Tag: Sin

Life In The Spirit

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There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:1-8).

The law of sin and death is easy for me to understand.  However, Paul lays it out in Chapter seven just in case we might miss it.  “…if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet (Rom 7:7).”  And, as soon as the law tells us not to covet our minds race to covetousness.  Try to think about sin with out thinking about a particular sin.  Heck try to think about sin without thinking about your preferred flavor of sin, your favorite sin.  We all have them.  Paul says, when the law came, “sin came alive and I died (Rom 7:9).”  It happens to us all.  The righteous requirement of the Law is justice at the infraction of the Law.  The wages of sin are death (Rom 6:23).  The Law tells you not to covet, and as soon as we read it, we break the Law by thinking about coveting… or whatever sin you prefer.  It is all the same.  “The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to [Paul and to] me (Rom 7:10)” and to you.  Chapter seven is amazing in its clarity of our predicament!  It builds to Paul’s cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (Rom 7:24)?”

Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to sell you prosperity if you only do what God wants.

Recently I have been reading through Chronicles and Kings.  They read like a game of thrones novel.  I cannot put them down.  I have been reading them so fast I have not had time to contemplate what I have found.  I did find this interesting though.  King Ahab wanted the vineyard next to his palace, but it belonged to another man.  He offered to buy it from him, but the owner would not because to do so would have violated the rules against selling Jewish inheritance.  The owner wanted to do the right thing by God.  Keep that in mind the next time someone tries to sell you prosperity if you only do what God wants.  Anyway, King Ahab pouts until his queen, Jezebel, offers to take care of the problem.  She has the owner killed on false charges.  I am telling you it reads like game of thrones.  Elijah meets king Ahab on his way down to inspect his new vineyard.  In confronting him Elijah says, “I have found you, because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the LORD (1Ki 21:20).”  “…you have sold yourself…”  The idea is that Ahab decided to do what was evil.  He knew the character of Jezebel.

Paul uses similar wording when he says, “I am of the flesh, sold under sin (Rom 7:14).”  We are not talking about universal inherited sin as the result of the fall.  The law of sin and death is a result of your own flesh, sold under sin, deciding to do what it longs to do.  Like King Ahab we have all decide to get what we wanted and what we wanted was our preferred flavor of sin.  “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death (Rom 7:24)?”

To live in the flesh is to live in disbelief!

Oh, but the Law has a righteous requirement and our Lord Jesus, the Christ, met that requirement on our behalf.  “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us…(Rom 8:3-4).”  That sacrifice has freed you from the law of sin and death because the death owed has been paid and you are now moved from the law of sin and death and placed under the law of the Spirit of life.  The law has not been annulled but rather fulfilled.  You, who accept it, are now in another legal category.  To live as if you are now free in the flesh is to live as if you don’t believe that you were a sinner in need of repentance.  To live in the flesh is to live in disbelief!

To live in life is to live in the Spirit.  I read question after question in online Christian groups asking if the Bible says it is okay to remarry.  Can I get a tattoo?  Is it okay to listen to non-Christian music?  The real question, the question that sets you free, is what would the Spirit have you do?  Do that!!!  Do you want to know how to please God set your mind on the things of the Spirit.  Set your mind on love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23).  “Walk as children of light 9 (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord (Eph 5:9-10).”

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Towards a Better Theology of Divorce

On By AaronIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

The other day my wife and I were driving to her parent’s house when she asked me why didn’t Jesus address physical abuse when he addressed divorce?  It is a great question.  I was a police officer for only five years, and I saw a lot of broken marriages in which both men and women lived in a relationship centered around abuse.  Why would Jesus only allow for a spouse’s unfaithfulness as the only justifiable argument for divorce?  We drove for probably another twenty minutes before I was pulled out of my thoughts on the question by another question, “did you hear what I said?  Are you even listening to me?”  I smiled because I had gone inside my own thoughts and had lost track of what was going on around me, but it was a question where the answer was not readily available.

But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

Matthew 5:31-32

Jesus says in Matthew, “It was also said, ’Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’  But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Mat 5:31-32).”  This is often interpreted as meaning that the only way out of the covenant of marriage is in the case of infidelity.

This quote is pulled right out of the center of what is known as the Sermon on the Mount.  If we were to outline that sermon it could look something like this…

  1. The Beatitudes
  2. Salt and Light
  3. Christ came to fulfill The Law
  4. The Law Refined (Real Transgression)
    1. Anger
    2. Lust
    3. Divorce
    4. Oaths
    5. Retaliation
  5. How to do The Law Right
    1. Love Your Enemies
    2. Give to the Needy
    3. The Lord’s Prayer
    4. Fasting
    5. Lay up Treasures in Heaven
    6. Do Not be Anxious
  6. Judging Others
    1. Ask and It will be Given
    2. The Golden Rule
    3. A Tree and It’s Fruit
    4. I Never Knew You
  7. Build Your House On the Rock

“For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Matthew 5:20

You will notice right away that it is a complex sermon.  It is a long sermon to say the least and books have been written on what is found in its context.  For today it is enough to know that this sermon was never meant to be the giving of a new law rather it was meant as discussion on how The Law of Moses was to be understood and the Messiah’s relationship to The Law.  The first section including the Beatitudes and Salt and Light were intended to communicate that the doctrines’ of God would be given to the humble and that the humble would become the salt and light in which those doctrines would be shared.  In the third section Jesus teaches that He, as the Messiah, has not come to abolish The Law but rather to fulfill The Law.  I love Adam Clarke’s description on this concept.  “Christ completed the law: 1st. In itself, it was only the shadow, the typical representation, of good things to come; and [Jesus] added to it that which was necessary to make it perfect, his own sacrifice, without which it could neither satisfy God, nor sanctify men (Clarke 1810-1826, Mat 5:17).”  The Law teaches that apart from righteousness a sacrifice is required.

Jesus then transitions into a discussion on the nature of righteousness, “For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Mat 5:20).”  Here is where Jesus begins to speak specifically to and about the Pharisees.  It is this teaching that Jesus comments on divorce are intended to address.

The Pharisees thought that they were righteous.  They believed that the sins that Israel was being punished for were the sins of their father’s and grandfather’s; not their own.  The proverb of Ezekiel’s time that, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge (Eze 18:2)’ was an allegation against God made by the Israelites of Ezekiel’s time and the Israelites of Jesus’ time.  Think of eating sour grapes like eating a sour patch kid.  That first initial overpowering sour causes you to react by breathing in through clenched teeth.  The idea is that someone else has eaten the sour patch kid and you are breathing in through the clenched teeth.  You are reaping the reward for someone else’s actions.  Jesus’ teaching here, using anger, lust, divorce, oaths, and retaliation, all sins for which the Pharisees were guilty, are illustrating that these Pharisees are not righteous enough to inherit the Kingdom of God.

The idea of a certificate of divorce, that the Pharisees were clinging to for their righteousness, comes from Deuteronomy.  “When a man takes a wife and marries her, if then she finds no favor in his eyes because he has found some indecency in her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce… then her former husband, who sent her away, may not take her again to be his wife, after she has been defiled, for that is an abomination before the LORD (Deu 24:1-4).”  The Pharisees interpreted from this passage that Moses allowed divorce when the wife lost favor with her husband or was somehow indecent.  According to David Stern Hillel and Shammai, contemporaries of Jesus, represent the poles of the contemporary argument.  “The School of Shammai say a man may not divorce his wife unless he has found unchastity in her, as it is said, ‘…because he has found in her indecency in a matter.’ But the School of Hillel say he may divorce her even if she burns his food, as it is said, ‘… because he has found in her indecency in a matter (Mishna: Gittin 9:10).’”

This Hillel loophole was a broad loophole indeed but that was their interpretation of The Law and if they obeyed it their righteousness could be retained.  It was primarily a loophole to keep a wife in line or to trade in on a newer model.

“Without God’s sacrifice The Law could not satisfy God nor sanctify men.”

Jesus response to this loophole is that, “everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery (Mat 5:32).”  This is a statement about the righteousness of the Pharisees.  They were divorcing their wives and were responsible for the adultery that they caused.  That responsibility made them unrighteous.  The only reason the wife’s adultery changes anything about the nature of divorce is that the adultery was not caused by the Pharisees.  Don’t worry Jesus addresses the Pharisees who were not guilty in this case in the cases of Anger, lust, oaths, and retaliation.

Adam Clarke concluded his understanding of the fulfillment of The Law in that The Law pointed to the necessity of an atoning sacrifice.  Without God’s sacrifice The Law could not satisfy God nor sanctify men.  The Pharisees too needed that sacrifice and Jesus’ comments on divorce were to highlight that issue.  Jesus was not establishing a new law regarding what was an acceptable divorce and an unacceptable divorce.  Jesus was teaching that the Pharisees too were unrighteous.

So where does that leave us on divorce?  “Is it lawful to divorce one’s wife for any cause (Mat 19:3)?”  Jesus points out that they should already know the answer to this question.

“Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate (Mat 19:4-6).”  Righteous husbands do not divorce their wives.  Righteous wives do not divorce their husbands.  Divorce is in fact a sin that defiles just as any other sin. 

“What we know today that the Pharisees didn’t know is that Jesus died as the perfect sacrifice for the consequences of our sins.”

The prophet Malachi puts it very crisply, “…the LORD was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union?… So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.  “For the man who does not love his wife but divorces her, says the LORD, the God of Israel, covers his garment with violence, says the LORD of hosts. So, guard yourselves in your spirit, and do not be faithless (Mal 2:14-16).” At the center of divorce is a violation of a promise.  A righteous person endeavors to honor the commitments that he or she has made.  A violation of that commitment is the equivalence of an act of violence.  That is still true today.

“Do you believe that your sins are forgiven?”

What we know today that the Pharisees didn’t know is that Jesus died as the perfect sacrifice for the consequences of our sins.  And we all need that sacrifice, even the Pharisees.  When you accepted Him, you are accepting that His punishment was for your sins.  Do you believe that?  Do you believe that your sins are forgiven?  Do you believe that your spouse’s sins have been forgiven?  Often, I think this is the harder part.  Jonah’s refusal to offer repentance to the Ninevites came from his own desire to see them punished.  He knew if he offered repentance to the Ninevites, they would accept, and Jonah’s god would offer His mercy.  Have you offered that forgiveness to your spouse?  What about the children of divorce?  They are injured just as much as the spouses of divorce.  Are you a child of divorce?  Have you offered forgiveness to your parents?

If you are in an abusive marriage, get out as soon as you can!  You are not responsible for those sins.  Is your spouse unfaithful?  You are not responsible for those sins.  But remember, Jesus died for those sins too, you can protect yourself and extend that forgiveness at the same time.  Are you being unfaithful to your spouse?  Accept Jesus’ forgiveness and repent!  Are you abusing your spouse? Accept Jesus’ forgiveness and repent!  Is your life a product of divorce?  Extend the forgiveness of Jesus!  Whether or not it is accepted and whether or not they repent is between them and God.

Thanks for reading and do not forget to subscribe to my e-mail below.  I am working on some great things and I would hate for you to miss out.

Photo by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash.

Clarke, Adam. The Holy Bible with a Commentary and Critical Notes. New Edition. Vol. I–VI. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife Corporation, 2014. Find this resource in the Faith, Hope, Love (Life) Store

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The Perfected Conscience

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What does it mean to have a perfected conscience?  The writer of Hebrews rights that the Old Covenant is inferior in that the gifts and sacrifices offered under it failed to, “perfect the conscience of the worshiper (Heb 9:9, ESV).”  What does that mean?

The central difference between the Old and New Testaments is that under the New Covenant the blood of Jesus is offered as a sacrifice on behalf of His people.  The Old Covenant, too, required a sacrifice of blood but that sacrifice was insufficient except that it pointed to the the necessity of the sacrifice of Christ.  The writer of Hebrews spends significant amount of time up to this point explaining how the New Covenant is better than the Old and one of his final arguments is that the Old Testament could not perfect the conscience.

Under the Old Covenant, The Law pointed to the guilt of sin.  When an Israelite failed, when he transgressed that law, a sacrifice was required; a sacrifice of blood.  Each time he failed or transgresses another sacrifice was required.  Over and over again the Israelite’s guilt was illustrated as illuminated by the law and specifically as he transgressed against it.  Our consciences are the mechanism or organ that recognizes that guilt; for the Israelite it was recognized specifically within the context of The Law.  When our conscience is functioning properly it is reminding us of our guilt for our own evil deeds and even our own evil desires.

But all the Old Covenant could do is remind of us that guilt.  It could not make the believer innocent and guilt by definition requires a punishment.

What is injustice without justice?  Dare We answer that it is another injustice.  I once watched a video of a sentencing hearing in which a man convicted of raping another man’s daughter was sentenced to a sentence so slight that the father in anguish leapt across a barrier in an attempt to get at the man who had offended against his daughter.  This man’s plea for justice on behalf of his daughter had gone unanswered and I had two thoughts.  First, that the justice which had been refused was in that refusal another injustice.  There was a “rightness” in wanting to see that father reach his intended target and deliver the justice owed.  Second, that the injustice of a failure of justice was directly tied to the love that the father had for his daughter.  Do we realize that in refusing to deal justice for sin God would be committing sin?  He can’t simply wave away our injustice.  And how often do we declare that a good God could not punish that which He loves?  Do we not recognize that not only is His perfect justice at stake but His perfect love if He were to pardon an offense against that which he loves?  When we appeal to God to right an injustice committed against us we are in part appealing to His perfect justice but we are also in part appealing to His love for us.  Why would He answer such an appeal if he was either unjust or didn’t care?

The Old Covenant is limited in that it can only point to our injustices.  Our consciences continually remind us of that guilt until we sear our conscience or deal with the guilt.  The Old Covenant was incapable of dealing with that guilt and so are we.  The power of the New Covenant is that it perfects our consciousness in that it deals with the guilt.  Jesus became the punishment.  When He says that you are forgiven he is not waving away the guilt by simply ignoring it.  He is taking on the punishment that guilt requires.  Justice was delivered on Him for your injustice.  You no longer need to feel the guilt.  Your conscience is perfect before God.

Later in verse 14 of that same chapter in Hebrews we find that the New Covenant not only perfects our conscience it liberates it from dead works.  When we commit an injustice our conscience tells us that we are guilty.  What are we to do?  When we offer any good work, any sacrifice, as payment for that injustice it fails.  It fails because perfection, The Law, requires that we are good all the time.  The good work of today can only pay for itself it can not pay for yesterday’s deed of injustice.  The penalty is still owed.  Every good work that you do is dead and meaningless because none of them remedy the guilt of the offense.  And all are guilty of more than that first offense (Rom 3:23).

However, the offering made to mediate the New Covenant (Heb 9:15) changes that.  It is first sufficient in that Christ’s sacrifice is not needed to atone for Himself.  But He offered it, none the less, as an act of love on your behalf.  He didn’t need to but He did and when you recognize the love that this act demonstrates and signifies you are not simply liberated from pursuing works that can not save but you are liberated to live your life as a response to His love for you.  Your good works do not need to liberate you and they are now free to testify of His love.  You are free to live a life that emulates that love for others.

“Today is the day”

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