Study – Grow – Know

Mounting Tension within the Christian

October 28, 2012 at 2:48 PM Leave a comment

I was sitting in church today with my family and listened to our guest speaker.  He spoke on Matthew 11 mainly, though he also moved around the Scriptures.

One of the main things he spoke on was the conflict that always exists within the Christian and it has to do with sin, self, and service to Christ.  It of course got me thinking of my own life and commitment to Jesus.  How well do I serve Him?  How well do I emulate Him and His character?

One of the things I noticed recently (again) is that there appears to be this constant tension between the fact that I am righteous in God’s eyes because of my faith in Jesus and His redemptive work on my behalf.  In fact, Ephesians 2 is a great chapter on our position in Christ.  Paul tells us that we are actually seated with Him in the heavenlies.  Of course, that is the spiritual condition of every authentic believer.  Unfortunately, my physical condition is far less grand.

I deal with my faults, foibles, and flaws every day and it can be frustrating.  Now, it goes without saying that Satan, as the accuser, will do and say whatever it takes to bring us down, to make us feel guilt and start accusing ourselves of simply falling short.  At the same time, there are times when God will – through the Holy Spirit – bring us up short in order to point out something in our lives that He wants to eradicate.

It seems that no matter how much I want to serve God, I am constantly reminded of my inability to get through a day without giving into some temptation to be lazy, or to ignore what matters, or to shirk responsibility.  This is the constant tension and tragedy that exists for authentic Christians.

It should lead us all to ask ourselves whether being a Christian is easy as some make it out to be, or whether there are real challenges.  The truth – at least as far as I can tell from Scripture and seeing it in my own life – is that being a Christian on a daily basis is difficult work.  It is difficult because it involves dealing every day with our own fallen nature, a nature that has not yet been excised from us.  That won’t happen until after our death and we enter into eternity to stand before Him.

In the meantime, I must face the fact that moment by moment, my sin nature is active within me.  It will do whatever is necessary to draw me to follow its desires.  It takes an active decision on the part of my will to reject the temptations of the sin nature and willfully do what God wants me to do.  That is the very difficult part of being a Christian.

Let’s face it, there are times when we all do not want to do what we know we should.  Do I always want to help with the after-dinner dishes?  Do I always want to help fold the laundry?  Do I naturally and spontaneously pick up a broom and sweep the kitchen floor or clean out the cat’s litter box?  These are just as important for me to do as preaching the gospel to a lost person because it tells my wife that I love her, not in words, but in actions.

Isn’t this what Jesus did every day of His life?  He willingly set aside the desires He may have had in favor of fulfilling His Father’s will for that day, during those times when His natural will may have been pulling at Him to do something else.  Instead of following suit, He followed the Father’s lead.

I am nearly 56-years old.  I became a Christian when I was 13, so we’re talking 43 years of being a Christian.  I look back over my life and I see highs and lows.  I see the times I obeyed Him willingly and I see the times I went off and did my own thing, sometimes, for months at a time before He was able to call me back.  I don’t believe for a moment I lost my salvation, but I do believe that I had absolutely and without doubt, removed myself from the place of blessing (cf. John 15).  By the same token, I was certainly not bringing glory to His Name, was I?

Over time, I believe my commitment to Him has grown, having become much more solid.  I’m not sure why that is except that it appears that He gets all the credit for that.  In Matthew 11, starting with verse 29, Jesus points out that we should come to Him because in Him we will find rest.  He promises that His yoke is light and easy to bear.

I responded to His call on my life at the age of 13.  There have been times where things were rocky, but I have realized that over time, much of what has occurred in my life is because He is in my life through the indwelling enabling of the Holy Spirit.  Without Him, at best I would only be able to look as though I was actually a Christian because we can fool those in the world, can’t we?  In fact, we can even wind up fooling ourselves.  Of course, we cannot fool God.

I realize that as my life continues for as long as God will give me breath, the tension will exist between my own will and God’s will and may even become far more apparent.  Though Paul clearly tells me in various places in Romans and elsewhere that my bondage to sin and the sin nature has been broken, at times, it still feels as though I continue in bondage.

This must be the reason in part that Paul speaks of the fact that not only we, but the entire Creation groans to be freed from the bondage that we (and the Creation) is under (cf. Romans 8:22).  I hate it.  I really do, because it is a constant reminder that though I am in Christ and am a new creation (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:17), the sin nature remains and it continues in its attempts to pull me away from God.

During the occasions when I am pulled away, Jesus says that those branches will be picked up and burned in the fire (cf. John 15).  Paul elaborates even more by telling us that when we stand before Jesus in judgment (not for salvation but for our works), our works will literally be tried by fire and only those that are deemed worthy will survive.  In fact, some individuals will watch as everything they did in this life burns up but they themselves will be saved (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:12).

This should tell us a couple of very important things that we should never forget.  God loves us and He loves us very much.  Once we become His child, He will never abandon us or judge us to death (cf. Romans 8 – read all of it!).  At the same time, He promises that though we will be saved, our works might not survive, but will instead be destroyed by His all-consuming fire of judgment.

So on the practical level, what do we as Christians do?  We need to recognize when we fail Him.  We must not hide that, because He sees it anyway.  We must be willing to admit when we have failed.  We must then quickly turn to Him in confession so that He will cleanse us from our unrighteousness.  After that, we need to commit again our life and purposes to Him and His purposes.

Some people believe that if you don’t feel terrible remorse or self-loathing, you haven’t done it correctly.  I disagree because the only way you can feel that is to focus on the sin itself.  God wants us to recognize it, confess it, and “repent” or turn to Him and away from the sin.  This does not mean that He is obligated to change the resultant consequences of our sin.  Think of King David after he murdered Uriah as he tried to cover up the fact that he committed adultery with Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba.  There were consequences that came into play and while God could have changed those things, He chose not to do so.  He forgave David, yes, but the consequences remained.

So it is with us, depending upon the sin itself.  Hopefully, God will keep all of His children from breaking what we consider to be the “big” sins.  Hopefully, our commitment to Him means that we will also keep a very short list where God is concerned.

Don’t be surprised if you find yourself dealing with the ugliness of your own sin and/or sin nature.  Our “flesh” wants its own way and we are too often willing to acquiesce to it.  In doing so, we feed it, making it that much more difficult to ignore it the next time.

I think this is exactly what Paul was trying to express in Romans 7, when he stated “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24).  Have you ever felt that about yourself?  If you have, then you’re in good company.  If you haven’t, then maybe you aren’t taking things seriously enough.

God most certainly loves all people, especially those of His own household.  He loves us enough to want to provide only what’s best for us and His best does not include giving into the sin nature that only serves to draw us away from Him.  When that does happen to us, He is right there, just like the prodigal son’s father, waiting for us to return to us as quickly as possible.  There, He will scoop us up in His arms, enveloping us with His love.

We learn in Romans 8:1 that those who are in Christ are no longer condemned.  When He sees us, He sees the righteousness of Jesus instead of the filthiness of our own life that we often see.  This does not mean that we live anyway we want to live “now that we are Christian.”  It means that as we take our commitment to Him seriously, we should find within us the growing desire to want to serve Him more than we will want to serve ourselves.

That tension will always exist within the lives of authentic Christians until such a time that we pass from this life to the next and God surgically removes the sin nature and provides us with a glorified body, suited for eternity.  Is it your desire to serve Him always, under all circumstances?  If so, you will experience a discontent with the sin nature that still exists within you.  The only thing you will be able to do about it is to learn to ignore it in His strength and for His glory.

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