by Jacob Ninan
The first of the Ten Commandments God gave to Israel as a part of the old covenant was that He was to be their God and theywere to have no other gods apart from Him (Exo.20:2,3). Jesus reiterated it by asking us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind (Matt.22:37). He used psuche for soul and dianoia for mind. In the New Testament context, we usually understand psuche to refer to the mind, with its abilities to think, feel and will. So, here, by using the word dianoia, Jesus is not repeating the word soul in a different way, but emphasising the focus of our thoughts and imagination. In other words, God should be the centre of our life in every aspect. Then we can understand what it means to go after other gods. It is not necessarily about turning away from Yahveh as our God and accepting some other god in His place. It is about moving the focus of our life from loving and serving God to other things that become more important to us.
When we love God with all our heart and mind, it is not that we are consciously thinking about God all the time, which can be immediately seen as being impossible and impractical. As we carry out our practical chores in life, we cannot be always consciously keeping in touch with God. We may be thinking of our studies, our work, our cooking, our buying or selling, etc., and this is not the sin that is implied by turning to other gods. What we need to do is to examine the priorities in our heart. If our priority is set on God, we will be doing whatever we do in a way that is pleasing to God. It is when our personal interests or demands of life come into conflict with God, and we choose at that point to overlook God's standards in order to give in to the pressure of life, that we choose some other thing or interest as our real God in that situation. This is an example of a single failure in our loyalty to God. But then, it could also be that we can choose a certain direction for our life, aimed at seeking pleasure, honour of man, power, influence, etc., that can ultimately turn our heart away from God, if we don't repent before that happens. It is not difficult for us to drift away from God slowly, without realising that we are making choices that will take us away from God, and then finally be shocked to realise where we have reached!
Many people are wrongly taught by their teachers that once they become children of God, God will make sure that they will never get lost. No, any of us can fall away from God unless we watch and pray at all times. See this warning that has been given to brothers and sisters in Christ, to take care that they should not allow unbelief to get into their heart by which they can fall away (Heb.3:12,13). Who are people who can fall away from God except people who had been with God in the beginning? We should understand 'falling away' not only as a total giving up on God, but also as different levels of backsliding that we can fall into, from a position of being in love with God – 'losing our first love'.
The above warning points out the 'deceitfulness of sin' which can cause us to fall away from God. There are many ways in which Satan deceives us, or we deceive ourselves. Let us look at some of the common ways. One thing that Satan told Eve when he was tempting her to disobey God was to assure her that she would not die, even though God had said plainly that she would. In the same way, we begin to imagine that nothing will happen to us even if we sinned. We may tell ourselves that nothing happened when we disobeyed God the last time! But even though nothing may happen because God is giving us time to repent, we can be sure that we will finally reap what we sow if we don't repent.
A very common assumption that remains in the back of our mind is that even if we sin, God is there to forgive us. Grace has been exaggerated these days to such an extent that we imagine that grace is like a blank cheque of forgiveness that God has given us. But grace has come to us at a cost, when the Son of God had to suffer and die in order to take the punishment for our sins. We cannot receive grace automatically until we repent from our sins.
Another excuse that comes to our mind is that everyone sins and there is no one who is perfect. But that does not give an excuse for anyone, because the price of sin is still death. Every time we sin, it is death that we invite for ourselves. If we really love our Lord Jesus who had to take that death on Himself in order to became legally able to offer us forgiveness, we would not treat sin so lightly.
Many people find excuse for their compromise by saying that we have to be practical about life as long as we are living in this sinful world. The implication is that it is not practical to aim for being pleasing to God according to His standards because we have to be willing to make compromises here and there to manage our life. But God wants us to be overcomers who will not give in to the pressures of life and compromise with God. Of course, that will involve going through extra suffering for ourselves when we refuse to bow down before the world.
Satan puts this idea into our mind that if we were to try to be totally pleasing to God we would miss a lot of good things such as promotions, wealth, recognition, pleasure, etc. He whispers to us that all we need to do is to bow down a little bit to him and then we can have all the things of this world too, in addition to heaven!
Satan also 'encourages' us by telling us that God understands all our struggles and that He would not mind if we take time now and then to 'enjoy ourselves'. This is just another way of distorting grace so that whatever we do in sin, it will be automatically be taken care of by grace!
Yet another idea that fools us is that no one can be really perfect, and so it is foolish to try to be perfect! In other words, it will be all right to settle for some less than perfect standard for ourselves! But the truth is that even though we are not going to be sinlessly perfect in our life on earth, it will be a compromise to set our direction towards imperfection. There is forgiveness if we aim for perfection and fail, but that is not the same as planning for failure because we really expected only to fail.
If we allow ourselves to be deceived in this way, our conscience will become increasingly dull, and slowly even the things we used to consider as being sin will look acceptable in our mind. Then we become bolder with compromises and sin. That will be the way we turn away from God ultimately.
The corruption we have in our sinful flesh is such that it doesn't take much time for us to backslide, we don't realise when we are backsliding, and we find reasons to justify our backsliding. Think of what happened to Aaron and the people of Israel just a little time after they had affirmed loudly that they would do all that God had told them (Exo.24:3). Moses was away on the mountain talking to God and was not to be seen anywhere. So the people felt that they needed some visible sign of God with them to follow. Aaron obliged them and made them a golden calf, and told them that this was the God who had brought them out of Egypt (Exo.32:4)! This was in total disregard to the commandment God had just given them against making things to represent God.
One reason why they fell was that they did not know God properly yet. That is the same way we too can fall if we don't get to know God personally from the Bible, and our knowledge is limited and second-hand from others. Our safety is to acquire a personal knowledge of God and understanding of His ways by meditating on and studying the word of God ourselves.
"No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth" (Matt.6:24). We should understand this verse not to be just a reference to going after money, but anything we may end up serving instead of God, such as pleasure, fame, power, etc. The main point here is that we cannot serve God and anything else because our interests will cause conflicts between the two, forcing us to choose one of them. If we understand who God is, we will also see that nothing else can be as important to us as He is, and so, any attempt to serve other things while assuming that we are also serving God is to deceive ourselves. Whenever we choose to do something in contradiction with what God said, we are actually setting Him aside and choosing to make that thing our god.
Let us look at some common examples. If we want to marry an unbeliever, we may make for ourselves all kinds of excuses, but actually we will be setting aside God's opinion of it for our own pleasure. If we allow ourselves to get into an extramarital affair, we may try to justify it by saying it is coming out of 'love', but we will be blatantly pushing God aside to serve this 'love'. Many people make false statements in order to make money by putting aside the thoughts from their mind that convict them. If we act in a way that tries to impress others, we are being untrue towards God and declaring that this impression before people is more important to us than what God thinks.
Sometimes we may try to excuse ourselves by thinking that we are not actually setting God aside and that we actually believe in Him. But our actions show which God we are serving. Jesus warns us by telling us that if we are not fervent in our love for God but just nominal about it, such a lukewarm devotion is not acceptable to Him (Rev.3:15,16). If we are lukewarm, we are setting ourselves up for compromise. But to be hot in our love of God is to love Him with all our heart, mind and strength.
Let us make a deliberate decision in our heart right now to be wholehearted towards God, determined not to compromise when it comes to anything. If we fail, let our repentance be deep and genuine, asking God to help us not to do it again. Our whole life must be characterised by a pressing on towards a wholehearted, no-compromise walk with God.