Sabotaging Resolutions

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  …  For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.  Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.  – Romans 7:15-25

And so, we start a new year with many making resolutions to live this year differently in some way from the manner in which they have lived in the past.  For the most part, resolutions to eat healthier, exercise, refrain from this, adhere to that will be forgotten before the calendar rolls to February.  Something seems to sabotage our good intentions. 

Many times as a Christian I have sought to break some habit or create a habit.  I have gone to the altar and confessed before God.  I have prayed and asked for help.  I have read the books and tried to follow the seven steps to success or the twelve sure-fire ways to get on the right track.  However, I find, time and again, that what Bobbie Burns told a certain mousie is true for me:  The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men, Gang aft a-gley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promis’d joy. 

It is true enough the plow which us turns us out into December’s cold is not always of our own making and may indeed be beyond our control.  Yet I think, more often than not, the cause of our disruptions and our failures to find that promised joy lies much closer to home.  Who is it that urges you to eat that second helping, skip your workout, or put off an unpleasant task?  Yep.

But there is something else I have noticed:  when I do something that, as Paul says, is “the very thing I hate”, someone is quick to jump up and condemn me for it.  It’s not for the sake of correction.  Instead the voice I hear asks how I could do/think/say such a thing if I were really a Christian.  It says because I fail to do or not do a particular thing that I am a failure in the sight of God.  The voice tells me that I am rejected by God because I failed to live up to this standard. 

Now a lot of people will tell us that it is the devil talking to us, the devil urging us to do something wrong or not do right, and the devil accusing and condemning us when we follow his advice.    I am sure the devil does get involved sometimes.  On the other hand, I have to give credit where credit is due.  I know that my old fleshly nature is itself devilishly clever and not in need of a lot of outside help to pull off some of these shenanigans.  Plus, it is my flesh, which does not want to cede control and authority to the spirit, who benefits.  By making me feel shame and disgust, it drives a wedge between me and my Father. 

Another ploy of the old nature is to deliberately make a mess of things, get me in a bind then blame God.  The flesh asks why I would trust a God who would allow such a thing to happen.

What we are really doing is sabotaging ourselves because there is a part of us that simply wants to be sovereign, to usurp God’s rightful place in our inner being.  It isn’t that we want to be serial killers or real deviants.  We may even choose, most of the time, to do good – give to charity, provide for our families, help others, and live morally.  But in doing so, we are further convincing ourselves that we do not really need God. 

I’ll use myself as an example.  First I will set unrealistic goals and expectations.  Next, I will distract myself and procrastinate.  I’ll get behind in a project.  I’ll stay up late and work extra hours to catch up.  I’ll get irritable and flaky.  My wife will complain about me neglecting her or working too many hours.  So now, I’m feeling unjustly condemned in one way.  Yet I also know -- since I know that reading “Comic Sins” on Lileks or clicking stupid lists on Cracked.com is what got me behind in the first place, that my wife’s complaint is actually legitimate.  At that point, any excuse to explode will do quite well.  I lose my temper, scream, cuss, and smash things – differing from Hulk only in coloration. 

Once all that is out of my system, I feel shame and guilt.  I’m not a real Christian.  No true Christian would do that kind of thing.  How can God overlook all that?  How can I ever go to God again?  I was never anything but a damned hypocrite.  And, of course, the flesh is quite ready to bring up all my past series of failures and ugly episodes to reinforce that point.

It’s all the work of the saboteur -- stealth, deception, and illusion.  It was never in my power to live the life of Christ.  If it had been, Jesus would never have needed to go to the Cross.  God never needed to look for a way to condemn us.  We condemned ourselves, from the first fall in the Garden to the guy who fell off the wagon this past New Year’s Eve.  We know we are wrong, and we want an excuse to wallow in it, an excuse to give control over to the old fleshly nature, to do it “my way”.  Take time to read Romans 7.  I’m not the only one this has ever happened to.  The Apostle knows the agony I feel because he has gone through the same conflict, the same dark, hopeless battle himself.  

The good news is that I’ve got bad news for the old nature:  There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do (Romans 8:1-3a).

 

Cover Up

My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father -- Jesus Christ, the righteous One. He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world -- 1 John 2:1-2

After a couple of days of really bad stuff, including a bunged-up hand which was very inconvenient and the loss of my voice, which is much less so, we are back to John's First Epistle.

I don't like the word 'sin'. For one thing it has a built-in condemnation factor for a lot of us. I always see a fundamentalist preacher with a big black Bible looking down his nose at me. My language is sometimes less than perfect. I know a whole bunch of bad words, and I can employ them effectively in context. Not long ago I had taken time away from work and driven twenty miles to take my wife to a doctor. It was her first visit, so I filled out the long information form for her. She took it up to the receptionist, and, in a minute or two, called me over. I do not give medical people my SSN, since our insurance company has a subscriber number in addition to the group number we are supposed to use. The office would not accept us unless I gave them my SSN. I didn't tell them to go to hell or to screw themselves. I just shrugged and said we'd take our business to someone who wasn't such a bureaucratic Gestapo idiot. I then began the arduous process of dragging my foaming-at-the-mouth wife out of the reception area to the main door. She’s small but wiry. It’s a lot like giving one of my cats a bath.

As we were exiting the building, I expressed my disgust with the word "dumb-ass". Now I think that's pretty innocuous, especially given that my wife needed treatment, and I had just wasted over an hour on a bunch of medical brownshirts. I said it, though, out loud -- and my "out loud" is first of all loud. A man was coming into the building just at that moment, and I recognized him as a missionary I had met some months before. He did not recognize me, but we talked for a moment. As we parted company, he sort of gently chided me to "be careful about what you say. You never know who is going to be around." I chuckled and refrained from saying, “Ain’t that the eff’in’ truth.”

It really did strike me as more amusing than convicting. First, I'm pretty sure God thinks they are dumb-asses, too. As far as being unkind, I prefer being compared to a quadruped lacking the ability to vocalize rather than, say, an intentionally malicious jackbooted fascist. But even more to the point, I do know God is always around, and I worry a lot more about offending Him than anyone else -- even missionaries, God bless 'em.

Anyway, the work of the Holy Spirit, according to Jesus in John 16 is to "convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment". For the world, the sin is a refusal to believe in Christ (see John 16:8-11). But, as Matthew Henry and others would point out, there are "Christianized ... and unchristianized, converted and unconverted sinners" (Matthew Henry's Complete Commentary on 1 John 2:1-2). Even as Christians, we, to use the most common meaning of sin, "miss the mark", fail to effectively do our job and carry out the Lord's will.

That, I suppose, is the bad news. It is inevitable that we will not love one another adequately, that we will be fearful and anxious at times, that we will act in greedy self-interest, avenge our own hurts, and dismiss the still, small voice of the Spirit.

The good news is that Jesus is the propitiation or expiation of all sin. On the Ark of the Covenant there were two cherubim carved on the cover. The cover of the Ark and especially the area between the two figures and under their outstretched wings was the “mercy seat”. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered the Holy of Holies and refreshed the covering of blood upon the mercy seat. Beneath, inside the Ark, were the commandments given to Moses by the Lord. The blood on the mercy seat blocked, you might say, God’s view of the law and man’s failure to keep it.

Jesus is the anti-type of the mercy seat sprinkled with blood, the fulfillment of what was depicted by it. By His blood, He turns aside divine wrath. It seems sad to us that the Father, even metaphorically, hides His face from the Son as Jesus bears the sin of man, bleeds, and dies. Yet it is in this turning away that we are spared the righteous wrath that is the just response to our rejection of truth. To believe now that we are “objects of wrath” is to deny the efficacy of the Cross. The only ones upon whom the wrath of God falls are those who cannot believe or refuse to believe that what Jesus did is enough. We may suffer the consequences of bad actions just because decisions and actions have consequences – even the action of no action. But we can be assured this is not God’s wrath upon us, for our Advocate has covered justice with mercy.