(Audio)
everyone who looks at a woman with lust
has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
The LORD wants to heal our hearts. It isn't that he is looking to catch us in unintentional habitual acts. But he is asking us to exert control, by his grace, of parts of our lives we often believe are beyond our control. He is asking us, for example, to have custody of our eyes. He isn't condemning what we happen to see. But he is recommending that we don't allow our eyes to unduly wander if that is something with which we struggle.
If your right eye causes you to sin,
tear it out and throw it away.
If HBO causes you to sin, cancel it. If going to the beach during the summer causes you to sin, buy a pool, or stay home. This is what we call avoiding the occasion of temptation. Does it matter as much as this?
It is better for you to lose one of your members
than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.
Anything less than sanctity involves treating others as objects for our own pleasure. That is bad for both of us. God wants to see us delivered from those cycles that can never satisfy. Being trapped in them is an experience of Gehenna even while we live.
Our earthen vessels often reveal our faults. In all of our sufferings, including when we ourselves fail, we experience the dying of Jesus. Because of this we can experience the surpassing power of God even and perhaps especially when we are at our lowest and have fallen the farthest. There is never cause to give up hope.
always carrying about in the Body the dying of Jesus,
so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body.
As this surpassing power manifests in us we surpass the limits of selfishness that cause us to use others for our own ends. We become like Jesus and like Paul for whom everything is for the sake of others and especially of God.
Everything indeed is for you,
so that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people
may cause the thanksgiving to overflow for the glory of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment