A Simple Call - Through Death to Life

"For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." (Romans 8:13)

"Be holy as I am holy." (1 Peter 1:16)

"You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

This will be a simple entry. It is a call, brothers and sisters, simply to hate our sinfulness. My sin, too often, becomes an abstract thing to me, as I put it quickly within my mental theological construction. I talk of my sinfulness often, but I do it in a sanitized way, and I do it mainly as a piece of the puzzle to help explain the world to others. And to get them to look at their own sin, as I effectively ignore my own.

But my sin is killing me, and your sin is killing you. John Owen wrote, "Be killing sin, or it will be killing you." I have noticed some things that my sin does...

1) It belittles God's glory. It says, "This thing here is better than God." How dishonoring to a perfect holy God!

2) It saps my energy for ministry.

3) It make me doubt God - whether he is real and whether he can deliver me from these sins.

4) It leads to a deafening of my ears to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

5) It renders me fruitless, and in my fruitlessness my relationships are strained. Instead of peace, I bring anger. Instead of patience, I bring selfishness. Instead of joy, I bring sullenness and guilt.

6) It lies to me telling me my sins are small, telling me I might as well give in because God will forgive, telling me that I am better than other people whose sins are worse, telling me sometimes that I am worse than everyone else, telling me sometimes that perhaps God will not forgive. In my sin, I really see how I have traded in the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature, rather than the Creator.

7) I am wounding the lover of my soul, our future Husband, Jesus Christ. Every sin is a sin of betrayal, as I prostitute myself out to other lovers. Jesus, take my whole heart!

These are a small handful of the reasons why God hates sin. And he calls us to perfection, which seems an impossibility, but I think he calls to that because when I set my heart on mortifying, killing my sins with the power of the Spirit, my heart must want it all gone - no survivors. Any sin, however small, that I harbor, is like harboring a traitor to my God. So to settle for anything less than holiness, to stop short and give up, settling for some "smaller" measures of sin, is to prove myself a traitor. And my procrastination to deal harshly with my flesh is itself a sin.

I write this entry as a personal wake-up call to myself and to you. God hates my sin! God hates your sin. He died to save us from it, to forgive us, to cleanse us, to make us new, and to bring us into his family. By being united to Christ, we receive forgiveness, and his wrath is taken from us, being absorbed by Christ on the cross. But even now, with God's wrath removed, he so greatly wants for us to lean heavily into this process of becoming like Christ, of becoming holy. That is the only way to life. Killing the sin within is a war worth fighting, and it is for our good. It is for our joy, and it is for his glory. As we choose holiness over sin, we declare the worth of our Savior and Creator! As long as the list is of the reasons that sin is bad, the other list - of the reasons that God and pursuit of his holiness is good - is so much longer!

To God alone be the glory! May his grace and peace rest on you! And may you become more deeply acquainted with God the Spirit, who indwells you, as you lean into his power, becoming partners in this most necessary of endeavors, the slaying of your flesh, for your joy and for his glory.