ODJ: saved to sin?
April 25, 2010
You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So you must honor God with your body (vv.19-20).
READ: 1 Corinthians 6:15-20
A Christian leader recently accepted my invitation to deliver an address at the seminary where I teach. During his talk, the preacher distinguished between goodness as moral purity and goodness as acts of service. He illustrated the difference by saying that if you resist going into a pornographic shop, that is moral purity, and if you give five dollars to a panhandler, that is an act of service.
When I wrote to thank him for his speech, I jokingly asked whether giving five dollars to a panhandler is really an act of kindness, or have you just bought that fellow a drink? The man responded in kind, saying that Jesus healed a blind man without wondering whether he would use his newfound sight to look lustfully at women.
He intended it as a joke, but it made me think. I had never considered what it would have been like to be tempted in the very area that had been healed by Jesus. Would a former blind man think twice before using his redeemed sight to sin? If I were that person, I think I would.
Then it struck me that I am that blind man. Augustine wrote that our sin natures were as broken as the traveler on his way to Jericho who was beaten by robbers and left for dead (Luke 10:30). And as that helpless man was rescued by the Good Samaritan, so also our corrupted wills have been restored by Jesus.
Just as it would be unthinkably inappropriate for that rescued victim to launch an attack on Samaritans, or a healed blind man to use his restored sight to lust, or a former mute to use her tongue to slander others, so it is wrong for us to use any redeemed part of our body for sin. “You were bought at a price,” says Paul. “Therefore honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20 NIV). —Mike Wittmer
The Lord Jesus Christ wants to restore every aspect of what we think, choose, feel, and do. What area of your life still needs saving? Commit it to Him now.
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