A true friend loves at all times (Proverbs 17:17).
Many are the good weather friends and plenty are the other consumers who happily use your time, energy and resources when you are popular, successful and prosperous. But it is in times of hardship, loss, suffering, weakness and failure that false friends will turn away from you and true friends remain. The process is painful but the relationships that remain are like the gold that remains after the fire has burned away all that was not gold.
donderdag 24 september 2015
maandag 14 september 2015
Stewardship
Christian stewardship is a biblical theological concept that influences our lifestyle, our choices, and our contribution and involvement in Gods Mission of Salvation to the World. It poses the question to us: "To whom does it belong?" The answer in Scripture is clear: "Whether He entrusts us with man or with few 'talents', It all belongs to God." All we enjoy on earth is a gift from God.
Christian stewardship is Theocentric: God Himself is our example: In love He gave us everything we needed, even His own Son for our salvation. It is also Christocentric as we look upon Christ who invested everything, even His very life in obedience to God and for our salvation. It is Holy Spirit centred too, for the Spirit encourages us to live a life of love in accordance with the law of Christ and pours out Gods love into the hearts of those who belong to God (Rom. 5:5). The Holy Spirit points us at Christ and His teachings concerning faith and money and encourages us to apply it in our daily living: "How much money, time and energy am I able to give faithfully as a spiritual response to God and all He has done for me?"
Our stewardship of all that God entrusted to us is a litmus test of our spiritual growth. It helps us to see to what extend are we living selfishly to please our flesh or selflessly to please our Lord. It is part of life-long spiritual growth. As stewards of all that God put at our disposal we are called to use every opportunity to do good for all people and so doing make Christ and the love of God visible in a needy world.
Christian stewardship is Theocentric: God Himself is our example: In love He gave us everything we needed, even His own Son for our salvation. It is also Christocentric as we look upon Christ who invested everything, even His very life in obedience to God and for our salvation. It is Holy Spirit centred too, for the Spirit encourages us to live a life of love in accordance with the law of Christ and pours out Gods love into the hearts of those who belong to God (Rom. 5:5). The Holy Spirit points us at Christ and His teachings concerning faith and money and encourages us to apply it in our daily living: "How much money, time and energy am I able to give faithfully as a spiritual response to God and all He has done for me?"
Our stewardship of all that God entrusted to us is a litmus test of our spiritual growth. It helps us to see to what extend are we living selfishly to please our flesh or selflessly to please our Lord. It is part of life-long spiritual growth. As stewards of all that God put at our disposal we are called to use every opportunity to do good for all people and so doing make Christ and the love of God visible in a needy world.
maandag 7 september 2015
Satan's ways are not unknown to us
Genesis 3:1-8
1 The snake was sneakier than any of the other wild animals that the Lord God had made. One day it came to the woman and asked, “Did God tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”
2 The woman answered, “God said we could eat fruit from any tree in the garden, 3 except the one in the middle. He told us not to eat fruit from that tree or even to touch it. If we do, we will die.”
4 “No, you won't!” the snake replied. 5 “God understands what will happen on the day you eat fruit from that tree. You will see what you have done, and you will know the difference between right and wrong, just as God does.”
6 The woman stared at the fruit. It looked beautiful and tasty. She wanted the wisdom that it would give her, and she ate some of the fruit. Her husband was there with her, so she gave some to him, and he ate it too. 7 Right away they saw what they had done, and they realized they were naked. Then they sewed fig leaves together to make something to cover themselves.
8 Late in the afternoon a breeze began to blow, and the man and woman heard the Lord God walking in the garden. They were frightened and hid behind some trees.
The Word of God reminds us that Satan's ways are not unknown to us. In Holy Scripture we see how Satan deceives and destroys starting here in Genesis 3 when he misled humankind into sin and into opening the door for all the horrors we have suffered ever since.
Genesis 3 shows how Satan gets a hold on our minds by making us doubt the Word of God. He sows distrust in our hearts and minds so that we start questioning whether God is truly all good and perfect. All sin starts with doubting God and His good intentions for is. Satan loves it when we no longer fully trust God for it affects our relationship with the Lord. Once a sheep starts distrusting the Good Shepherd he/she will start to wander away and ultimately become an easy prey for Satan who seeks to destroy.
However, the righteous will live by faith. Once we learn to fully trust God and His love and good intentions then change will occur. We will be made righteous by Him. Let us therefore resist every lie from Satan which makes us doubt Gods love, goodness, justice, fairness and good intentions for us. Let us believe Him who is the way, the truth and the life:
11 I will bless you with a future filled with hope—a future of success, not of suffering. 12 You will turn back to me and ask for help, and I will answer your prayers. 13 You will worship me with all your heart, and I will bless you (Jeremiah 29).
1 The snake was sneakier than any of the other wild animals that the Lord God had made. One day it came to the woman and asked, “Did God tell you not to eat fruit from any tree in the garden?”
2 The woman answered, “God said we could eat fruit from any tree in the garden, 3 except the one in the middle. He told us not to eat fruit from that tree or even to touch it. If we do, we will die.”
4 “No, you won't!” the snake replied. 5 “God understands what will happen on the day you eat fruit from that tree. You will see what you have done, and you will know the difference between right and wrong, just as God does.”
6 The woman stared at the fruit. It looked beautiful and tasty. She wanted the wisdom that it would give her, and she ate some of the fruit. Her husband was there with her, so she gave some to him, and he ate it too. 7 Right away they saw what they had done, and they realized they were naked. Then they sewed fig leaves together to make something to cover themselves.
8 Late in the afternoon a breeze began to blow, and the man and woman heard the Lord God walking in the garden. They were frightened and hid behind some trees.
The Word of God reminds us that Satan's ways are not unknown to us. In Holy Scripture we see how Satan deceives and destroys starting here in Genesis 3 when he misled humankind into sin and into opening the door for all the horrors we have suffered ever since.
Genesis 3 shows how Satan gets a hold on our minds by making us doubt the Word of God. He sows distrust in our hearts and minds so that we start questioning whether God is truly all good and perfect. All sin starts with doubting God and His good intentions for is. Satan loves it when we no longer fully trust God for it affects our relationship with the Lord. Once a sheep starts distrusting the Good Shepherd he/she will start to wander away and ultimately become an easy prey for Satan who seeks to destroy.
However, the righteous will live by faith. Once we learn to fully trust God and His love and good intentions then change will occur. We will be made righteous by Him. Let us therefore resist every lie from Satan which makes us doubt Gods love, goodness, justice, fairness and good intentions for us. Let us believe Him who is the way, the truth and the life:
11 I will bless you with a future filled with hope—a future of success, not of suffering. 12 You will turn back to me and ask for help, and I will answer your prayers. 13 You will worship me with all your heart, and I will bless you (Jeremiah 29).
vrijdag 14 augustus 2015
Selfindulgement
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 you have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter (James 5:1-5).
The rich 25% of the world enjoy their lifestyle at the expense of the poor. Their life of wasteful affluence and arrogant selfindulgement can only be sustained by structurally underpaying the global poor. Surely many servants of Mammon fatten themselves up for slaughter at the day of judgement. May the One who knows our deepest thoughts and aspirations, intentions and motivations judge us to be different.
The rich 25% of the world enjoy their lifestyle at the expense of the poor. Their life of wasteful affluence and arrogant selfindulgement can only be sustained by structurally underpaying the global poor. Surely many servants of Mammon fatten themselves up for slaughter at the day of judgement. May the One who knows our deepest thoughts and aspirations, intentions and motivations judge us to be different.
maandag 3 augustus 2015
Being witnesses
Our lifestyle, attitude and action are the most important aspect of being witnesses. That is why it says in Acts 1:8 that when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, you will be my witnesses.....It does not say "you will be witnessing".
The Holy Spirit empowers and transforms us so we bear the fruit of the Spirit, that is the character of Christ becoming visible as we are changed from glory to glory from the inside out. It is not anything we can achieve for it is His work in us which we receive by grace and not because of our own efforts. Therefore no-one can boast. All we can do is to receive it with gratitude as we continue to trust Him. Therefore it is Gods work in us that speaks of His greatness and glory. In response to this wonderful work of God one cannot but speak about His greatness, not as a duty but simply out of a heart full of awe, gratitude and love for Him.
The Holy Spirit empowers and transforms us so we bear the fruit of the Spirit, that is the character of Christ becoming visible as we are changed from glory to glory from the inside out. It is not anything we can achieve for it is His work in us which we receive by grace and not because of our own efforts. Therefore no-one can boast. All we can do is to receive it with gratitude as we continue to trust Him. Therefore it is Gods work in us that speaks of His greatness and glory. In response to this wonderful work of God one cannot but speak about His greatness, not as a duty but simply out of a heart full of awe, gratitude and love for Him.
donderdag 23 juli 2015
Gods wonderful destiny for you
God loves you and wants to give you a great destiny
God loves us and therefore His desire for us is to have happy lives, happy not only for the short-time we are here on earth but for eternity.
But God also knows that because of our sins and disobedience to Him we are actually often very unhappy and unfulfilled deep inside.
Therefore John 3:16-17 tells us that God loved us so much that He send His own son so that we could be saved.
Many are the people in this world who want to control and use us, some use seduction, others use violence, others use manipulation and even some use religion to control us and exercise power over us so that they can exploit our money, our energy, our abilties or even our bodies. But really they are thieves for they want to take from us by stealth. But Jesus is very different. He says in John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Jesus did not come to take from us but He has come to give us life, fullness of life
NO NEW RELIGION!!!
He has not come to bring a new religion with more rules and regulations trying to force people to change. The Bible makes it clear that people are so flawed by nature, so affected by sin that no law can force people to live in a way that meets Gods Holy demands.
Rules and laws are based on fear and threats of punishment but even the threat of painful death cannot change who we are inside!!!
Besides Gods demands are much higher than the rules people impose on other people. God wants that we live holy and without sin, full of love for all human beings, even to the point of loving our enemies and forgiving and doing good to those who persecute us.
This no human being can ever achieve, no matter how much pressure we put them under.
SIN IS A MORAL AND SPIRITUAL DISEASE
You see sin is more than an act of disobedience to God for it is also like a spiritual and moral disease that cripples us. We are morally and spiritually so affected that it is simply impossible for us to live as healthy spiritual and moral beings.
“No one is righteous, not even one…” .we are all morally sick and inclined to sin as Romans 3:10-12 reminds us. We are all so affected by this moral and spiritual disease that all of us are unhealthy. In fact the Bible even calls us spiritually death because it is a progressive disease that goes from bad to worse until we end up spiritually death and destroyed in hell, eternally separated from God like a body wasted away by disease until it ends decaying buried in the soil.
GOD HAS A BETTER DESTINY FOR US
This is not the destiny God has in mind for us. He has a cure, a way to save us. But the cure does not consist of all kinds of religious and moral commands, church rules or cultural and societal regulations…..
Such rules characterized by "do this, don't do that" do not have real transforming power. In fact they add to our burden with guilt, shame and their threat of punishment, rejection and social isolation. It may force us to try hard to be morally and spiritually healthy but we will sooner or later fail for it does not cure us! Often all it does it encourage us to pretend to be morally healthy and deny or hide our sins and errors. At most it helps us cope with the disease but it holds no hope for healing.
The cure God has is to give us a new heart, a transformed heart, to bring us to live spiritually. This was foretold more than 2500 years ago by the prophet Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 31:33-34
33"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34"They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
And this became reality when in His love God send His son Jesus 2000 years ago to become the cure for our disease.
JESUS IS THE CURE, ONLY HE IS OUR HOPE
Jesus lived a sinless life and yet he died on the cross to take the punishment for all our sins and moral flaws away so we no longer need to live under condemnation, in shame and guilt.
But He did more, He rose from death in the power of God and then send His Holy Spirit to dwell within us so that we are transformed in our hearts into people that live morally and spiritually healthy. Not under the threat of punishment by law-enforcers but prompted by an inner law, a law of love, a law that gives life and motivates us to eagerly do what is good.
For this all we need to do is come to Christ and abide in Him who is the life-giver.
It starts with trusting Him and putting your faith in what He achieved by dying on the cross and by overcoming the power of decay and death when He rose from death in his resurrection.
Let me summarize it in 5 main points:
1) Trust Gods word where He says that He loves the whole world and does not want anyone to perish in their sins
2) Trust Him that His sacrificial death on the cross is enough to take away the punishment for all your sins
3) Trust Him that His sacrificial death on the cross is enough to cleanse you from all your sins
4) Trust Him that He will give you his Holy Spirit when you ask for it
5) Continue to focus on Jesus and trust Him to inspire, prompt and empower you to live right, out of love and not out of fear of punishment. Trust Him to continually transform you into His likeness as you focus on Him.
Really my dear friends, Jesus is trustworthy and His promises are reliable and in Luke 11:11-13 He says:
11"Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? 12"Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? 13"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"
Let us trust God and turn to Him
Let us stop pretending that we are good morally healthy and flawless people and instead admit that in our own strength we cannot cure ourselves. We need God’s forgiveness, we need im to wash away our guilt and shame and we need Him to give us a new heart, a transformed heart, a heart full of His Holy Spirit so that Christ lives in us and we can truly be His followers and instead of going from bad to worse we change from glory to glory and find the happiness God had in mind for us all along.
2 Cor. 3:17-18
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
If you want this to happen in your life put your trust in Jesus, for the forgiveness of your sins, for inner cleansing and healing and for giving you His Holy Spirit so you will be transformed into His likeness.
Amen
God loves us and therefore His desire for us is to have happy lives, happy not only for the short-time we are here on earth but for eternity.
But God also knows that because of our sins and disobedience to Him we are actually often very unhappy and unfulfilled deep inside.
Therefore John 3:16-17 tells us that God loved us so much that He send His own son so that we could be saved.
Many are the people in this world who want to control and use us, some use seduction, others use violence, others use manipulation and even some use religion to control us and exercise power over us so that they can exploit our money, our energy, our abilties or even our bodies. But really they are thieves for they want to take from us by stealth. But Jesus is very different. He says in John 10:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
Jesus did not come to take from us but He has come to give us life, fullness of life
NO NEW RELIGION!!!
He has not come to bring a new religion with more rules and regulations trying to force people to change. The Bible makes it clear that people are so flawed by nature, so affected by sin that no law can force people to live in a way that meets Gods Holy demands.
Rules and laws are based on fear and threats of punishment but even the threat of painful death cannot change who we are inside!!!
Besides Gods demands are much higher than the rules people impose on other people. God wants that we live holy and without sin, full of love for all human beings, even to the point of loving our enemies and forgiving and doing good to those who persecute us.
This no human being can ever achieve, no matter how much pressure we put them under.
SIN IS A MORAL AND SPIRITUAL DISEASE
You see sin is more than an act of disobedience to God for it is also like a spiritual and moral disease that cripples us. We are morally and spiritually so affected that it is simply impossible for us to live as healthy spiritual and moral beings.
“No one is righteous, not even one…” .we are all morally sick and inclined to sin as Romans 3:10-12 reminds us. We are all so affected by this moral and spiritual disease that all of us are unhealthy. In fact the Bible even calls us spiritually death because it is a progressive disease that goes from bad to worse until we end up spiritually death and destroyed in hell, eternally separated from God like a body wasted away by disease until it ends decaying buried in the soil.
GOD HAS A BETTER DESTINY FOR US
This is not the destiny God has in mind for us. He has a cure, a way to save us. But the cure does not consist of all kinds of religious and moral commands, church rules or cultural and societal regulations…..
Such rules characterized by "do this, don't do that" do not have real transforming power. In fact they add to our burden with guilt, shame and their threat of punishment, rejection and social isolation. It may force us to try hard to be morally and spiritually healthy but we will sooner or later fail for it does not cure us! Often all it does it encourage us to pretend to be morally healthy and deny or hide our sins and errors. At most it helps us cope with the disease but it holds no hope for healing.
The cure God has is to give us a new heart, a transformed heart, to bring us to live spiritually. This was foretold more than 2500 years ago by the prophet Jeremiah:
Jeremiah 31:33-34
33"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34"They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
And this became reality when in His love God send His son Jesus 2000 years ago to become the cure for our disease.
JESUS IS THE CURE, ONLY HE IS OUR HOPE
Jesus lived a sinless life and yet he died on the cross to take the punishment for all our sins and moral flaws away so we no longer need to live under condemnation, in shame and guilt.
But He did more, He rose from death in the power of God and then send His Holy Spirit to dwell within us so that we are transformed in our hearts into people that live morally and spiritually healthy. Not under the threat of punishment by law-enforcers but prompted by an inner law, a law of love, a law that gives life and motivates us to eagerly do what is good.
For this all we need to do is come to Christ and abide in Him who is the life-giver.
It starts with trusting Him and putting your faith in what He achieved by dying on the cross and by overcoming the power of decay and death when He rose from death in his resurrection.
Let me summarize it in 5 main points:
1) Trust Gods word where He says that He loves the whole world and does not want anyone to perish in their sins
2) Trust Him that His sacrificial death on the cross is enough to take away the punishment for all your sins
3) Trust Him that His sacrificial death on the cross is enough to cleanse you from all your sins
4) Trust Him that He will give you his Holy Spirit when you ask for it
5) Continue to focus on Jesus and trust Him to inspire, prompt and empower you to live right, out of love and not out of fear of punishment. Trust Him to continually transform you into His likeness as you focus on Him.
Really my dear friends, Jesus is trustworthy and His promises are reliable and in Luke 11:11-13 He says:
11"Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he? 12"Or if he is asked for an egg, he will not give him a scorpion, will he? 13"If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?"
Let us trust God and turn to Him
Let us stop pretending that we are good morally healthy and flawless people and instead admit that in our own strength we cannot cure ourselves. We need God’s forgiveness, we need im to wash away our guilt and shame and we need Him to give us a new heart, a transformed heart, a heart full of His Holy Spirit so that Christ lives in us and we can truly be His followers and instead of going from bad to worse we change from glory to glory and find the happiness God had in mind for us all along.
2 Cor. 3:17-18
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
If you want this to happen in your life put your trust in Jesus, for the forgiveness of your sins, for inner cleansing and healing and for giving you His Holy Spirit so you will be transformed into His likeness.
Amen
woensdag 22 juli 2015
Living without condemnation
"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone.
Mark 10:18
18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Romans 7:18-25
I often have been called a good man, a good father, a good friend and so on. There also was a time in my life that I thought so low of myself that I really tried to do anything as long as I would appear good and acceptable (read worthy of love, care and respect). As a natural people-pleaser this was not that hard to do but the truth remains that no matter how well people may think of us, by nature no-one is fully and consistently good. No human being, not even one is truly good and without flaw. We are all contaminated by evil as Romans 3:12 reminds us. Ever since Adam took from the tree of good and evil both have been present in us. We are truly a mixed bag of sin and righteousness. This means that at times we suffer what Paul describes here in Romans 7:18-25.
We try so hard to be good and set ourselves high and lofty standards of good behaviour or worse allow others to set these for us. But no matter how hard we try sooner or later we run out of energy and fall down hard in all kinds of sin. The truth is that Jesus is right: No-one is good, only God.
So what then is the solution? How do we avoid going from bad to worse and change from glory to glory? It is when we admit our own failings, our own inability and look upon God to change us. It is when we fix our eyes on Jesus in faith and drink in His love, praying and expecting Him to inspire us from within to live right that this happens:
17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
2 Cor. 3:17-18
God wants to set us free from trying so hard in our own strength to be good, worthy, acceptable and lovable. He wants us to accept the fact that although by nature we are flawed and unable to e good all the time, He loves us and wants to help us grow in righteousness. This happens when we look upon Jesus with the eyes of faith, hope and joyful expectation that where our own strength fails, He is our strength amidst our weakness. Not only doe she bring forgiveness and healing to our hearts, but He also makes us grow into His likeness: As we look upon Him more and more in faith, expecting it only from Him and not our own strength, then our lives start to reflect Him and radiate with His glory as by faith we allow His love to fill our hearts (Romans 5:5).
Then we will experience what Paul exclaims in joy in Romans 7:25 “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord….”
And we may live in the wonderful liberty that Paul describes in the next chapter knowing that our sins have been forgiven and done away with, not once, not twice but continually for in Christ there is no condemnation. He is always our advocate before the father.
My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.
1 John 2:1 (ESV translation)
Clothed with His righteousness we are given a brand new start every day:
1Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
Romans 8:1-2
No more living under external laws that bring condemnation and punishment but living out of the law of love which he puts into our hearts. Now we can live authentically, being good because God is good and He lives within us by His Holy Spirit, filling us with His love and goodness.
Then truly the word of the prophet Jeremiah 31:33 is fulfilled in us:
33"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34"They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
Amen
Mark 10:18
18 I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. 21 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23 but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Romans 7:18-25
I often have been called a good man, a good father, a good friend and so on. There also was a time in my life that I thought so low of myself that I really tried to do anything as long as I would appear good and acceptable (read worthy of love, care and respect). As a natural people-pleaser this was not that hard to do but the truth remains that no matter how well people may think of us, by nature no-one is fully and consistently good. No human being, not even one is truly good and without flaw. We are all contaminated by evil as Romans 3:12 reminds us. Ever since Adam took from the tree of good and evil both have been present in us. We are truly a mixed bag of sin and righteousness. This means that at times we suffer what Paul describes here in Romans 7:18-25.
We try so hard to be good and set ourselves high and lofty standards of good behaviour or worse allow others to set these for us. But no matter how hard we try sooner or later we run out of energy and fall down hard in all kinds of sin. The truth is that Jesus is right: No-one is good, only God.
So what then is the solution? How do we avoid going from bad to worse and change from glory to glory? It is when we admit our own failings, our own inability and look upon God to change us. It is when we fix our eyes on Jesus in faith and drink in His love, praying and expecting Him to inspire us from within to live right that this happens:
17Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
2 Cor. 3:17-18
God wants to set us free from trying so hard in our own strength to be good, worthy, acceptable and lovable. He wants us to accept the fact that although by nature we are flawed and unable to e good all the time, He loves us and wants to help us grow in righteousness. This happens when we look upon Jesus with the eyes of faith, hope and joyful expectation that where our own strength fails, He is our strength amidst our weakness. Not only doe she bring forgiveness and healing to our hearts, but He also makes us grow into His likeness: As we look upon Him more and more in faith, expecting it only from Him and not our own strength, then our lives start to reflect Him and radiate with His glory as by faith we allow His love to fill our hearts (Romans 5:5).
Then we will experience what Paul exclaims in joy in Romans 7:25 “Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord….”
And we may live in the wonderful liberty that Paul describes in the next chapter knowing that our sins have been forgiven and done away with, not once, not twice but continually for in Christ there is no condemnation. He is always our advocate before the father.
My dear children, I am writing this to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father. He is Jesus Christ, the one who is truly righteous.
1 John 2:1 (ESV translation)
Clothed with His righteousness we are given a brand new start every day:
1Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
Romans 8:1-2
No more living under external laws that bring condemnation and punishment but living out of the law of love which he puts into our hearts. Now we can live authentically, being good because God is good and He lives within us by His Holy Spirit, filling us with His love and goodness.
Then truly the word of the prophet Jeremiah 31:33 is fulfilled in us:
33"But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34"They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."
Amen
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