Ask Me How Good I Am

Scripture: Matthew 6.1-18; Phil. 3.4-14

I am getting ready to coach baseball this spring. For this league, we have tryouts where all the players are evaluated on their baseball skills and then graded. Then we have a draft. I was talking to a prospective player about his chances in the draft when his grandmother chuckled, “Ask him how good he is, he’ll tell you.”

Most of us have a favorite subject to talk about – the subject is us. Moreover, we tend to view the world through the lense of Me. Jesus warns us that this way of seeing things puts us in great danger of losing our way, even and especially when we are trying to be good. Our motivation inevitably becomes how to make ourselves look good to others.

Along with distorting the Law, this was the Pharisees other great sin.

“They do everything they do with the aim of being noticed by others. They enlarge the religious symbols on their clothing. They like to have the most prominent seats at dinners and in the synagogues. They relish loudly respectful greetings in malls and public places, and being called ‘Professor’ or Doctor.’” Matthew 23.5-7

Not only did the Pharisees not “practice what they preached,” but the good they did came from a completely wrong motivation, to bring glory to themselves, to be better than the rest. Maybe you too have played the Game of Comparison. The game is played by comparing yourself to your peers at work or family by virtue of status, salary, awards or trophies. If you seem to be better than the one you are comparing yourself with, you feel good. If, in comparison to your peer, you look inferior, then you feel inferior. And then you feel envious, jealous, and maybe even angry and spiteful.

Either way, it’s not a pretty picture. You probably don’t admit playing this game to even close friends. But play it you do. I do too. I would love to be called Professor or Doctor. I don’t really want to do the work required to get that degree, but I would love the title. And it occurred to me years ago that since that was the only reason I wanted the degree maybe that wasn’t a good motivation.

My friend told me once he was sitting in a meeting with some other pastors and he looked around the table of older guys, many going bald, wearing brown polyester suits with bad ties and guts hanging out over their belts, and this prayer-thought occurred to my friend:

“Lord, I thank thee that I am not like these other pastors here. . .”




The Principle of the Audience of One

Jesus said, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. We should say a word about this. “Hypocrites” is a term only Jesus uses in the New Testament, and he uses it seventeen times. A hypocrite in classical Greece was a stage actor, but it also came to mean someone who practices deceit. Jesus brought this term into the moral vocabulary of the Western world. He did so because it focuses on the moral significance of the inmost heart before God. When Jesus says, “Beware of practicing your piety before men,” or “when you give don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing,” he doesn’t mean that your goodness should be invisible. He means that the motivation and the intent of the good deeds should be for someone other than yourself.

Os Guinness has said of the Puritans in American history that they lived as if they stood before an audience of One. They carried their lives as if the only one whose opinion mattered were God.

And Jesus says, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5.16

Don’t be like the hypocrite’s, the Pharisees, who every time they give want a marching band to go before them in parade and with voices crying, “Look how good he is!”

Literally blowing horns probably isn’t our style these days, but much greater blasts are heard every time someone gives a million dollars to this college or that endowment and they get their name on a building. Nobody wants to give for the maintenance for that building. Nobody wants their name on a mop or a broom. Now remember, the point is not that we are seen doing a good deed, but rather, are we doing a good deed in order to be seen?

Dr. H.A. Ironside, the famous preacher and bible scholar, remembers a time in his life when he didn’t feel as humble as maybe he ought. He asked an elder friend what to do. The friend told him, “Make a sandwich board with the plan of salvation in Scripture written upon it; wear it then walk through the business and shopping district of downtown Chicago for a whole day.” Ironside did what his friend told him. Upon completion of this humiliating experience, he returned to his apartment. As he took off the sandwich board, he caught himself thinking, “There’s not another person in Chicago that would be willing to do what I have done.”

Remember the heart’s motivation. Remember the audience of One.







The Principle of Secrecy
Dallas Willard writes, “When we want human approval and esteem, and do what we do for the sake of it, God courteously stands aside because, by our wish, it does not concern him.”

Jesus said that the hypocrites do what they do so that men will praise them. And so they do. You will get the world’s praise if you really seek it. But, Jesus says, that’s the reward you get, and that’s all you get. He implies that you lose something greater in the process when you love the world and ignore God.

Secrecy is a discipline we must cultivate. We know how to be secret about the bad stuff in our lives, will we learn how to do good things in secret? This is the missing power in our lives today – we are not praying; we are not reading our Bibles; we are not serving; we are not giving; in secret. If we were, “the Father who sees in secret” would reward us. Then when we come to worship on a Sunday, we and God would have something really good to say to each other. Remember, God goes where He’s wanted!

I remember years ago at my father’s funeral I spoke to an older cousin of mine whom I rarely see. We were catching up with the news of our lives. I knew that he at one time worked for his father-in-law’s lumber and supply business, which is a successful, fifth-generation family business in Lancaster. I asked him if he still worked there and if so, what did he do. He smiled slightly and with genuine humility said, “Well, I’m the president of the company.” So, that’s pretty good then, I think I said. He wore his status and achievement well. He never “acted” important that I could see.

Treasure from Heaven is Now

Is it possible to be successful by many standards of the world and please God? Success may come your way, but you will have to make a choice and that choice comes first in the heart. You can wear success well, even humbly, on the outside, but inside you must gauge your own heart’s motivation. Who are you trying to please? Is it the audience of the world’s approval or is it the audience of One?

“Your heart will be where what you treasure is.” Matthew 6.21

Life organizes around the heart. We have “heartsight,” as surely as we have eyesight. If by our eyesight our body is directed, then if the eyesight goes bad the whole body is in the dark. But if the eye of the soul, “the light within you,” is not functioning, then you are in the dark about everything.

If you tune your heart to the love of God, your life will organize itself around the things of God. You will pray and see this prayer come true, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6.10

Or as St. Paul put it, “Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Philippians 3.8

Who Is a Good Person?

Scripture: Luke 13.1-9; 1 Corinthians 10.1-13

Bad things happen to bad people. That was the thinking among many in Jesus day. Certainly that’s how some of Jesus’ disciples were thinking. Jesus quickly disabused them of that notion. Jesus pointed out that accidents happen. The victims of such accidents are no worse sinners than anyone else in town. To think that only the really bad people have bad things happen to them is a childish, ridiculous notion.

Jesus, you’re right. We can all agree with that. We would be more than a little offended if someone suggested that those who died in the Towers on September 11, 2001 somehow deserved their deaths because of sin in their lives. Well, there are those who did suggest that, but most of the nation rightly rejected that thinking.

We all agree that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. But does this mean that it doesn’t matter if you are good or bad? What makes a good person? Do we know what one looks like?

Remember, in the Beatitudes Jesus told a rough and rag-tag crowd that they were the blessed. Not because of how good (or bad) they were, but because of who God is.

This goes against the grain of certain assumptions. In our day, to be fat, bald, stupid, poor or ugly is the worst sort of thing to be. You’re a loser. You’re hopeless. The sad truth is that for many people, this is all they know. They have heard nothing else.

Jesus took the time to point out to people how beautiful they are in God’s eyes.

“Consider the lilies, how even in Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. . .Will not God much more clothe you? Matthew 6.28-30


Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The twisted, misshapen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat and the old –

For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus. No one is beyond beatitude.

Dallas Willard reminds us that “any spiritually healthy congregation of believers in Jesus will more or less look like these “brands plucked from the burning.” If the group is totally nice and competent, that is a sure sign something has gone wrong. For here are the foolish, weak, lowly, and despised of the world, whom God has chosen to cancel out the humanly great.”

In the new humanity, “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all.” Colossians 3.11

That mention of a Scythian is important. A Scythian was the very lowest form of humanity – a barbarian’s barbarian, if you will. The Scythian was thought of as utterly brutal, because he was. Yes, “Blessed are the Scythians.”

So I should be bad to be good? No. To be in Christ is to open the door to true goodness. Jesus uses the image of a fruit tree.

“ No good tree produces bad fruit, nor any bad tree good fruit. . .The good person, from the good treasured up in his heart, produces what is good.” Luke 6.43-45

The preaching of the Kingdom is Jesus saying, “Now it is really possible for you to live a good life, and for you to be a good person. In fact, I mean to make it so.”

What Jesus says is to be a good person you must start with the heart. What’s inside always will produce what comes out. Jesus deals primarily with the sources of wrongdoing and does not focus on the actions themselves. That will be important in the next couple weeks when we discuss what Jesus says about anger, adultery, divorce, and wealth.

That’s what the Pharisees had all wrong. They focused on the actions without addressing the root of the problem. So they fashioned a law of God for themselves that wasn’t really the Law of God. Their version of the law was distorted. It was simultaneously self-righteous and morally diluted. It was ungracious and ineffective at once.

Jesus would have none of it. The true Law of God was blindingly pure and good and graciously life-giving.

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. . .For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5.17, 20

To be a good person the Jesus’ Way is to put your faith in his power and life in you to transform you into a truly good person, one who keeps the law of God in both letter and spirit.

To be sure, law is not the source of rightness, but it is forever the course of rightness.

If you start first with the law, make it your source of inspiration and rightness, you will fail.

I thought Jason made this point well last week. “I look at the rules and I realize I’m in trouble. . .ahh crap” is, I believe, how he put it.

To succeed in keeping the law you must aim at something more. One must aim at becoming the kind of person from whom the deeds of the law naturally flow.

The only kind of person that fits this description is the kind that is becoming like Jesus; having the same nature and life in themselves that is in Jesus. When you become like this, then the goodness flows. This is the blessing of God!

There’s a scene in the movie White Men Can’t Jump in which the main character, Billy Hoyle comes back to his girlfriend and has to explain her that he has gambled away their savings in a basketball game for like the umpteenth time. His lamely begins his explanation with,

“It happened again.”

“It? It?” his girlfriend angrily questions. “It didn’t happen. You happened, Billy. You happened.”

There are very few accidents in our lives, when we think about it. Much of the stuff that happens to us, good or bad, is simply the fruit of who we are.

Apple trees produce apples. Fence posts don’t produce apples. Our actions will be determined by the kind of thing we are. It is the inner life we must aim to transform, and then behavior will naturally follow. But not the reverse. Actions do not emerge from nothing. They faithfully reveal what is in the heart. A good person may have bad things happen to them, but their lives will consistently produce good things because of who they are within.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis says, “The command ‘Be ye perfect’ is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command.”

What Is the Good Life?

Scripture: Matthew 5.1-20; Romans 10.8-13

Bridge to Terabithia is the story of two young teenagers who become friends. The boy is a shy kid who likes to draw. The girl is brave and bold and has a gift for imagination and story. One Sunday she asks if she can go to church with her friend and his family. The boy and his family are regular churchgoers. The girl confesses that she and her parents never go to church. She would like to go with her friend to his church.

They all go to church together. They sing hymns. They hear a sermon. On the ride home the kids are sitting in the back of the pickup truck and the girl says to her friend,

“Wasn’t all that about Jesus interesting?”

“No it wasn’t. It was boring!” the boy replies, almost offended by the question.

“You believe it because you have to and you hate it,” the girl answers. “I think it’s beautiful and I believe it.”

The scene reminds me of how dull and deadly our presentations of Jesus can be. To make Jesus appear small or dull or simply ordinary is to seriously distort the Gospel. Jesus was anything but dull or ordinary. Dallas Willard reminds us that the first people to hear him teach and believe him did so not because they had to for fear that something bad might happen to them in the future – they believed because they were compelled by the power of his words and the force of his personality. Here was a person of great wisdom and ability, greater than they had ever encountered. They concluded that they would be fools not to follow him.

The sermon on the mountain is one such occasion. His word came simple and strong.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.”

These “blessed are’s. . .” are called beatitudes, or the Beatitudes. A beatitude is simply a statement of reward, a reward that may come sooner but certainly will come later.

The sermon on the mountain as a whole is Jesus message of how to really live in the presence of God’s kingdom. It asks the questions, “What is the good life?” and “Who truly is a good person?”

I think we could all agree that these are two very important questions, perhaps the most important questions a human being could ask.

For example, as recently as the beginning of the twentieth century it was still not thought odd that a professor of philosophy at Harvard University should conclude a distinguished series of lectures by saying, “Ethics is certainly the study of how life may be full and rich, and not, as is often imagined, how it may be restrained and meager. Those words of Jesus. . .announcing that he had come in order that men might have life and have it abundantly, are the clearest statement of the purposes of both morality and religion, of righteousness on earth and in heaven.” That such a statement would be professional suicide today speaks volumes about where we now stand.

Let us, like that Harvard professor, assume for a few moments this morning that Jesus had something worthwhile, even relevant, to say to humanity about how to live.

How did Jesus answer those two big questions, “What is the good life?” and “Who is a good person?”

Remember the scriptures say that great crowds were following him everywhere he went(Matthew 4.24) and these crowds consisted of people with every kind of sickness, pain, affliction, and disorder imaginable. In other words, the crowd wasn’t made up of the bright shiny people, it was made up of the mass of raw humanity. When Jesus begins to teach on the mountain, he and his disciples are surrounded by this humanity. And Jesus begins to teach by “show and tell.”

He took the most extreme examples he could find in the crowd and said, “Here, here is the good life. Here could be a good person.”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit. . .” This is a kind way of saying “Blessed are the spiritual zeros, the losers. . .” How can Jesus say this? Because that’s who he was talking to. Probably almost no one in the crowd that day were spiritually accomplished people. The spiritually accomplished, as yet, had no reason to come out into the countryside to hear this preacher. Jesus knew who he was talking to.

We have, curiously, made “poor in spirit” sound attractive in our modern or postmodern mindset. That’s not what Jesus meant. These folks had nothing spiritually attractive about them. In some church circles today we might say of them, “they’re hard-living people,” or “they don’t know their Bible.”

We’ll go on to make this point with the other beatitudes in due course, but the pattern is established here - Jesus is mostly talking about people who really have nothing going for them. The story of the Good Samaritan is like this too. Remember, Jesus never called the Samaritan good, but he knew how outrageous an example it was to use with his Jewish audience. It would be like one of us saying, “There was a certain alcoholic. . .” or “There was a certain homosexual. . .” and then tell our story with this character as the hero, as the only good person around.

Now, here’s the really important thing we need to understand about the beatitudes: These outrageous, spiritually zero people are going to be rewarded, but it’s not because of who they are or anything they’ve done. God rewards them in spite of who they are.

Jesus shows and tells us that the kingdom of God is very close to us because God is very close to us.

“The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart.”

We’re used to earning rewards – A’s and B’s in school; frequent flier miles; credit card points. But if we could earn heaven, what use would Jesus be to us except to have the good sense to say “All good people go to heaven?”

The Gospel of the Kingdom is “The last shall be first” and there is no one who is beyond beatitude. But it is all God’s doing. Our good (or bad) condition does not get us any closer to heaven. Poverty, spiritual or material, is no virtue in and of itself. But neither is it an insurmountable barrier for God or for someone who seeks God.

You might now reasonably ask, “But aren’t we supposed to be good?” Yes. And God reveals the answer to that question, “Who is a good person.” We’ll look at that question over the next several weeks. What we might find is that our definition of good is pretty weak when. . .well, there is this:

A chaplain of a state prison once received a request from a father of a young man who was interned in the prison. The young man had committed a robbery in a little town and had been sentenced to many years in jail. He was angry, embittered.

The boy’s father came each week to visit him, but the boy refused to see him.

The chaplain was asked to intervene, to plead with the boy to see his father. But the young prisoner refused to reconsider. Despite his refusal, the boy’s father took off work every week, boarded a bus, and traveled across the state in the hope of seeing his son.

Every week. And every week it became the young chaplain’s difficult task to ask the son, “Do you want to see your dad?” He then had to bear word of the refusal to the waiting father. The father would thank the chaplain, gather his belongings, and head toward the door for the bus trip back home.

One day, after telling the father the same thing, that his son would not meet with him, the chaplain said, “No one would do what you are doing. Your son is an embittered, defiant young man. Go back home and get on with your life. No one would put up with this kind of rejection, week after week. Nobody would do this.”

“He has put up with it for centuries,” said the father, as he picked up his meager belongings and headed out. And the young chaplain literally fell to his knees at this vision of the righteousness of God.

God is nearer than we think. And no one is beyond his blessing.

Always a Bride

Scripture: John 4.1-26; 2 Corinthians 3.12-4.2; Galatians 3.28

The woman did not have the best reputation. She had been married and divorced five times. Okay, so the first four didn’t work out. But five? She was a serial divorcer. She was the second part of the headline – “Bad Men and the Woman Who Loved Them.” You might say she was looking for love in all the wrong places.

And it might be her poor reputation that brought her out in the mid-day heat for the hard work of carrying water from the well back to her home. Maybe this time of day she wouldn’t have to endure the stares or gossip of unkind neighbors. Whatever the reason, when she gets to well she finds she has company; a Jew by the looks of him.

Of course we know it was Jesus she met that day. But she didn’t know who she was meeting. She just knew that since he was a man and a Jew, she probably shouldn’t be talking to him. Like the neighbors needed one more thing to gossip about her!

But the man asks her for a drink of water and as a woman it was her duty to do it – though she questions him, “How can you as a Jew ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink of water?”

“If you knew who it was who was asking, you would ask of me and I would give you living water,” the man responds.

Remember, we’re reading this story a certain way, the way we usually read the Bible – we’re looking for the “big truth” or the metaphor. We read like we already have the answer and we’re looking backward.

The woman is doing none of these things. She thinks this is still about getting a bucket in and out of that well so this thirsty man can get a drink. And in fact, when Jesus says “I would give you living water,” he is still speaking somewhat literally. “Living water” refers to water that flows, moving water - a spring, a stream, or poured fresh water. In other words, not water that has been sitting stagnant in a pool or basin.

The woman wants to know how he would get this water since he has no bucket – are you better than our great ancestor Jacob? This woman is skeptical about this man’s claims. Her experience has taught her to be skeptical in regards to men making promises. Men break their promises. Men prove to be unreliable. What starts as happiness, in her experience, always ends in bitterness. She always ends up carrying her heavy buckets herself in midday heat, day after day.



How many married women and married men have come to the same conclusion as this Samaritan woman? You start a marriage with much excitement and promise and soon you find out that it is not what you expected, delight becomes drudgery.

Part of the problem is one of expectation. So many people go into a marriage with unrealistic expectations of their spouse. It would be interesting, I think, on the day of the wedding, if we all had the power to read the minds of the bride and groom as they looked at each other and said their vows. You know, maybe if they had thought bubbles over their heads, like in cartoons, and we could read what they really meant when they said their vows to each other. “In sickness and in health – but you better not get sick and you better stay a size 6” . . .or “for richer for poorer – yeah right, I didn’t sign up for poverty. We’ll never have money problems!”

Too bad we aren’t as transparent as cartoons with our thoughts and feelings. Most people don’t see their marriages as cartoons.

Most people look at marriage as an entry into paradise. Like those characters from Jerry McGuire – “You had me at hello. . .You complete me,” we walk into marriage expecting it to somehow provide the missing piece of the puzzle that is meaning and purpose and happiness for us. Adam and Eve, maybe, could walk together and reasonably expect paradise, but no man or woman since then.

Marriage was never promised as the entry to paradise. Paradise can only be entered by the door that has been appointed.

Jesus said to the woman, “The water you draw always runs out and you get thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water that I give will never be thirsty. The water I give them becomes a spring gushing up, a spring of everlasting life.”

“Where is your husband,” Jesus asks, “Go get him so he can share this good news.”

Why does Jesus ask this question? He knows this woman is living in sin and he knows all about her failed marriages. Jesus asks because he wants this woman to see her sin and more importantly, see her need for what he is offering her.

You’ve been looking for love in the wrong places. Love is found in God. God is found in spirit and truth. God is found in me.

Before this woman can decide to remarry or move out and remain single the rest of her life, she must first come to the One that she truly is destined for. To drink of the living water of Christ is to once and for all find your destiny and purpose in life. To find that purpose unlocks the smaller puzzles in our life of human friendships and singleness or marriage.

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Galatians 3.28

In other words to have life in Christ makes all other distinctions decidedly secondary.

If we are called to singleness, it is be a singleness of joy, and love. It is to be a singleness that is rich in friendships and rich in self-giving. In the words of Thomas Merton, “You are to be no withered root,” but rather a tree that bears much fruit for life and the Kingdom.

If we are called to marriage, it is be a marriage that understands we are fallen creatures in a fallen world touched by the grace of God. In marriage we learn the richness of forgiveness and sacrifice and fidelity. We find peace and joy in years of growth and wisdom. Every marriage that grows in this way plants a flag for the Kingdom on this earth, a banner that reads for all to see – “God is here.”

When we find Jesus Christ, the veil is removed and the walls come down. We are fully known and fully loved. No more need to hide and pretend. We have the Spirit and that means freedom. We turn our backs on the things that only brought us shame and we come to God for healing and new purpose. We become what Adam and Eve were meant to be.q

Jesus is the best man any of us will ever meet. In Christ, we are the best bride there ever will be. God calls us to abundant life in Him today.

Lust Gone Wild

Scripture: Galatians 5.16-24; Matthew 5.1-8


C.S. Lewis drew a short parable to make a point about sex:

Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?

If a chief part of God’s glory in us is that we are wonderfully made for each other in holy relationship, then a chief part of the work of the devil is to distort our sexual appetite, to replace loving intimacy with lust. As we will see when we look at the scripture, lust is not a new problem.

The Bible mentions pornography in the Old Testament. The prophet Ezekiel spoke out against the pornography in Jerusalem in his time. To say things got worse in the New Testament time and Roman Rule is an understatement. Demosthenes of Rome wrote,

“We keep mistresses for pleasure, concubines for the day-to-day needs of the body, but we have wives in order to produce children legitimately and to have a trustworthy guardian of our homes.”

This was not a minority opinion or a weird aberration, but was the norm for Roman society. Remember folks, Paul was certainly familiar with the world and lives of the people among whom he was preaching and teaching. Corinth in particular was known for its brothels and baths and general promiscuity. “Paul was very conscious of the fact that it is not easy to live the Christian life. Human nature being what it is, there is conflict between what God wants in us and what our “flesh” often wants. Paul was sympathetic to the believers struggles with temptation, but he was also uncompromising in calling sexual immorality serious sin.

Paul would not allow followers of Christ to be comfortable with the sins of their past lives and the contemporary culture around them.

And in fact it’s been said that chastity was the one completely new virtue that Christianity introduced to the pagan world.

To the Galatians Paul gives a list of evil things to be avoided and a list of good things to embrace. He is writing in a way that was widely accepted and recognized in those times. Today, the only place I see lists of good and bad behaviors are on the walls of my sons classrooms at school, lists of what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
Ironically, we adults don’t think we need lists anymore. When’s the last time you saw the Ten Commandments posted somewhere, even in a church? And yet my morning newspaper reminds me there are many who haven’t learned “Thou shalt not kill.”

Three of the evil deeds Paul lists concern sexual immorality – fornication, licentiousness, and impurity. These three pretty much cover the gamut. They are not the only kinds of sin nor are they greater evils than pride, jealousy, idolatry or angry quarrels – together they are listed as things warned against:

“I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.” Verse 21b

Paul teaches that the flesh is at war with the spirit in every human being. Some translations even read “the lust of the flesh.” What is the flesh? It is our sinful nature. It is “the old man” that we are to rid of when we become new creations in Christ. Paul recognizes that the ridding of the old person does not happen instantaneously in regards to our desires and behaviors, but happens as we are cede control to the Spirit of God.

“Walk by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Verse 16

To walk is an ongoing progressive activity – it takes time but you do, in fact, get somewhere. When you invest in the flesh you get the consequences of sin in return. When you invest yourself in the things of God, you get leading and you bear the fruit of God’s presence in your life.

Paul makes it clear that overcoming these sins is the Spirit’s work in us, not what we ourselves can accomplish on our own if only we just try hard enough.


We have not invented lust in modern times, but perhaps we have, with our technology and wealth, perfected it.

What would say, a man of the mid-20th century even, like C.S. Lewis, say about the television shows that today routinely air at 8 or 9 pm every day and the amount of sexual innuendo and skin that is flaunted?

What would Lewis say about Internet pornography?

I think he would say it’s just the latest symptom of a sickness in society and in ourselves. I saw in the week leading up to the Super Bowl that a pregnant woman put her stomach up for bid on the Internet as advertising space. She did this because she wanted badly to go see her Chicago Bears in the Super Bowl. In exchange for Super Bowl tickets a company called U.Bid “rented” her belly to advertise their web site. It was a womb site for a web site. It wasn’t mentioned if the contents of the womb were for sale as well. But it is another example that persons have simply become objects.

Newsweek’s cover story this week was dedicated to “Girls Gone Wild.” The article expressed the general feeling or concern that there has been a general coarsening of the culture in regards to sexuality. If Newsweek senses this, maybe the Church should too.

What can we do? We should take a shower, if you will, from the onslaught of sex-soaked media that we and our kids daily face. What I mean is, take the practical steps of removing the things from your life that you have control over.

Get rid of magazines that are dedicated to celebrity culture
Monitor the television you and your family are watching
Don’t rent or pay for movies that will degrade you with sex or violence
Put blocks on your Internet access to any websites that might have questionable material
When looking at real people, see them that way, not just as objects


Jesus put it this way – If your eye causes you stumble, pluck it out.

Take these practical steps and then move on to the more important issue: Why is lust such a big problem for me? Like any sin, it is a symptom of a deeper void. It’s another idol trying to pretend to the throne of our hearts. We should ask ourselves why we set the idol on the mantelpiece to begin with.

G.K. Chesterton once commented that “every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.”

He’s right. It’s a spiritual problem that will not be fixed without the help of the Holy Spirit. “Live by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Look yourself in the eye and know that God can help you. If you’re in a relationship look your wife or your girlfriend, your husband or your boyfriend in the eye and know that God has already given you something better than the temptation and the sin.