But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat,
and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
As wonderful as iPhones and MackBook Pros are, as fun as it is to sip a latte on the porch at Starbucks, as exciting as losing yourself in the latest movie, as classy as wearing the latest fashion may be, they will turn sour and false if we think satifsaction lies in them. We must look beyond them to the one true satisfaction, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as revealed in Jesus Christ.
In America, or at least in the world I live in, everything screams at me to find satisfaction in something other than God. I am a huge Apple fan, and to some extent have bought the line that I will be happy if I have the latest iPhone or MacBook Pro. But what about magazine covers, billboards, movie trailers, TV commercials? Do they not all scream the Lie? If you look like me you will be happy. If you own me you will be happy. If you eat here you will be happy. If you watch me you will be happy. If you read me you will be happy.
Now, I know that dressing, eating, watching, and reading are not sins in themselves. The Lie comes in when we believe that dressing, eating, watching, and reading will satisfy more than God does. That is the Lie, that something or someone other than God will satsify. As soon as we believe it, we have exchanged the truth about God for the Lie.
My current pastor has a favorite phrase which teaches a similar truth, in fact it might simply be the flipside of the same coin: God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in him. In other words, when we worship God as the most glorious of all beings, then he also shows himself to be the most satisfying. Glorifying God and delighting in God are one thing.
The reality which is opposed to the Lie is that God alone can satisfy. The Psalmist, in Ps 81:11-16, said something very similar to Paul:
11 “But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel would not submit to me.
12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,
to follow their own counsels.
13 Oh, that my people would listen to me,
that Israel would walk in my ways!
14 I would soon subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.
15 Those who hate the LORD would cringe toward him,
and their fate would last forever.
16 But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat,
and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.”
As wonderful as iPhones and MackBook Pros are, as fun as it is to sip a latte on the porch at Starbucks, as exciting as losing yourself in the latest movie, as classy as wearing the latest fashion may be, they will turn sour and false if we think satifsaction lies in them. We must look beyond them to the one true satisfaction, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as revealed in Jesus Christ.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Millennial Views in a Statement of Faith: Sin.
Justin Taylor quotes Mark Dever saying that having a millennial view written into a church's statement of faith is sin. Having experienced this sort of thing first hand, I find Dever's quote refreshing. I agree with Dever and believe that a long-term consequence of this sin is a severe danger to the health of the church, since it breeds an "us vs. them" mentality. It certainly divides more than it unifies.
I think that millennial views need not be among those doctrines that divide us. . . . I am suggesting that what you believe about the millennium—how you interpret these thousand years—is not something that it is necessary for us to agree upon in order to have a congregation together. The Lord Jesus Christ prayed in John 17:21 that we Christians might be one. Of course all true Christians are one in that we have his Spirit, we share his Spirit, we desire to live out that unity. But that unity is supposed to be evident as a testimony to the world around us. Therefore, I conclude that we should end our cooperations together with other Christians (whether near-ly in a congregation, or more at length in working together in missions and church planting and evangelism and building up the ministry) only with the greatest of care, lest we rend the body of Christ for whose unity he’s prayed and given himself. Therefore, I conclude that it is sin to divide the body of Christ—to divide the body that he prayed would be united. Therefore for us to conclude that we must agree upon a certain view of alcohol, or a certain view of schooling, or a certain view of meat sacrificed to idols, or a certain view of the millennium in order to have fellowship together is, I think, not only unnecessary for the body of Christ, but it is therefore both unwarranted and therefore condemned by scripture. So if you’re a pastor and you’re listening to me, you understand me correctly if you think I’m saying you are in sin if you lead your congregation to have a statement of faith that requires a particular millennial view. I do not understand why that has to be a matter of uniformity in order to have Christian unity in a local congregation.Read Justin's entire post to find links to sermons by Mark Dever and Tom Schreiner, as well as an article by Sam Storms on the problems with the Premillennial view.
Monday, July 06, 2009
If sin made sense, it wouldn't be sin.
Douglas Wilson writes,
I know this from first-hand experience, and I expect, with a little honesty, that you do too. So, what is the solution? The gospel, of course. The teacher, whoever that might be, must be able to preach a good-ol' come to Jesus sermon—to the dead.
But people act the way they do because of sin. And if sin made sense, it wouldn't be sin. This is the mystery of lawlessness. A man can engage in behavior that is self-destructive, knowing full well that it is self-destructive, and do it anyway, with his eyes wide open. Wisdom says in Proverbs that all who hate her love death (Prov. 8:36). When you are trying to set the paths of life before a man who loves death, and you are assuming that he is doing what he does because he actually doesn't love death, this is going to result in a very clear, cogent, and impotent teacher. The law can't save.Read the whole thing if you want, but this paragraph was really all I wanted to post on. In other words, Wilson's original post is well worth reading, but my point is to acknowledge the irrationality of sin, namely that "A man can engage in behavior that is self-destructive, knowing full well that it is self-destructive, and do it anyway, with his eyes wide open."
I know this from first-hand experience, and I expect, with a little honesty, that you do too. So, what is the solution? The gospel, of course. The teacher, whoever that might be, must be able to preach a good-ol' come to Jesus sermon—to the dead.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Regarding secret, hidden sin...
Douglas Wilson writes,
Three solutions present themselves—two of them false and one true. The first false solution is to continue to hide the sin, on one's own terms, and in one's own way. But Moses' words should follow all who seek this way out—"be sure your sin will find you out." The second seeks to combine biblical truths with pragmatic solutions. "I confessed it to God. What else . . .?" Sometimes there is nothing else but to receive forgiveness. But in other situations, much remains to be done. Stolen goods must still be restored, slandered brothers and sisters must be asked for forgiveness, and broken covenants must be put right. And so the third way, the only effective way, is to want God's mercy so much that you are willing do exactly what He says when you apply to Him for it.Read the whole thing.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Lust, Temptation, and Sin
Often times, when men talk about lust, they put the onus on the word lust. I lusted yesterday. While this is true, I think the word has taken on a milder connotation than it should have in these scenarios—almost as if it is a respectable sin. Or, at least, it seems to have lost some of its teeth. The idea really should be I committed adultery yesterday. Ouch. That puts a tougher spin on it, doesn’t it?
Some times, when men are dealing with this sin, they try to draw a line between what constitutes lust and what does not. Making this distinction is important to determine whether sin is really happening or not. For instance, it is sometimes said in evangelical circles, "The first look is free, but if you look again, you have sinned." In other words, one might see an attractive woman and look away, because the first look is not sin, but if he looks again, then that is sin. This, of course, is a rather legalistic way of understanding the problem and can lead to long, lingering, first looks. Talking about lust in this way is really like walking up to a wolf and placing sheep’s clothing around its shoulders.
The important distinction needed is to cut past the soft-talk and deal directly with sin and temptation. The biblical reality is that temptation is going to happen. The issue is not that we look long or twice or at all, the issue is whether we sin. So, what constitutes sin? Does a long look constitute sin? Does a second look constitute sin? Both of these are the wrong question. What constitutes sin is the response in our heart. Do we want what we see? Sin is the wrong response to the temptation.
“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 Cor 10:13). Temptation is going to happen. Beautiful women will walk in front of you. The question is not whether you look long or twice. The issue at hand is how you respond to the temptation. According to Paul, God himself will not let you be tempted more than you are able. That seems to imply that you don’t have to sin, not only in this situation, but in any temptation. You don’t have to respond to the temptation with sin. So, how should we respond? Look to Jesus.
Verse 14 begins with therefore. Since no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man, therefore, flee from idolatry. How to do you flee from idolatry? “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:14-16) We look to Christ. We partake in his blood and in his body. We look to him as the serpent being lifted up. He became a curse for us and was hung on a tree, so that we do not have to sin any more, so that we may find the way of escape from temptation and may be able to endure it.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all men who believe, both Jew and Greek. The gospel of Jesus, crucified and risen, is the power of God unto salvation, both in the eternal sense and from sin. What a glorious truth!
So, it is wise and helpful to make sure you don’t look long and don’t look twice. But, don’t think that these acts save you or keep you from sin, because even a nanosecond look is long enough to sin, for sin is a heart response to the temptation. Instead look to Christ and his gospel. Pray to Christ as your way out of temptation. How you respond to the temptation is a heart issue, not an issue merely of the eyes.
Some times, when men are dealing with this sin, they try to draw a line between what constitutes lust and what does not. Making this distinction is important to determine whether sin is really happening or not. For instance, it is sometimes said in evangelical circles, "The first look is free, but if you look again, you have sinned." In other words, one might see an attractive woman and look away, because the first look is not sin, but if he looks again, then that is sin. This, of course, is a rather legalistic way of understanding the problem and can lead to long, lingering, first looks. Talking about lust in this way is really like walking up to a wolf and placing sheep’s clothing around its shoulders.
The important distinction needed is to cut past the soft-talk and deal directly with sin and temptation. The biblical reality is that temptation is going to happen. The issue is not that we look long or twice or at all, the issue is whether we sin. So, what constitutes sin? Does a long look constitute sin? Does a second look constitute sin? Both of these are the wrong question. What constitutes sin is the response in our heart. Do we want what we see? Sin is the wrong response to the temptation.
“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 Cor 10:13). Temptation is going to happen. Beautiful women will walk in front of you. The question is not whether you look long or twice. The issue at hand is how you respond to the temptation. According to Paul, God himself will not let you be tempted more than you are able. That seems to imply that you don’t have to sin, not only in this situation, but in any temptation. You don’t have to respond to the temptation with sin. So, how should we respond? Look to Jesus.
Verse 14 begins with therefore. Since no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man, therefore, flee from idolatry. How to do you flee from idolatry? “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor 10:14-16) We look to Christ. We partake in his blood and in his body. We look to him as the serpent being lifted up. He became a curse for us and was hung on a tree, so that we do not have to sin any more, so that we may find the way of escape from temptation and may be able to endure it.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all men who believe, both Jew and Greek. The gospel of Jesus, crucified and risen, is the power of God unto salvation, both in the eternal sense and from sin. What a glorious truth!
So, it is wise and helpful to make sure you don’t look long and don’t look twice. But, don’t think that these acts save you or keep you from sin, because even a nanosecond look is long enough to sin, for sin is a heart response to the temptation. Instead look to Christ and his gospel. Pray to Christ as your way out of temptation. How you respond to the temptation is a heart issue, not an issue merely of the eyes.
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