“Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Corinthians 5:6-8 NASB1995; read vs.1-13)
If we, who profess faith in Jesus Christ, allow sin to reign
in our mortal bodies, and if we then gather together with the body of Christ, we
are not going to be able to have a spiritual influence on the rest of the
church which will lead them to walks of faith in obedience to our Lord in holy
living. We will either have no influence at all, or a negative one, for what
comes out of our mouths comes from what is stored up in our hearts. And all it
takes is one bad influence to begin the spread of influence contrary to God’s
will.
Now there are people who fake their Christianity, and those
who are charlatans and wolves in sheep’s clothing who may appear to say the
right things when they are trying to impress, manipulate, and/or deceive others
with their lies, so we have to be very discerning here. For just because they
may sound religious, and as though they are speaking the truth, it does not
mean that lies are not in the mix or that they are not trying to gain your
support for a later time in which they will convince you with their lies.
And this is why the New Testament Scriptures speak to the
church and to all who profess the name of Jesus over and over again, warning
all of us against lies and liars and deceptions and false teachings and Satan’s
traps, and against falling for these deceptions. And it is why we have warnings
such as this, and instructions in what to do to correct the situation, so that
we don’t all end up in the pit thinking that we are in the right place. For all
it takes is one rotten piece of fruit to infect the others and to rot them all.
And from the perspective of a 75 year old, who grew up
attending church gatherings from infanthood, and who has lived many different
places, and been a part of many different gatherings of the church (or the
false church), and been very active in Christian ministry most of her life, including
in church planting, I can tell you that deception has been working its way very
slowly through the church, at least all of my life, and they have very slowly
been diluting and altering the gospel to make it less offensive to the world.
And so rather than removing from their midst (see verse 2)
those who are willfully, deliberately, and habitually living sinful lifestyles,
with no signs of genuine repentance and changed hearts and lives, many coddle
the habitual sinners in their sin, and they convince them that a mere verbal
profession of faith in Jesus Christ assures them of forgiveness of all sin and
heaven as their eternal resting place, but regardless of how they live. And if
they feel guilty, they tell them to just claim who they are in Christ, which is
a lie.
For if we made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ, but
then we went right on living just like we did before we made the profession of
faith, we are not really “in Christ,” by faith in him. For faith which saves
comes from God, it is persuaded of God, and it is gifted to us by God. And it
is not of our own doing, so we don’t get to decide what that faith looks like. For
biblical faith results in us denying self, dying with Christ to sin, and walks
of obedience to our Lord’s commands, in practice, by the grace of God, in the
power of God.
And this is not saying that we will be absolutely perfect in
all ways from that point forward (1 John 2:1-2) and that we will never fail or
never sin. But sin is no longer to be what we live by, what we practice. Rather,
holy living and righteousness are to be what we practice, and obedience to our
Lord and to his commands. And if at any time we wander from that, we must come
back to following our Lord and walking in his ways. But habitual wandering is
still deliberate and habitual sinning against God, which will not end in
heaven.
So, the encouragement here for the church, as a whole, is to
be God’s holy people who walk in righteousness and in obedience to the Lord,
and for whom sin is not their practice, who also exercise church discipline on
those who refuse to genuinely repent of their sinful lifestyles and to change
their life course to follow the Lord in obedience. And please know that
repentance is not just saying you are sorry, especially if you are sinning and
saying you are sorry deliberately and habitually, and the cycle keeps going on
forever.
[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John
6:44; John 10:27-30; Acts 26:18; Romans 2:6-8; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; 1
Corinthians 10:1-22; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32;
Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; Hebrews 3:1-19; Hebrews 4:1-13; Hebrews 12:1-2;
1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:5-10; 1 John 2:3-6; 1 John 3:4-10]
Seek the Lord
An Original Work / July 20, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Musical Instrumentation by Mark
Bradley
Based off Isaiah 55
“Come to Me all you
who thirst; come to waters.
Listen to Me, and
eat what’s good today,
And your soul will
delight in richest of fare.
Give ear to Me, and
you will live.
I have made an
eternal covenant with you.
Wash in the blood of
the Lamb.”
Seek the Lord while
He may be found; call on Him.
Let the wicked
forsake his way, in truth.
Let him turn to the
Lord, and he will receive mercy.
Freely, God pardons
him.
“For My thoughts are
not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My
ways,”
declares the Lord,
our God.
“My word that goes
out of My mouth is truthful.
It will not return
to Me unfulfilled.
My word will
accomplish all that I desire,
And achieve the goal
I intend.
You will go in joy
and be led forth in peace.
The mountains will
burst into song… before you,
And all of the trees
clap their hands.”
Deliberate and
Habitual Sinning
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