• CFN has a new look and a new theme

    "I bore you on eagle's wings, and brought you to Myself" (Exodus 19:4)

    More new themes will be coming in the future!

  • Desire to be a vessel of honor unto the Lord Jesus Christ?

    Join For His Glory for a discussion on how

    https://christianforums.net/threads/a-vessel-of-honor.110278/

  • CFN welcomes new contributing members!

    Please welcome Roberto and Julia to our family

    Blessings in Christ, and hope you stay awhile!

  • Have questions about the Christian faith?

    Come ask us what's on your mind in Questions and Answers

    https://christianforums.net/forums/questions-and-answers/

  • Read the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ?

    Read through this brief blog, and receive eternal salvation as the free gift of God

    /blog/the-gospel

  • Taking the time to pray? Christ is the answer in times of need

    https://christianforums.net/threads/psalm-70-1-save-me-o-god-lord-help-me-now.108509/

  • Focus on the Family

    Strengthening families through biblical principles.

    Focus on the Family addresses the use of biblical principles in parenting and marriage to strengthen the family.

The Christian’s Most Crippling Disability and Enemy

electedbyHim

Elected by Him
Calvinism Overseer
Joined
Jul 15, 2022
Messages
3,484
Reaction score
1,486
Came across this article and looking to see what others think.

Most of the time, we are right to separate sufferings from sins. What you do is different from what happens to you. Your sins are bad things about you as a moral agent. Your sufferings are bad things that happen to you. Agent and victim are opposite in principle. As a new creation in Christ, you live in an essentially different relationship to your sufferings.

But it is worth noting that you, as a new creation in Christ, also live in an essentially different relationship to your own sinfulness. Your sin now afflicts you. The dross of your blind spots and besetting sins no longer defines or delights you. The sin that indwells becomes a form of significant suffering. What you once instinctively loved now torments you.

What sins do you still wrestle with? Forgetting God and proceeding as if life centers on you? Obsessive religious scrupulosity that starves your humanity? Defensive and self-assertive pride? Laziness or drivenness, or an oscillation between both? Irritability, judgmentalism, and complaining? Immoral impulses and fantasies? Obsessive concern with money, food, or entertainment? Fear of what others think about you? Envy of good things that someone else enjoys? Shading truth into half-truths to manufacture your image? Speaking empty or even destructive words, rather than nourishing, constructive, and graceful wisdom?

These sins are endemic to everyday life. Perhaps you recognize the “seven deadly sins”(and a few extras) within that list of the mundane madness of our hearts! I can identify with each one, and I suspect you can too. Our Father loves us with mercies new every morning and more numerous than the hairs on our heads. He is good and he does good. He has chosen to love us. And we really do love him–as street children he has rescued and adopted. But our love is far from perfected. C. S. Lewis vividly captured our ongoing, widening, deepening struggle with all that needs God’s redeeming mercies:

Man’s love for God, from the very nature of the case, must always be very largely, and must often be entirely, a Need-love. This is obvious when we implore forgiveness for our sins or support in our tribulations. But in the long run it is perhaps even more apparent in our growing–for it ought to be growing–awareness that our whole being by its very nature is one vast need; incomplete, preparatory, empty yet cluttered, crying out for Him who can untie things that are now knotted together and tie up things that are still dangling loose.[1]

Whether we find ourselves tied in knots or dangling at loose ends, God hears our cry. He says, “You are mine. So take heart. I will complete what I have begun.”

Our Indestructible Hope

The essential change in your relationship with God radically changes your relationship to remaining sinfulness. In Christ, in order to sin, you must lapse into temporary insanity, into forgetfulness. It is your worst cancer, your most crippling disability, your most treacherous enemy, your deepest distress. It is the single most destructive force impacting your life. Like nothing else in all creation, this threatens your life and well-being.

Saying that our sins afflict us like a madness is not to justify or excuse our derangement. Your sin is your sin. When you get your back up in an argument, when you vegetate in front of the TV, when you spin a fantasy world of romance or eroticism, when you grumble about the weather, when you obsess about your performance in the eyes of significant others, when you worry, nag, or gossip, you do these things. No evil twin, no hormone, no satanic agency, and no aspect of your upbringing can take credit or blame for the works of your flesh. You do it. You want to do it–but you don’t really want to, when you come to your senses. And you do come to your senses. The conflicted dual consciousness of the Christian always lands on its feet, sooner or later. Yes, you drift off and commit sin. But you turn back to the Lord because you are more committed to him. And you are more committed to him because he is absolutely committed to you, and the new creation is already at work in you. Many psalms capture this tension between our proclivity to sin and our fidelity to our Redeemer from sin. They confess the dark vitality of indwelling sin while confessing love for the triumphant mercies and goodness of the Lord.[2]

In moments of sane self-knowledge, you view your dark tendencies as an affliction: “I am what I do not want to be. I do what I do not want to do. I feel what I do not want to feel. I think what I do not want to think. I want what I do not want to want.”You know the inner contradiction: “I want to love God joyously, but meander in self-preoccupation. I want to love others freely, but lapse into lovelessness. I want to forgive, but brood in bitterness. I want to give to others, but find that I take from them or ignore them. I want to listen and learn, but find I am opinionated and narrow-minded. My biggest problem looks at me from the mirror.”

But indwelling sin does not define you. It opposes you. It is an aberration, not an identity. Self-will is a living contradiction within you. So you look far beyond the mirror: “Lord Jesus, your love for me will get last say. You are merciful to me for your name’s sake, for the sake of your own goodness, for the sake of your steadfast love and compassion (Psalm 25). When you think about me, you remember what you are like, and that is my exceeding joy. My indestructible hope is that you have turned your face toward me, and you will never turn away.”

He will consume your dross in the fire of his love for you.

Content taken from God’s Grace in Your Suffering by David Powlison, ©2018. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (London: Harcourt Brace, 1991), 3.

[2] Most people associate psalms of confession (e.g., Psalms 32, 38, 51) with this theme. But Psalm 119 most vividly captures the dual consciousness that lands on its feet. See “Suffering and Psalm 119,”in David Powlison, Speaking Truth in Love (Greensboro, NC: New Growth, 2005), 11—31. Psalm 25 and Romans 6—8 are also filled with this holy ambivalence which lands on God’s side of the struggle.
 
I'll suggest that the writer misses almost everything God has said about our suffering. He reminds me of a church-preacher whose sermon we sat through once, who took 60 minutes of that congregation's time to complain in perhaps a hundred different ways, about how hard it was "for anyone" to be a pastor.

Our sufferings may or may not be related to our sin. It does not matter. Our suffering has the purpose of humbling us, of refining us. And all of our sin, is the opposite of holiness and humility before God.
Code:
7 And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations,
there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be
exalted above measure. 8 For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
II Corinthians 12:7-10
Code:
Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.
Isaiah 48:10
 
Consider it joy when you face various sufferings as it when endured patiently builds charecter. That's a paraphrase of what Peter taught.
Keep a short account of sin.. if you do sin repent and ask forgiveness. Deal with it right away. Delaying only builds distance between you and God (in your mind)
Trust God for His forgiveness and that He is working in you to complete the work He started.
 
I'll suggest that the writer misses almost everything God has said about our suffering. He reminds me of a church-preacher whose sermon we sat through once, who took 60 minutes of that congregation's time to complain in perhaps a hundred different ways, about how hard it was "for anyone" to be a pastor.

Our sufferings may or may not be related to our sin. It does not matter. Our suffering has the purpose of humbling us, of refining us. And all of our sin, is the opposite of holiness and humility before God.
Code:
7 And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations,
there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be
exalted above measure. 8 For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
9 And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.
Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions,
in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
II Corinthians 12:7-10
Code:
Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction.
Isaiah 48:10
Although I agree with what you are saying, I read the article differently.

My opnion on indwelling sin that we act on and not repent of.

That affliction can come in different ways.

I look at how David was afflicted for his sin physically and mentally.

(NASB)

Psalms 32:3-4 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
Psalms 38:2-8 For Your arrows have sunk deep into me, And Your hand has pressed down on me.


Psalms 38:3-8 There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation; There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities are gone over my head; As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me. My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my folly. I am bent over and greatly bowed down; I go mourning all day long. For my loins are filled with burning, And there is no soundness in my flesh. I am benumbed and badly crushed; I groan because of the agitation of my heart.

The we have Job who suffered but did not sin.

Ultimately, as you stated with Isaiah 48:10, it is for our purpose and Gods glory.

Romans 8:28

Just some thoughts
 
Although I agree with what you are saying, I read the article differently.

My opnion on indwelling sin that we act on and not repent of.

That affliction can come in different ways.

I look at how David was afflicted for his sin physically and mentally.

(NASB)

Psalms 32:3-4 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
Psalms 38:2-8 For Your arrows have sunk deep into me, And Your hand has pressed down on me.


Psalms 38:3-8 There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation; There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities are gone over my head; As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me. My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my folly. I am bent over and greatly bowed down; I go mourning all day long. For my loins are filled with burning, And there is no soundness in my flesh. I am benumbed and badly crushed; I groan because of the agitation of my heart.

The we have Job who suffered but did not sin.

Ultimately, as you stated with Isaiah 48:10, it is for our purpose and Gods glory.

Romans 8:28

Just some thoughts
I disagree with you on one point. Job was a sinning believer, about which God confronted him in the latter chapters. He is described as "blameless," which doesn't mean "sinless" in the Bible. It is a word based on the outward freedom from blemishes that the animal sacrifices had to have.

Job had a genuine, outward commitment to the true God, but he did question God's permission that led to his extreme suffering. The point of the Book of Job is the perseverance of true faith in spite of suffering.

Job and his three "friends" had a bad theology that equated great sin with great suffering. That was the source of Job's lamenting, especially in chapter ten. He knew that he had not committed any great sin and as a result questioned God's plan to allow great suffering in his life. It was also the source of Job's "friends'" judgmentalism.
 
I disagree with you on one point. Job was a sinning believer, about which God confronted him in the latter chapters. He is described as "blameless," which doesn't mean "sinless" in the Bible. It is a word based on the outward freedom from blemishes that the animal sacrifices had to have.

Job had a genuine, outward commitment to the true God, but he did question God's permission that led to his extreme suffering. The point of the Book of Job is the perseverance of true faith in spite of suffering.

Job and his three "friends" had a bad theology that equated great sin with great suffering. That was the source of Job's lamenting, especially in chapter ten. He knew that he had not committed any great sin and as a result questioned God's plan to allow great suffering in his life. It was also the source of Job's "friends'" judgmentalism.

I am not saying Job was sinless in his life.

Job did question God, is that a sin?

God never answers Job but starting in chapter 38 the Lord begins questioning Job.

Job and his three "friends" had a bad theology that equated great sin with great suffering.

I do not see that with Job, he always maintained his innocence to his friends.

It has been a while since I have read it.

It is a great read.
 
Although I agree with what you are saying, I read the article differently.

My opnion on indwelling sin that we act on and not repent of.

That affliction can come in different ways.

I look at how David was afflicted for his sin physically and mentally.

(NASB)

Psalms 32:3-4 When I kept silent about my sin, my body wasted away Through my groaning all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was drained away as with the fever heat of summer. Selah.
Psalms 38:2-8 For Your arrows have sunk deep into me, And Your hand has pressed down on me.


Psalms 38:3-8 There is no soundness in my flesh because of Your indignation; There is no health in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities are gone over my head; As a heavy burden they weigh too much for me. My wounds grow foul and fester Because of my folly. I am bent over and greatly bowed down; I go mourning all day long. For my loins are filled with burning, And there is no soundness in my flesh. I am benumbed and badly crushed; I groan because of the agitation of my heart.

The we have Job who suffered but did not sin.

Ultimately, as you stated with Isaiah 48:10, it is for our purpose and Gods glory.

Romans 8:28

Just some thoughts
What is "indwelling sin" ?
 
Back
Top