When You're Active in Church But Living in Sin

ourdailybread.org
They're everywhere---church people who actively "serve God" in their churches yet continue to live in sin. Somehow, they feel that serving God covers up for their sins. Or probably, this is the result of the famous lines in preaching today---that God accepts you as you are and nobody is perfect.

But what happens when you actively serve God but continue to enjoy sin?

When we were controlled by our old nature, sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. [Romans 7.5]
Let's look at it from another version:

For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.

First, when you still enjoy sin and study the bible, God's Word (the Law) merely "aroused evil desires" in you. The law (or Word of God) triggers sinful passions if you're still in sin. Imagine yourself leading bible studies or teaching in Sunday school, and each time you prepare your lessons evil desires are aroused in you. And imagine what that would do when you teach people the Word.

The Word rebukes and enlightens you if you seek for truth and live it out. God knows if you are meditating the Word for holiness. But it produces death if you just use it for religious purposes, especially if you still sin all you want.

Second, you just "produce a harvest of sinful deeds" that "results in death." You teach or preach good, even with sound, correct and bible-based theology, and yet in the spirit, what you do produces nothing but a harvest of sinful deeds that leads to death. 

It only produces death in your hearers---death in you, death in your hearers. And they still go on doing "sinful deeds" in their private lives or when they're not in church.

You gain nothing when you are actively "Serving God" in church and yet continue to live in sin. You're not supposed to be serving God in church in the first place, but should be sitting down in the pew listening intently to the Word and letting it radically change you.

And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! [Job 19,26-17]

Comments