“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin” Hebrews 12:4 NASB
AN ILLUSTRATION
About a year or a year and a half ago I brought my kids into the attic of our home, showing them what was up there, and I warned them about the dangers of touching attic insulation. I warned them that it has all these little microscopic plastic needles, and if you touch it, it’s like getting thousands of little splinters, and will cause it to irritate your skin. A few weeks ago (a whole year later), some insulation fell out of the ceiling when I was changing a light fixture. I asked the kids to clean it up for me and… none of them wanted to go anywhere near it because they were scared to touch it! They were literally frightened of it, staying a few feet away and looking at it in the distance. They didn’t want to go near it. I saw the power of how their childlike faith in what I said affected them. They just accepted what I said, and took it so literally and seriously.
I thought, "WOW. This is how I should be when I read the Bible. This should be my attitude towards sin when I read God's warning of it in His Word!"
Faith isn’t only believing that God’s Word is true, it’s also believing that what it says is serious!
And I saw this is exactly what I need : a hatred and a despising fear of sin and what God tells me to resist, and a value for everything good and godly that God exhorts me to gain.
AN EXAMPLE
I once met a man who visited NCCF in the very early days. He seemed to be a committed Christian, he seemed to want to live for God, but one day I heard him criticizing the preaching that we talk about sin too much. He said something like, “it doesn’t need to be that much of an emphasis. When sin comes we just squash it and move on.”
Was he right?
I got a sense that he wanted to “move on” to other truths like serving God and doing God’s work. That since we are already forgiven that sin must not be such a big deal. Shortly after that he joined a church and started playing in the band since they gave him a position there, as he had a passion for music and felt he could fulfill his burden of serving God.
But what does the Bible say? Was he right? How much emphasis should we really have on fighting sin?
Here is one verse which I think gives a clear answer:
“You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin” Hebrews 12:4 NASB
To me, this is the clearest example of God saying to me personally, "My will for you is to strive against your sin, and not be so casual towards it!"
If we realize how dangerous sin is, what it did to our Savior, what it does to us, we will not be so casual towards it. If we see how one “small” sin which is not dealt with grows, we will fear.
Judas’ downfall started with “pilfering” from the moneybag. Perhaps he started with just 1 coin! Imagine that moment, how small it looked. But see how it ended - Jesus said it would have been better for him if he was never born.
I heard of a Christian man (who seemed to be a godly man, part of a good church) who fell into adultery, and when his elder asked him what happened his reply was simple: “One thing led to another.” It was a short answer but it’s exactly what happens! One thing leads to another.
In Matthew 5:22 we see that anger is a first step toward Hell! Lately the Lord has challenged me that: anger is a first step to Hell, and irritation is the first step to anger - so don’t take my response to irritation and annoyances lightly!
We need more childlike faith in the seriousness of God’s Word and what He exhorts us to live for, and to live against.
Think of all the souls in Hell today who were close to the right path, but had a casual attitude toward sin and started going down the wrong path.
A CASUAL ATTITUDE
I believe a casual attitude toward sin comes when either 1. The love of the Lord is too little or 2. The belief / faith in what He says is too little
It’s possible to read God’s Word and think we believe it when we actually don’t.
I’ve seen myself do this - skim over verses, assuming since I know the verse that I must be living it, without even considering whether God is trying to tell me, “Bobby you need to work on this!!”
Verses like, “every idle word you speak you’ll give an account of.” If we believed this why are we not so careful with every word that comes from our mouth?
Or “if you don’t forgive others God won’t forgive you.” We’d be afraid to have any negative attitude toward even 1 person on earth! We’d cry to God for a clean heart!
If we believed “it’s better to pluck out your eye than to lust”, we’d be so careful to have only appropriate interactions with the opposite sex, a red flag would come up quickly whenever the conversation starts getting to personal, or flirtatious. We’d weep and fight it! For those of us who are married, we will aim to fight attraction to others by increasing our love and devotion to our own spouse!
If we really believe “it’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom”, we will despise the thought of chasing after money and houses, and trying to prosper our children materially over their spiritual eternal life. Why does the idea of a big salary and a secure future still tempt us to strive for it?
If we believed, “God resists the proud”, we would run to the Lord in desperation to keep us from pride when people flatter us and compliment us!
Job had such a fear of God that he sacrificed to the Lord even at the POSSIBILITY that his sons had sinned (Job 1:5). I believe God wants us to have a fear of Him like that: such a serious attitude toward living in a fear of the Lord that even at the possibility of our falling short (and may not see it), we will not be casual toward it but seek to judge ourselves.
It’s very easy to feel we must be “fine” because we know the verses. But this is (I believe) one of the devil’s greatest deceptions to all generations, not just ours. And that attitude will ultimately produce such a casual attitude toward sin, and from there, God can’t work in us like that, and the backsliding away from Him will come.
God‘s Word is truth and anything it says, I should take with the full extent of it. It’s not only true, but it’s true to the most highest extent of what should be valued and believed. Because this is what God himself has said is true. How many eternal treasures are missed and eternal things are lost because we simply don’t believe what God says, but we just assume we believe it.
The Pharisees lived for the law of Moses, studied it, preached it, and Jesus told them "You don't believe what Moses says" (John 5:46-47). What does that tell us? It tells us: it's possible for a person to be passionate for a truth without actually believing it! I believe this exact thing is also the testimony of the lives of many Christians - dedicating themselves to God's Word (study, external works) but not really believing it, taking it seriously in their own personal life.
I think of my children who wouldn’t come anywhere near the ceiling insulation because of one word I gave them a year ago, they remembered it and lived desperately by it toward what they saw was bad. If we have a childlike faith, do you see how our whole attitude will change if we really have faith like that?
The reason why we are not more wholehearted for God and against sin is because our faith is so small to believe like a child plainly and simply what God says, as I saw in my children latch onto 1 word about “insulation” for years and it immediately changed their view and attitude. We should repent of our small faith - "Lord, help our unbelief!"
As we’ve gone through Acts as a church, I saw the great revival that happened in Acts (Acts 2:37-38), and after thousands repented and were baptized I was challenged by the thought: “ok what was the word for them after that?”
And see what Peter’s FIRST preaching was to all these newly saved people:
“And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” Acts 2:40
Peter preached repent and be baptized. What did he continue to say after that? Here it is: “be saved from this perverse generation!” This must be the word for us today too.
CONCLUSION
Our fight to overcome sin is also the fight to overcome a casual attitude toward sin.
It’s also a fight to gain a value for God’s Word, to believe what it says.
I once heard someone say, “one day some young person is going to pick up this Bible and he’s going to do something different: he will actually believe it. And the rest of us will see him and be ashamed of how casual we’ve been.”
I get what he was trying to say: that there’s a level of faith and seriousness for God’s Word which we still need to strive for.
“The fact that you sin is not as serious as the fact that you don’t weep over your sin” - Brother Zac
May the Lord open our eyes by His Holy Spirit to see what’s valuable in this life to live for, and to fight for - to overcome sin and to value Jesus and His pleasure and His will above all.
“Therefore we also have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are made manifest to God; and I hope that we are made manifest also in your consciences.” 2 Corinthians 5:9-11