“If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left.” Hebrews 10:26
“The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” I John 2:4
“No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.” I John 3:6
“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” Hebrews 12:4
There is no such thing as putting up too strong a resistance against sin. But what I’ve been thinking about is this: So suppose you are saved. And then, suppose this same-old, same-old temptation that used to plague you comes up again. It can be a sinful thing to do, a sinful thing to say, a sinful attitude to entertain. . .And you hear God whisper, “If you love me, you won’t do that.” And oh! you resist! And feel His Spirit within you, in fact, spurning the sin. And yet, in your flesh, you just don’t resist enough. You fall. And you feel disgust and contrition over the sin even while you’re commiting it,–but it doesn’t stop you. You do the sinful thing, you say the sinful thing, you keep the sinful thought as your guest, enjoying it even while you hate it. It’s disgusting. And once it has run its course and/or been ousted, you are left bereft. What now? Failing to resist strongly enough when you could have is the same thing as deliberately sinning, it seems to me. It is as though you sat twisting the nail in Jesus’ hand. How can this guilt be borne? How can we expect mercy now, when we have trampled the sacrifice that was to save us underfoot?
“It is impossible for those who have once been enlgihtened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.” Hebrews 6:4-6
How can we continue to hope, if we fall under the thrall of sin again even for a moment, knowing what we know? If we say to ourselves, “Well, even if I am condemned, I will still try to serve Him with my whole heart and mind and soul and strength, just because He is worthy. Even if I can’t be saved, maybe others can, and I will strive to serve Him still even if I go to Hell at the end of the road,” does that change anything? Or since sin has crept in again, are we barred from pleasing God in any way from here on out? For no righteousness originates witih us, of course, only with His Spirit when we are governed by Him. We can do no good thing by ourselves, unaided by Him. So how does that work? Is there any hope left?
*******************
Not quite relatedly, I sometimes struggle with the selfish knowledge that one can’t be everything to everybody. (Or anyone, actually. Anyway, you shouldn’t; you shouldn’t even try or want to be.) You can love someone without limit, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to be the first person they turn to. It doesn’t even mean you necessarily make their list of people to confide in. And there’s a part of me that struggles–always getting knowledge second-hand, never being the one trusted with confidences from so-and-so. I mean, you’d think I’d be near the top of this person’s list, but I’m not even on it. I guess there’s a lot of these types of relationships in most people’s lives. And I guess family members are most often the mysterious, aloof parties. And I wonder, are there people in my life that I’m hurting this way? I try not to.
Whenever I am tempted to rankle at a person for this, I absolve them by acknowledging that after all, you can’t really help who it seems most natural to turn to when you’re confused or troubled or hurting. And so the fault lies with me–not the other person–because if I wanted to be trusted perhaps I should have done a better job at reaching out and building trust in the first place.
(It seems like everything always comes back to me and my failure to reach out and connect to people. This may be perfectly just, but justice can be a hard and solid word sometimes–especially when it smacks you around.)
*******************
The desire was born in me that I want to be a foster-mom.
It would be so, so hard. But so, so, so worth it.
While reading this, I couldn’t help but think of a certain passage in Romans. Certainly you’ve heard it a million times, but it is the millioneth and one time that God shows you something you missed all those other times. And anyway, it’s the word of God, which is a handy sword to have around. So here is Romans 7:14 – 25
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 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. 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. 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.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 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. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 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.”
I could clutter this up with my own words, but why bother? God will show you whatever He wants to show you at the time He chooses to show it to you. He’s showing you even now. He’s taking you on the journey. He’ll give you what you need when you need it.
*******
I know this feeling… very intimately. I long for people to confide in me. It’s like you said, though… it always comes back to me. In the past, I may have had my own little pity party, and fed myself lies that I was insignificant and underloved. Now it just seems preposterous to think of myself as being underloved. So many people love me so much… I need to have eyes to see it, and to take them at their word. And that deep intimacy I’m always so thirsty for… it only comes from Jesus.
For the record, you’re on *my* top list.
You are very refreshing in that way, actually. Because others may correct me, but in a way that doesn’t really… connect, I guess, because we’re on different pages. But for the most part, people don’t correct me. They tell me things that have some pure truth in them, but are clouded up by earthly perspectives. If I want someone’s advice on a spiritual matter, you’re the first one I go to. So there.