Understanding all these parts of the person is very interesting but
explaining them all would be quite tedious. I’ll get to the point and
for anyone who actually reads this and has questions we can have a good
conversation about what all the human components are. What is most
important to understand is that the spiritual is more powerful then the
physical. The physical is tied to decay, it is irrevocably cursed by God
because of sin, this will not change until the second coming of Christ.
Romans 8:20-23 An animal can not help being bound, to the physical
world, it can not help being a victim of its passions and environment.
So a dog that kills its owner because of harsh treatment should be
pitied and loved because it was raised poorly and had no choice in the
matter. A human because he has a spiritual side which can overpower the
physical passions must be held accountable for his actions, he can never
blame his circumstances nor environment. When humans blame other things
for being responsible for their actions they lower themselves to the
level of animals and degrades themselves and the human race.
As
Christians a large part of our lives is to be spent eradicating sin. By
sin I mean the distance between ourselves and God. God is everywhere.
This is true, but until you know He’s there you He might as well not be
there because its not going to help you at all if you don’t know He’s
there. God is not physical being He is spiritual so I’m not talking
about simply physical distance. There is spiritual distance between
ourselves and God which must be traversed for us to truly rest in Him.
As pagans we had no hope of traversing the gap, it was quite impossible.
Christ’s sacrifice guaranteed the souls of those who believe an
eternity in heaven and his blood made a road which we can travel on
which will lead us to God. The road has many names, Godliness,
Righteousness, Love, Perfection, Goodness.
To
draw near to God we must bring all our components. If we wish to
eradicate sin and to rest in the peace of God all of our faculties must
be equally in pursuit of God. Often Christians make the mistake of
cutting out the fruit of sin without ever taking out the root. A person
who truly wants to walk the road of Godliness can not continually be
stomping out all the outgrowths of sin saying, “I’m going to honor my
parents, I’m going to respect my girls, I’m going to get good grades,
I’m going to stop cursing, I’m going to stop drinking….” This will wear a
person down, make them discouraged and they won’t experience the peace
Christ did. The problem is that this person is just dealing the results
of his sin, he’s just trying to fix what happens because he’s so far
away from God. What He has to do is start asking the deeper questions
of, “why do I dishonor my parents, why do I drink, why do I get bad
grades?”
The
problem usually resides in the spiritual side of a person. It is the
more powerful side of a person and most people don’t even know its there
or if they do they rarely access it. Its hard to change all of a sudden
from being a sensual person who learns with one’s eyes and thinks with
one’s feelings. But it must be understood that change comes by changing
the heart not by changing the action. It is possible to stop drinking
but the inner problem that forced that person to alcohol in the first
place will soon enough find another avenue to vent its anger. A true
disciple of Christ will discipline all parts of his person, not just the
part doing the sinning. A person who wishes to destroy sin in his life
by the power of God must allow God to control His mind for the mind
creates one’s thoughts; his body because it is the throne of the
passions; his will determines his actions; his soul because the soul
decides one nature; the spirit because the spirit is one’s character and
his emotions because they decide his feelings. A diligent disciple then
would create a lifestyle in which each of his parts is properly
disciplined. Christians are rarely taught today that their is more to
them then what they can feel. They are not taught that the unseen
determine what happens in the seen world and that disciplining their
spirit is far more important then learning about the dangers of drugs
and the rules of dating. *kicks the tv again*
Comment away, let me know what you think on the text or the music, I've started listening to Nightwish again, I haven't really listened to them since Junior High.
Good point that the spiritual side is stronger than the physical. Encouraging and sobering :)
ReplyDelete*kicks tv*
ReplyDeleteHi, it’s me again.
ReplyDeleteSorry this is so long, but it really does have to be since there’s so much to be said.
I hope we can have a good discussion on this topic.
Anyway. Onwards!
To quote you:
“As Christians a large part of our lives is to be spent eradicating sin. By sin I mean the distance between ourselves and God. God is everywhere. This is true, but until you know He’s there you He might as well not be there because its not going to help you at all if you don’t know He’s there. God is not physical being He is spiritual so I’m not talking about simply physical distance. There is spiritual distance between ourselves and God which must be traversed for us to truly rest in Him. As pagans we had no hope of traversing the gap, it was quite impossible. Christ’s sacrifice guaranteed the souls of those who believe an eternity in heaven and his blood made a road which we can travel on which will lead us to God. The road has many names, Godliness, Righteousness, Love, Perfection, Goodness.”
I have so much to say even about this segment by itself.
Starting with your first two sentences:
“As Christians a large part of our lives is to be spent eradicating sin. By sin I mean the distance between ourselves and God.”
First off, I need to say right away that I strongly disagree with the idea that it’s even *possible* for us as humans to eradicate sin. This disagreement goes for sin in both the context of generic sin, and sin in the context of “distance between ourselves and God.” We ourselves are not capable of eradicating sin of any kind, in any way. That was the entire point of what Jesus did on the cross.
I’ll come back to this point later.
Another thing I’m not in concurrence with is your usage of the word “sin”, and I’ll explain.
To quote Revelation 1: 5:
“And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”
And to quote Hebrews 8:12:
“For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”
Why is this distance of which you speak considered sin? Especially since we are Christians, and thus cleansed wholly and completely by the blood of Jesus? Biblically God certainly doesn’t see it that way, but I’ll take it that this concept of sin is your own idea. In any case, my question was more rhetorical than an actual question, because my next point takes into consideration the very existence of that distance of which you mentioned.
To quote Ephesians 2:13:
“But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.”
We as humans can’t even *attempt* to come to the Father except through Jesus (John 14: 6, and John 6:44).
Jesus bridged the gap between us and the Father once and for all when He died on the cross. We are clothed in *His* righteousness, and “made nigh” by His blood.
Moving on to your next two statements for a moment, you said:
“God is everywhere. This is true, but until you know He’s there you He [sic] might as well not be there because its not going to help you at all if you don’t know He’s there.”
I’m not going to spend long on this one, because I’m not sure if you meant that we can’t attempt to close the distance between us and God if we don’t know He’s there, or if you meant that in general He might as well not be there if we don’t know He is to begin with. If it’s the first, I already talked about that. If it’s the latter, then I believe your statement is entirely false. But again, I won’t spend long on this one—there is still so much left to be said, and I’m not sure what you meant with this anyway. :)
(Continuing...)
ReplyDeleteSkipping to the end of the segment I quoted at the beginning, I’d like to talk about the last bit you wrote which I quote here:
“There is spiritual distance between ourselves and God which must be traversed for us to truly rest in Him. As pagans we had no hope of traversing the gap, it was quite impossible. Christ’s sacrifice guaranteed the souls of those who believe an eternity in heaven and his blood made a road which we can travel on which will lead us to God. The road has many names, Godliness, Righteousness, Love, Perfection, Goodness.”
I don’t even know where to begin ;).
Well, to start:
My thoughts on that first statement can be summed up with these words:
“There is NOT!”, but I’ll elaborate anyway.
To say that there’s a spiritual distance between ourselves and God which must be traversed *after* we’ve already been saved is really quite insulting to the indescribable gift we’ve been given by Him.
It’s basically saying that when Jesus said “It is finished”, it wasn’t finished at all.
If indeed “his blood made a road which we can travel on which will LEAD us to God”, instead of us being “made NIGH by the blood of Christ” (to quote Ephesians 2:13 as I did earlier), then He might as well have said “It’s almost finished, but not quite”. In fact, you could say that instead of “It is finished”, He might as well have just said “It’s just the beginning. I’ve given you guys a good start, though” since there’s a considerable amount of voyaging that would have to be done in order to be nigh to God. What you said there then was pretty much a direct contradiction to what the Bible says. The “distance” has already been traversed.
(Continuing...)
ReplyDeleteMoving to the next segment :), I quote you again:
“To draw near to God we must bring all our components. If we wish to eradicate sin and to rest in the peace of God all of our faculties must be equally in pursuit of God. Often Christians make the mistake of cutting out the fruit of sin without ever taking out the root. A person who truly wants to walk the road of Godliness can not continually be stomping out all the outgrowths of sin saying, “I’m going to honor my parents, I’m going to respect my girls, I’m going to get good grades, I’m going to stop cursing, I’m going to stop drinking….” This will wear a person down, make them discouraged and they won’t experience the peace Christ did. The problem is that this person is just dealing the results of his sin, he’s just trying to fix what happens because he’s so far away from God. What He has to do is start asking the deeper questions of, “why do I dishonor my parents, why do I drink, why do I get bad grades?””
Again, it sounds to me like you’re placing the responsibility on the person themselves to eradicate the sin, and to change their *own* heart. As I said before, we as humans are not capable of this ourselves.
I’ll agree with the line:
“This will wear a person down, make them discouraged and they won’t experience the peace Christ did.” But I’d have to stop there. I don’t think the problem is that this person is just dealing with the results of his sin and trying to fix what happens because he’s so far away from God.
The problem I believe lies in the fact that he’s trying to deal with his own sin himself in the first place.
And even if we were to TRY and work ourselves into a state where we *thought* we had eradicated our own sins. How do you think that would measure up to God’s standard of righteousness really?
To quote Romans 3: 10:
“As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:”
I’m not saying that Christians should go around murdering people, drinking and thieving simply because we’ve already been forgiven. What I am saying, is that we can’t depend upon our own selves to change our own hearts and eradicate our own sin, because (I’ll say it again) we can’t.
After we become saved, I believe we need to know that *God* will change our hearts FOR us, so we won’t *want* to go around murdering people, drinking and stealing other people’s valuables. That’s just an example of course, and I’m definitely not saying that all unsaved people do this.
And again, once we are saved, our sins are no longer remembered by God. There is nothing that we have to worry about eradicating in the first place.
To quote Psalm 103: 12:
“As far as the east is from the west, [so] far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”
(Finishing...)
ReplyDeleteMoving to my last point at long last.
I’ll resist the urge to respond to the rest of your post with a whole lot of what I already said, and just quote part of the rest of your post, because that’s all that’s needed.
You said:
“Its hard to change all of a sudden from being a sensual person who learns with one’s eyes and thinks with one’s feelings.”
And you also said:
“Christians are rarely taught today that their is more to them then what they can feel. [sic]”
My last point is rather quick, and I believe very important.
I’ve noticed a trend in your writings that appears to me to be along the lines of “you can’t always trust your feelings”. I’ll agree with this wholly and completely, which brings me to what I want to say:
Just because someone doesn’t *feel* like they’re close to God, and just because they feel like there’s a distance between them and Him that needs to be traversed, does not mean that this is true;
“For we walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Cor 5:7).
Biblically speaking, we as Christians are already nigh to him, courtesy of Christ’s blood and sacrifice. There is no distance to be traversed. Take it on faith. Not even on the faith of humans, because our faith will always falter at some time or another. But rather, To quote Galatians 2:16:
“Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.”
And there you have it. “The faith of CHRIST”. His faith, not our works. Our works don’t…work. And our faith will always falter. But I think it’s safe to say that His faith will never *ever* fail.
So yes.
Oh and if you skipped, you’ve cheated.
-Mary