by Jacob Ninan
Suppose we heard this word preached, or we read it in the Bible, "but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matt.5:28). What would be our spontaneous reaction? "We are not under Law but under grace, and so there is no condemnation for us!" (Rom.8:1)? Or do we think Jesus is our righteousness, when God looks at us He does not see us with our failures or shortcomings but sees Jesus with His perfect righteousness imputed to us (1Cor.1:30)?
If this is our response, it shows that we are not really willing to see ourselves as we are. In fact we are trying to live in denial of reality. We are looking for grace as a cover for our failures to such an extent that we are not even willing to take responsibility for our sins. This is what Paul warns us about, trying to point out that grace does not give us freedom to sin (Rom.6:15).
Imputing the righteousness of Jesus to our account was necessary for God to be able to accept us. Without it, it would not have been righteous for God to accept us as we were, with all our sin and imperfections, as His children. So, this was necessary for our 'justification'. But once we have been justified freely by the grace of God, we are now in the process called sanctification, where God is trying through the Holy Spirit to transform us little by little to become like Jesus in actual practical life. But what would happen if we think when the Holy Spirit convicts us of our sinful condition that it must be the accusation from the devil? Then we would be resisting sanctification.
This is a major problem for Christians who read the word of God regularly and listen to many messages, but who do not allow the word to expose their sins nor do they make any serious attempt to obey what they read or align their practical life with the word. James warns us about this, saying that those who listen to the word but do not live according to it are like those who see themselves in a mirror but who then move away without doing anything about the flaws they saw in the mirror. "But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not just hearers who deceive themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who has looked intently at the perfect law, the law of freedom, and has continued in it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an active doer, this person will be blessed in what he does" (Jas.1:22-25).
On the contrary, imagine if we were to react to the word like this, "Oh Lord, am I lusting after women? Am I really committing adultery by looking at women? What does it mean to lust? Lord, forgive me for being careless with this many times. Help me Lord to look at women with purity in my eyes." Then we are able to pray along with the psalm, "Create in me a clean heart, God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me" (Psa.51:10). This is not just about getting stirred up emotionally when we read this verse but to want to steadily keep our heart pure before God. Then the Lord may bring to our attention how we can move forward in this direction, by looking at older women as if they were our mother and at younger women as if they were our sisters (1Tim.5:2).
But we are not looking at just sexual lust here, but every sinful desire that comes up from our flesh, our old sinful nature. Have you ever discovered yourself drawn by greed, or getting worked up with jealousy towards someone? Have you ever found that you were trying to become great before people instead of wanting to be pleasing to God? Let us take a look at a list of fleshly desires that we may have, and then examine ourselves to see whether we have problems with any of them (Gal.5:19-21). If we have not been allowing the Holy Spirit to show us these things in our life in order to cleanse us from them, we may have been taking cover under a false understanding of grace.
Do we think that we don't have such issues and that we are from better families? The Jews told Jesus that they were descendants of Abraham and not slaves to anyone (Jn.8:33). Let us not forget that all of us have come from the family of Adam and Eve who yielded to Satan after moving away from God. As a result, all of us have had Satan as our father, and that is why we have to be born again in order to become children of God (Jn.8:44). Our old nature shows up with sinful tendencies and that is how we are tempted (Jas.1:14,15). Every kind of lust draws us to sin, and we have to overcome them in order to live a godly life. But if we keep taking cover under grace and resisting the attempts from the Holy Spirit to make us more like Jesus, we will remain at the same spiritual level.
It is not just that we will remain at the same level, but as we keep resisting the the work of the Holy Spirit, we are also hardening our heart a little more! The next time we hear the same word, it does not touch us as powerfully as before.
Let us try to understand various reasons because of which people try to 'protect' themselves from looking at their real condition.
1. We would like to think we are good people, and it pains to look at reality. We would like to think of ourselves as being 'spiritual' people who go to church regularly, read the Bible and pray. We may think that since we have been born again we are all set for heaven. But then we don't realise that we still have the remains of the old nature (flesh) in us which tempts us in all sorts of directions. That is when we try to put away all words that convict us of our real situation and try to cover them with verses pertaining to our justification and God's acceptance of us. The Jews thought that having God as their Father was good enough for them (Jn.8:41).
2. We think we are not like the gross sinners. We don't murder people, commit adultery (physically), etc., and think that all common sins that everybody has are not serious before God. We would not even like to call them sins, but only as our human weaknesses! Remember the Pharisee who thought so well of himself that he thanked God thinking he was so much better than the tax collectors (Lk.18:11). On the other hand, the tax collector did not even dare to look towards God, but begged God to have mercy on him. Jesus tells us at the end of the story that only the tax collector was accepted by God.
3. We become so aware of other people's faults, we apply scripture to them when we read or hear it. This is probably a tendency we have grown up with. We are so sensitive when it comes to noticing other people's faults that it does not occur to us that perhaps we too have our faults. As a result, the tendency is to wish that those other people in our life were listening to the word we just heard. The next time we hear the same word, it does not really move us because we have already labelled others with it! This is why Jesus warns us to first of all remove the log that is in our own eyes (Matt.7:3).
4. We have a wrong understanding of grace. That is not uncommon, because the 'gospel' that is being preached all around us is a false gospel that allows people to think they have become children of God without even having admitted to their own sins or turned away from them to God. Many preachers are calling people to come to Jesus who will them take good care of them, solve all their problems and give them whatever they ask for. Jude warns about such people saying that they are actually presenting grace as if it was a licence to sin (Jude.4). People get the idea that once they come to Jesus a place is reserved for them in heaven and it does not matter how they live in practice.
5. We are told to think positively and avoid all negative thoughts. This is a teaching from the world, the spirit of the world, which has spread through the churches too. When they believe this, they try to reject any words that they hear which makes them feel bad. They think that words of warning and words that convict them of their sinfulness are negative and to be put away from their minds. They prefer to think about the promises of God and about words of grace by which they have been justified. But we must realise that all the exhortations and warnings which the Bible gives are from our loving Father who wants us to go in the right direction and who wants to protect us from harm.
6. We think that we must make postive things happen by confessing them with our mouth. This is from the heretical teaching called word of faith which says that our words have power in themselves and that when we speak things, they will happen. Just think a little more about what would happen if we really had power in our words to make things happen. Then we won't need God and we can be our own gods, as many of such teachers believe! The truth is that our words have no such power. We depend entirely on God for our life because it is He who has power to do whatever He wishes.
7. It may be that we have never been truly born again. If we think we were born again when someone sprinkled some water on us as babies, or just because we raised our hands or went forward in a meeting, we are deceiving ourselves. We cannot be born again without acknowledging that we are sinners before God, repenting from them and trusting Jesus as our Savior. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit is not with us helping us, and we have only human ideas to lean on. Then what is ruling our mind is the desire to protect ourselves and to be able to do whatever we like. There is no deep fighting against sin (1Jn.3:9).
8. There are a few people who have come to know about victory, but then for various reasons assume that they have already reached the final place of victory! One way they do it is to emphasise certain verses that God has given about their position in Christ and believe that since the word of God says so, it must be true. Another problem is when someone has had a special experience such as the baptism in the Holy Spirit, and they interpret that to imply that they have been sanctified entirely. A third mistake, which the Pharisees made, is to think that as long as they did everything right externally, they were holy, while ignoring the things that were going on inside. But we can learn from the apostle Paul who, after teaching the world about victory, was honest enough to say that he was still pursuing after perfection (Php.3:12).
At the age of 30, the Father announced to the world that Jesus was His beloved Son with whom He was well pleased. Did this mean that Jesus was so holy that He could not be tempted? What we see is that immediately after this, He was tempted severely by the devil in the wilderness and He had to overcome. The night before He was killed, Jesus had the greatest battle of His life, when He was tempted to choose His own will over His Father's. But we know that finally He yielded to His Father. Temptation in itself is not a sin, and that is why Jesus did not sin even though He was tempted. We too need to learn to overcome in temptation. There is a long way for us to go, and we must press on with determination and without discouragement.