Some pharisees and teachers of the Law came from Jerusalem to accuse Jesus. They questioned Him, “Why do Your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?” Jesus quoted Isaiah the prophet and said, “These people love God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him.” They thoroughly kept the traditions of the elders and cut off everything defiled. They were confident of being cleaner than anyone else, but they did not understand what was important. It was what came out of people that defiled them.
People are full of evil thoughts from within, that is, out of their hearts. The Lord said, “Sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.” However, some people do not acknowledge this. What is unfortunate is that a considerable number of them are believers who received the Lord’s grace.
Many believers misunderstand the meaning of salvation. They think the disposition to sin in them disappears the moment they believe in Jesus. They ignore the struggle against sin, which they should start when they believe in Him. Though they spend their lives at church, they still display all the habits they had in the world. God’s work must be handled by the church, but it is restricted because of them.
Though we believe in Jesus and are forgiven of our sins, we still have the disposition to sin, and there is a chance we can have thoughts that do not conform to God’s heart and change them into action. To overcome this, we must have a change of heart when we believe in Jesus. We must be filled with a heart to do God’s work and keep removing the fundamental power which leads us to oppose God’s will.
When we believe in Jesus, God does not automatically change us into people separate from the disposition to sin. Such misunderstandings stop the chance of changing. We must change ourselves. When we try to get rid of our old ways, the Holy Spirit will intervene. When this change really happens by the power of the Holy Spirit, we will have a character which conforms to God’s work.
Therefore, you should not simply load God’s word in your mind, but change yourself by obeying His word. In the domain of your personal life, you should adjust your character so that when God’s word tells you, “Do this. Do that.”, it will sound sweet. We should not stubbornly hold to the heart and character of our old selves and drift away from God, but we should humbly support the work God does through the church like people of repentance.
When the Lord gave us the command to ‘love one another’, this does not mean each of us should be morally perfect. When we keep this command, the ministry of salvation that God does through the church will be more effective. If we love God, let’s prove the sincerity of our love by loving members of the church. Let’s safeguard an acceptable environment so we can carry out the mission to save all people and raise them to be workers of the Gospel.
(Lord’s Day Service on July 25, 2021)
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