Although the notion of self-control flies in the face of modern-day dogma, wherein we are told that having it and practicing it is akin to legalism, men being without self-control within the church will be one of the signs heralding the last days. Either you have mastery over your urges, or your urges have mastery over you. Either you have control over your flesh, or your flesh controls you to the point that in the rare moments of lucidity, you wonder how you got where you are, so far away from anything resembling joy, peace, or fulfillment. There is no in-between, and the less one exercises self-control in their day-to-day life, the easier it becomes for the devil to set a snare and shackle the individual anew. It is eye-opening and somewhat terrifying to realize how much one’s own flesh despises the spiritual man and the lengths to which it will go to ensure its destruction, even if that likewise guarantees the destruction of the flesh itself.
It’s akin to the story of the tortoise and the scorpion,
wherein, after hours of begging and reassurance, the tortoise finally relents
and agrees to ferry the scorpion across the pond, only for the scorpion to
sting the tortoise halfway through the journey.
“Why would you do such a thing,” the tortoise asks, “you’ve
assured our mutual demise. Now we will both die.”
“Because it is my nature,” the scorpion says as they sink to
the bottom. It is the nature of men’s flesh to be at enmity with the spiritual
man. However much the flesh protests and insists that mutually assured
destruction is not its purpose, the end result of sin always is. There is a
reason we are commanded to crucify the flesh, and it’s not to cause ourselves undue
pain; it is to ensure that the spiritual man survives and thrives.
We all know what sin is. The Bible makes it clear, and there
is no ambiguity about it, but much of what the Bible calls sin is common
practice in many churches, and we somehow always find a way to justify it,
excuse it, or pretend as though it’s not sin. We either point to the changing
times, the changing culture, changing appetites, or the one that gets my goad,
an evolving understanding of what it is to be a believer, yet fail to contend
with the reality that we serve a God who changes not. Just because men have
decided a particular practice is no longer a sin does not mean that God agrees
or that He likewise has gone back on His word and now celebrates that which He
once found abhorrent.
Galatians 5:19-21, “Now the works of the flesh are evident,
which are: adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery,
hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions,
dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like; of
which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you in the past, that those
who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”
Whenever men proceed to give license to practices that God
has decreed as sinful, they are undermining the authority of God and
diminishing His sovereignty. That only serves to embolden those without
self-control, and because sin is corrosive and ever-growing, by the time it’s
ferreted out, it’s done so because the pastor was on the news getting arrested
for the gravest of crimes.
Self-control is a necessary virtue in the life of a believer,
and the absence thereof will always have them making choices they will later regret,
feel shame about, or draw them away from the light into the shadows where the sharpened
claws and sharpened fangs await.
James 4:7, “Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil, and he
will flee from you.”
Self-control is how we resist the devil. The sad reality is
that many who fall into repeated habitual sin, however that sin might manifest,
do so because they have not exercised self-control in a given situation and so
gave in to the temptation that was proffered to them. The devil didn’t make you
do it; he can’t make you do anything. What he can do is provide the
opportunity. He can and does put out that piece of cheese, hoping to disguise
the trap it’s trying to hide.
The master you love is the master you obey. The master you
love is the master you follow. Your nature is revealed not in what you say but
in what you do, the company you keep, the way you spend your time and
resources, and on whom. Some people love their sin more than they love God, and
it shows. They may profess love for Him, but words without actions are only
words and nothing more.
If I told my wife I loved her every morning upon waking, then
proceeded to spend the rest of the day with a stranger, buying her flowers and
treating her to dinner, would my words hold any weight? Would my actions
confirm my assertion that I loved her, or would they stand as a testimony
against me?
When you love someone, whether God, your spouse, or your
children, your heart’s desire is to spend as much time with them as you can.
You prioritize them, you nurture the relationship, you are attentive to their
needs, and you pursue an ever-deepening bond. When all that those who profess
love for Jesus have ever done was raise a hand in church, then nevermore
considered Him, desired Him, or sought to know Him in a deeper, more meaningful
way, their profession, however boisterous, is demonstrably false.
When the modern-day church redefined salvation from a
lifelong journey of submission to God and obedience to His Word to a one-time
experience, a single prayer, or a walk down the aisle, it opened the floodgates
to all the things Paul warns about as being the cause for the perilous times
that would come.
The frivolous attitude with which many treat things of
eternal import is disheartening and troubling. This isn’t just an American
Christianity issue or an issue pertaining to a specific denomination. The
attitude is cross-denominational and is readily observed in every Western
nation, wherein there is no persecution of Christianity and no cost to calling
oneself a Christian.
Paul makes it clear that there is a high cost to practicing such things. He reiterates that there are consequences to living in accordance with the desires of the flesh rather than in obedience to the Word of God, and it’s not a slap on the wrist or a disappointed look from the Almighty. There is no ambiguity in his declaration that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God, yet many ignore or brush off this dire warning as they do much of scripture that does not align with their compromised state.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment