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Jesus Spirit God

Prayer

The greatest sin in your life is not the immorality. The greatest sins are not what we normally think of as sins. It’s odd that the prostitutes and the tax collectors can get into the kingdom before the chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees. The greatest sin in our life is living morally but having that morality energized by the flesh and not by the Spirit of God. There is something deceptively evil about moralism. Moralism is the idea that one can make oneself acceptable to God or holy by keeping the rules.

The greatest sin in our lives is the ability we have derived from our religious tradition to live morally without the energy of the Holy Spirit. Many people believe that we can be moral without God! The atheist Richard Dawkins thinks we can. For once I agree with the atheist. But here’s the point. Even if you are moral, you are no closer to God than the drug dealer on the street. You might be a better neighbor than the drug dealer but you are no closer to God just because you are a good upstanding citizen in the community.

What we called a Christian separated lifestyle is indistinguishable on the surface from any middle class lifestyle. We live less separated lives than an average Muslim. Growing up, we were forced by the rigid rules of the church to live a certain way. Most of us did it without any help from the Spirit. We conformed out of fear.

It is essential that we know that in the Bible, the basic conflict is not between morality and immorality. The Bible does not place all the evil in immorality and all the good in morality. The Bible insists that the basic conflict is between living according to the law and living according to the Spirit. The real sin to avoid, in Scripture, seems to be moral law keeping without the awareness of our personal separation from God. Of course God doesn't like immorality but he wants us to be moral for the right reasons.

In the Gospels you get the impression that people can be divided into two general groups. You have the immoral people; the prostitutes, the winos, the criminals, the street people with whom Jesus spent considerable time. These people are immoral because of their undisciplined sinful nature. Then you have the Pharisees, who in God's sight, are wicked even though they are morally strong. Both groups equally need salvation.

Sin cannot be identified as only a moral weakness. Sin is also a strength. Sin is a power that can make us its slave. Many times throughout my life I have encountered the teaching that sin was the weakness to do this or the weakness to do that. But, sin is strong.

In Scripture the spiritually dead but moral people are also far from God. That is why popular spirituality is so seductive, It says we can have morality but we don't need God to have it. But the real issue is not morality but a relationship with God.

The real issue in Christian holiness is not “Am I moral or immoral?” The issue is this. What is the source of my energy for holy living? Am I energized by tradition? Am I motivated by fear, or am I living according to the Spirit?

There has been a lot of pain in my life over this issue. I don't know of anything more painful than some of the horrible values placed on externals growing up. When I first came to really know the Lord I was refused entrance into one church choir because I wore wire-rimmed glasses like John Lennon. I was told if I wore less worldly glasses made of plastic I could sing in church. That sounds ridiculous I know, but it's true and I hurt for a long time. Someone tried to tell me that wearing a beard was a sin. I was told wearing blue jeans was evil.

I believe that every trace of morality must be based on what the Bible actually says and our holiness must be energized by the Spirit. Holiness is not a matter of looking at the world and then doing the opposite. Holiness must be forward looking and positive. It is living out the values of the kingdom.

Many of us are miserable because we have not derived intrinsic enjoyment from living righteously. We find it a chore to live holy. We don't like it. Out of fear or out of habit we live a certain way. We have a form of godliness in our lives but we deny the power. We do it often in our own strength.

God wants to deliver us from self made righteousness. Immorality is a far more curable disease that false righteousness. That's why the common people heard Jesus gladly, but the scribes and the Pharisees hated him.

The moralism of modern spirituality is very deceptive. Christian holiness must be learned God's way, the way of the Spirit and not the way of the flesh.

If you have been transformed into a new creation then you will begin to behave like it. God will make you to be and out of that being will come Christian morality. Galatians 6:15 makes it clear. "Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is a new creation." The law and discipline avail for nothing, what really matters is that we are made into a new creation in Christ Jesus. And all righteousness in Christ is a matter of being transformed into the image of God's Son.

Do not think that when I am attacking law keeping or moralism that I am attacking God. I am not. God's law is still God's law. Murder is still murder, even for a justified believer. I am concerned that Satan has misused the law to bring us under condemnation. Satan has given us a guilt complex built on fear of failing to please God. And this must be brought to the cross and buried under the blood of Christ if we are going to be free from condemnation so we can walk in the Spirit. You cannot walk in the Spirit if a guilt complex weighs you down.

Jesus wants us to be holy God’s way. To do this Jesus did four things. First, he built relationships with his disciples that were based on a love that motivated their obedience. He did not select his followers in a harsh manner. People followed him because Jesus loved people. His ministry was characterized by love.

Secondly, he began his public speaking ministry with the Sermon on the Mount. I heard a guy say that we can live by the law because if we couldn't God wouldn't have given it to us! Well believe that if you want to. But, those sayings serve to put the standards of God completely out of reach of dead works. The flesh cannot live holy by itself. Jesus was placing the commandments and morality completely beyond the reach of the natural and making them a supernatural thing. It's just like telling the lame man to get up and walk. You can't fake it. You can't do it without the help of the Holy Spirit.

True Christian morality is only lived by the power of the Holy Spirit. You can't live real Christianity any other way. If we want to be holy we must be holy God’s way. We must "by the Spirit" put to death the misdeeds of the body.

When people are brow beaten to live morally and there is no mention of the supernatural help of the Holy Spirit in the message, then there is no gospel in the message either. Sinful people do not need to be morally exhorted; they need to be spiritually converted. There is no way you can live a life pleasing to God unless the Spirit of Christ comes and takes his abode in your heart. There is not one of us who can live the kind of life that closes the gap between God and us. We can't pray enough. We can't obey him enough. We can't do anything towards God without him first initiating it. And that's the real beginning point of Christian holiness. God has convicted us. God has saved us. God has called us. God! God! When we get to heaven and Peter inquires how we ever got there we can say, "All that we have and all that we are is because of what Jesus has done in us and through us." That's the gospel and I love it!

Thirdly, after convincing them that he loved them and after showing them that the level of commitment he demanded could not be achieved by the flesh, Jesus called them to true repentance and promised them his Spirit.

For example, John the Baptist was a very disciplined man. He didn't drink wine, didn't cut his hair, lived out in the desert, and ate all sorts of weird health food like grasshoppers, bugs and honey. He lived a pretty straight life but he represented, not the ideal for the Christian, but the end of a certain period of human righteousness. Don't get me wrong. He was not a bad man or a failure. He had the high distinction of being the last of the Old Testament type prophets. But here's the point.

Jesus comes along and takes a demon possessed adulterous woman and says that she has a greater capacity for pleasing God than John the Baptist if she truly repents, because the least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist. What I'm saying is

this. The coming of the Holy Spirit introduced the world to the great paradox that no one could attain the lofty values of the kingdom in the flesh because of the great difference between the immorality and dead morality of humans as compared to the purity of life in the Spirit. Jesus said, "You cannot live this life. But I'm going to take 12 ordinary men and a loose woman and I will make them more righteous than all you Scribes and Pharisees put together, because when they truly repent I will give them my Spirit!"

Many writers say that repentance is doing an about face, a turning around. That's part of it, but I believe there is more to it than that. I believe true repentance is the awareness of how hopeless and helpless we are in ourselves. True repentance is a state of moral exhaustion were we are at the point of fainting because we cannot live righteously and then we come a fall into the arms of a loving savior who is touched with the feelings of our infirmities and weaknesses. We land in the precious arms of

Jesus and we begin to learn to lean upon him. When we acknowledge our weakness then we find his strength and that is the beginning of victorious living.

The first thing Jesus wants us to know is that he loves us. The second is that we can never do enough in the flesh to merit his grace. The third is that we must come to the end of ourselves. We must trust no longer in the arm of flesh but truly repent of all self and sin both immorality and dead moral works.

The fourth thing Jesus wants us to do is this. After we have repented of self, we are to submit to the Holy Spirit who indwells us. The great paradox of the Christian faith is becoming what we already are. The book of Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. In Hebrews 10:14 it says, "by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy." And this is the point. We should be entranced with the One who makes us perfect.

We have tried to tighten this area of our lives. We have tried to make Jesus Lord of that area. We make New Year’s resolutions, we try a new diet, we make new faith pledges, and you know what happens. We come up frustrated, bewildered, and 10 times worse off than before. We have blubbered our way to altar calls. We have used up boxes of Kleenex and we are no better for it. We have found ourselves in a treadmill of dead works, going back to habits, going back to problems.

Jesus the author and the finisher of our faith. And while you are gazing at the beauty of his purity you will eventually notice that he has gone to work fixing those things that you couldn't fix yourself. If we can get a good glimpse of the glory of God in the face of Jesus, God will do an extreme makeover on our moral existence.

Our text says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body you shall live." How do you live morally? By the Spirit! By the Spirit!

I'm not advocating slackness. The opposite of legalism and moralism is not slackness but to walk in the Spirit and to be led by the Spirit. Why should we be holy? But why should we be concerned about spiritual morality? Some writers say, "Be moral in order to be something." But I don't want to be a self made Christian. I want my being to be a result of the transforming power of God. I don't want to be something unless God makes me into that something.

The Bible says don't be like a mule that goes places only to the harsh pull of the bit. We have freedom. God trusts us. That's amazing. God has made us free. He whom the Son sets free is free indeed. We are not free to become again a slave to sin. But we have been freed to serve the Lord with gladness.

We are not to be moral to merit something from God, neither are we to avoid morality in order to prove his grace. But we are to do those deeds, which bring happiness to him. We are in a relationship with the Lord that is characterized by love. We love him and we want to prove it. Spiritual morality is Christian love service in the Spirit.

I went to preach at this small church where I grew up. I went to dinner at the house of a little old widow lady who knew me since childhood. After dinner she brought a special pie she had made just for me. She had a tiny room upstairs prepared for

me with fresh towels laid out. She urged me to rest before the evening service, even setting an alarm clock for me. Why? Why did she do it? Well, she loved me. I knew she loved me. Even when I was a kid she took special interest in this preacher's kid. She was killed in a car accident. But I will never forget her. Her good deeds expressed her love.

Many times we have gone around more concerned about being holy that with the person we are being holy for. We go around saying, "Look at what I can do today that I couldn't do yesterday." I know one guy who bragged to me about how money he could raise in his church but now he's out of the ministry. So what? So you look like a spiritual Rambo with your Pentecostal biceps, triceps, and deltoids. But you are so spiritually muscle bound that you cannot respond to the breath of the Spirit.

We don't know why we should be moral. Some writers set you free but others bind you up so that you are afraid to move for fear that God will be displeased. There are some poor Christians who are so guilt ridden that they are always feeling all knotted up inside.

Yes, we are to be balanced and God wants us to walk in obedience. But we didn't get in the kingdom by performance and dead morality does not keep us in. We are free and freedom is a thing that we fear the most. How simple it is to feel dirty all the time and guilt ridden. But there comes a time when God wants to set us free.

The number one problem among young people is the terrible feeling of confinement to live in moral discipline and they never experience the Spirit's energizing power. That leads to frustration. It leads to condemnation, emptiness and spiritual death. Many people never answer an altar call because they are so bound.

Well I'm not preaching cheap grace. I'm preaching freedom in Christ. This is in the Bible too. I have discovered what it is like to make God happy. That is true Christian morality. Morality is something that is directed towards God as love in the Spirit. Here is morality. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul, and all thy strength." Love him. Love him. Christian holiness is the result of a love relationship with the Lord!

Christian morality is living for God and enjoying it. It is a person searching in a field and finding a treasure, selling all and buying that field. Unless you see Jesus as the pearl of great price, as the treasure hidden in the field, there will be no true spiritual morality. Everyone who ever went near him wanted to break the box of ointment. The problem with a lack of holiness in our lives is really a lack of love for the Lord. We need to get to know him. To know him is to love him. Do you love him? I love him and I want to love him more.

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