Sin and Eagles

I feel when I have sinned an immediate reluctance to go to Christ. I am ashamed to go. I feel as if it would not do to go, as if it were making Christ the minister of sin, to go straight from the swine-trough to the best robe, and a thousand other excuses. But I am persuaded they are all lies direct from hell.

John argues the opposite way—‘If any man sins, we have an advocate with the Father.’ The holy sensitiveness of the soul that shrinks from the touch of sin, the acute susceptibility of the conscience at the slightest shade of guilt, will of necessity draw the spiritual mind frequently to the blood of Jesus.

And herein lies the secret of a heavenly walk. Acquaint yourself with it, my reader, as the most precious secret of your life. He who lives in the habit of a prompt and minute acknowledgement of sin, with his eye reposing calmly, believingly, upon the crucified Redeemer, soars in spirit where the eagle’s wings range not.
     
       — Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Go and Sin No More

One of Rachel Held Evans' most powerful and controversial posts can be found here:

How’s that working out for you? 

The "go and sin no more" thing? 

Because it’s not going so well for me. 

I’ve known Jesus for as long as I’ve known my name, and still I use other people like capital to advance my own interest, still I gossip to make myself feel important, still I curse my brothers and sisters in one breath and sing praise songs in the next, still I sit in church with arms folded and cynicism coursing through my bloodstream, still I talk a big game about caring for the poor without doing much to change my own habits, still I indulge in food I’m not hungry for and jewelry I don’t need, still I obsess over what people say about me on the internet, still I forget my own privilege, still I talk more than I listen and complain more than I thank, still I commit acts of evil, still I make a great commenter on Christianity and a lousy practitioner of it.

But Jesus pours out his mercy, staying the hand of my accusers again and again and again.

I go, stepping over scattered stones, forgiven, grateful, and free.

I go, but I do not sin no more.

Do you? 

They were doing the “biblical,” thing you know—the religious scholars and leaders who surrounded the woman caught in adultery that day. They probably had Leviticus 20:10 at the ready:

“If a man commits adultery with another man's wife--with the wife of his neighbor--both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death.”

They wanted to see if this Jesus fellow who ate with tax collectors and prostitutes and who touched the ritually impure, could be tough on sin. So they picked a clear-cut sin with a clear-cut consequence—a biblical slam dunk— and passed around the stones.

“The Bible says we should stone this woman?” they challenged Jesus, “What do you say?” 

Would he be so foolish as to contradict God’s Word? It would be the ruin of this ministry!
I wish we knew what the carpenter scribbled in the sand that day. Lists of names? Lists of sins? Something about how God desires mercy over sacrifice? Inscrutable doodles meant to redirect the crowd’s judgmental gaze?

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her,” Jesus finally says before crouching to the earth again, the God who formed us out of dust covered in it.

The gospel notes that it was the oldest in the crowd who left first. They knew. 

One by one, the religious elite dropped their stones and walked away. Seems the sinning no more thing wasn’t working so well for them either.

“Woman, where are they?” Jesus asks after they have gone. “Has no one condemned you?”
“No sir.”

I imagine she was still trembling.

“Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.”

It’s one of just two times in his recorded ministry that Jesus said this—“go and sin no more”—and I don’t believe for a second he expected this woman to do such a thing...at least not forever, at least not for good.  

He knew she was not so different from the religious leaders who surrounded her, not so different from you and I. He knew that hers would be invisible stones, the kind she’d grip tighter each time she saw the man who once shared her bed but not her public humiliation, each time she heard the whispers of her neighbors or the loud, pretentious prayers of the men who had grabbed her and surrounded her and threatened to kill her, each time she heard rumors that the person who saved her would himself be put to death. 

She would sin, no doubt.

But perhaps she would think twice before casting those stones. Perhaps she would stop for a moment to consider the irony of becoming just like her accusers.

We tend to look down our noses at these ancient people with their purity codes regulating everything from the fibers in their clothes to the people they touched. But we have our own purity codes these days—people we cast out from our communities or surround with Bible-wielding mobs, labels we assign to those who don’t fit, conditions we place on God’s grace, theological and behavioral checklists we hand out before baptism or communion, sins real or imagined we delight in taking seriously because we’d like to think they are much more severe than our own. 

“Let’s not forget that Jesus told that woman to go and sin no more,” Christians like to say when they're afraid this grace thing might get out of hand. 

Lord have mercy.

Of all the people in that story, we’ve gone and decided we’re the most like Jesus.

I think it’s safe to say we’ve missed the point.

We’ve missed the point when we quote the Gospel of John like the Pharisees quoted Leviticus to justify a gathering mob.

We’ve missed the point when we use it to condemn rather than convict.

We’ve missed the point when we turn this story into a stone.

 

 

It's not the Falling that is the Worst.

A prayer by Michel Quoist.  He was a French Catholic priest who wrote glorious prayers that aren't so lofty and stale.  His prayers are so honest and real.

I have fallen, Lord,
Once more.

I can’t go on, I’ll never succeed.
I am ashamed, I don’t dare look at you.

And yet I struggled, Lord, for I knew you were right near me, bending over me, watching.

But temptation blew like a hurricane,
And instead of looking at you I turned my head away,
I stepped aside
While you stood, silent and sorrowful,
Like the spurned fiancè who sees his loved one carried away to the enemy.

When the wind died down as suddenly as it had arisen,
When the lightning ceased after proudly streaking the darkness,
All of a sudden I found myself alone, ashamed, disgusted, with my sin in my hands.

This sin that I selected the way a customer makes his purchase,
This sin that I have paid for and cannot return, for the shopkeeper is no longer there,
This tasteless sin,
This odorless sin,
This sin that sickens me,
That I have wanted but want no more,
That I have imagined, sought, played with, fondled, for a long time;
That I have finally embraced while turning coldly away from you,
My arms outstretched, my eyes and heart irresistibly drawn;
This sin that I have grasped and consumed with gluttony,
It’s mine now, but it possesses me as the spiderweb holds captive the gnat.

It is mine,
It sticks to me,
It flows in my veins,
It fills my heart.

It has slipped in everywhere, as darkness slips into the forest at dusk
And fills all the patches of light.

I can’t get rid of it.
 I run from it the way one tries to lose a stray dog, but it catches up with me and bounds joyfully against my legs.
Everyone must notice it.

I’m so ashamed that I feel like crawling to avoid being seen,
I’m ashamed of being seen by my friends,
I’m ashamed of being seen by you, Lord,
For you loved me, and I forgot you.
I forgot you because I was thinking of myself
And one can’t think of several persons at once.
One must choose, and I chose.

And your voice,
And your look
And your love hurt me.
They weigh me down
They weigh me down more than my sin.

Lord, don’t look at me like that,
For I am naked,
I am dirty,
I am down,
Shattered,
With no strength left.
I dare make no more promises,
I can only lie bowed before you.

[The Father's Response]
Come, son, look up.
Isn’t it mainly your vanity that is wounded?
If you loved me, you would grieve, but you would trust.
Do you think that there’s a limit to God’s love?
Do you think that for a moment I stopped loving you?
But you still rely on yourself, son. You must rely only on me.
Ask my pardon
And get up quickly.
You see, it’s not falling that is the worst,
But staying on the ground.

-Michel Quoist

Are You Avoiding Him as Savior?

If you’re avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless you and save you, then you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model and helper, but ironically you are avoiding him as Savior.  You are trusting your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God.

- Tim Keller, Reason for God


Romans 3:10:

As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
    there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
    not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
    their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
    “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
    ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
    “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

You are allowed to be a sinner...

Richard Beck is Department Chair of Psychology at Abilene Christian University writes a blog called Experimental Theology.  Recently, he discussed the need for Christians to stop hiding their sins from each other and acting so pious that we can't see God's mercy and forgiveness in each other's lives.  What do you think?

Two weeks ago I wrote about how we make the love of God credible and believable to others when we stand in front of each other and say "I love you." It's hard to believe in the love of God unless human beings stand before us as signs, representatives, sacraments and ambassadors of God's love.

When you say "I love you" to others you make the love of God credible and believable.

Something similar happens when it comes to God's mercy, grace and forgiveness. It's hard to experience the mercy of God. It's hard to feel forgiven. And the church doesn't help much with this. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes in Life Together in the church "we are not allowed to be sinners":

For the pious community permits no one to be a sinner. Hence all have to conceal their sins from themselves and from the community. We are not allowed to be sinners. Many Christians would be unimaginably horrified if a real sinner were suddenly to turn up among the pious. So we remain alone with our sin, trapped in lies and hypocrisy, for we are in fact sinners.

This experience of hiding and shame is a tragedy given the grace and mercy of God. As Bonhoeffer describes, under the merciful gaze of God you are allowed to be a sinner:

However, the grace of the gospel, which is so hard for the pious to comprehend, confronts us with the truth. It says to us, you are a sinner, a great, unholy sinner. Now come, as the sinner that you are, to your God who loves you. For God wants you as you are, not desiring anything from you – a sacrifice, a good deed – but rather desiring you alone. God has come to you to make the sinner blessed. Rejoice! This message is liberation through truth. You cannot hide from God. The mask you wear in the presence of other people won’t get you anywhere in the presence of God. God wants to see you as you are, wants to be gracious to you. You do not have to go on lying to yourself and to other Christians as if you were without sin. You are allowed to be a sinner...

And yet, God's mercy remains unbelievable to us. We don't trust it. It seems too incredible. And so we continue to hide in shame and fear.

This is why the sacrament of confession is so important. In being embraced as a sinner by another human being the mercy and forgiveness of God becomes credible. In confession we become sacraments of God's grace for each other and that makes the grace of God more believable. God's forgiveness becomes credible when we forgive each other. Bonhoeffer:

Now each stands in Christ’s place. In the presence of another Christian I no longer need to pretend. In another Christian’s presence I am permitted to be the sinner that I am, for there alone in all the world the truth and mercy of Jesus Christ rule. Christ became our brother in order in order to help us; through Christ other Christians have become Christ for us in the power and authority of Christ’s commandment. Other Christians stand before us as a sign of God’s truth and grace. They have been given to us to help us. Another Christian hears our confession of sin in Christ's place, and forgives our sins in Christ's name. Another Christian keeps the secret of our confession as God keeps it. When I go to another believer to confess, I am going to God...

We are to become signs of God's mercy for each other. Me for you and you for me. Each of us an incarnation of God's grace and love.

I'm reminded of the exhortation from 1 Peter:

1 Peter 4.8-11
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God.

Repeat Offender

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Tullian Tchividjian

 

No one in the Bible is more of a repeat offender than the apostle Peter, the so-called “rock” upon which the church is built. His consistent ineptitude is almost comic, or at least it would be, were he not also the one who Jesus appointed to be his chief representative.

As you may remember from Sunday school, Jesus called Simon (and his brother Andrew) while they were fishing by the Sea of Galilee. He immediately left his family business and followed the Lord. After he answered Jesus’ famous question, “Who do you say that I am?” correctly, Jesus changed his name from Simon to Peter, which means rock. Peter lived with Jesus for three and a half years, witnessed many miracles, and heard his teaching. He was part of Jesus’ inner circle of three (Peter, James, and John) and was clearly captivated by Jesus and his teaching. Peter was the one who asked Jesus to explain parables, and the one who asked for more clarification about forgiveness. He had given up everything for the Lord he deeply loved (see Matthew 19:27), and he loved his Savior more than he had ever loved anyone. And yet, his track record was abysmal.

A few bullet points from his spiritual resume:

- When Jesus told him to walk on water, Peter was afraid and sank. (Matt. 14:22–33)

- Peter tried to persuade Jesus that he would not have to die and received the following reply: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the – concerns of God but merely human concerns.” (Matt. 16:23 NIV)

- He fell asleep in Gethsemane three times, despite the explicit instructions of his sorrowful Lord, who asked him, “Could you not watch one hour?” (Mark 14:32–42)

- When the guards came to arrest Jesus in Gethsemane, Peter drew his sword and Jesus rebuked him for it. (John 18:11)

- After Jesus was arrested, Peter denied him three times, after being told by Jesus—in no uncertain terms—that he was going to do so. (Mark 14:26–31, 66–72)

Apart from his being the first to acknowledge that Jesus was the Christ, the son of God, almost everything he did in the Gospels ended in a correction, a rebuke, or just simple failure. It is hard to imagine how to be a worse disciple than Peter, short of rejecting the faith entirely, once and for all. He could be relied upon to fail at doing God’s bidding, with one or two salient exceptions. Yet these exceptions were enough for Jesus to proclaim that he was the rock. Why?

It is no coincidence that Peter was both the weakest and the one who recognized who Jesus was. He could recognize the Savior, because he knew how much he needed one. His faith was directly tied to his failure. As one writer accurately put it, “The great and merciful surprise is that we come to God not by doing it right but by doing it wrong!”

This is proved by one of the most comforting (and probably overlooked) passages in the Bible. When the women find the young man minding the empty tomb on Easter morning, he gives them a message: “Go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you’” (Mark 16:7). Jesus names Peter specifically. That disciple who had seemingly done all in his power to ruin his relationship with Christ, and who had, only a few days before, denied even knowing him at all, was still going to receive a kept promise: “There you will see him, just as he told you.”

Though Peter was, and we are, ultimate promise-breakers, Jesus was, and ever will be, the ultimate promise-keeper.

Everyone in Church is a Saint?

"May a merciful God preserve me from a Christian Church in which everyone is a saint!  I want to be and remain in the church and little flock of the fainthearted, the feeble and the ailing, who feel and recognize the wretchedness of their sins, who sigh and cry to God incessantly for comfort and help, who believe in the forgiveness of sins.”

Martin Luther, in Luther’s Works (St. Louis, 1957), XXII:55.

Drop your Denials and Self-Defenses

“The gospel of justifying faith means that while Christians are, in themselves still sinful and sinning, yet in Christ, in God’s sight, they are accepted and righteous. So we can say that we are more wicked than we ever dared believe, but more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope — at the very same time. This creates a radical new dynamic for personal growth. It means that the more you see your own flaws and sins, the more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s grace appears to you. But on the other hand, the more aware you are of God’s grace and acceptance in Christ, the more able you are to drop your denials and self-defenses and admit the true dimensions and character of your sin.”

        -Tim Keller

Sacrifice

“The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.”

 
— John Stott
The Cross of Christ

At your worst, At your Best.

Imagine your worst moment of guilt and shame, the memory that, when you let it, haunts you and threatens to hound you to the grave. In light of that sin, we sometimes cannot imagine how God could possibly forgive. Yet it was for that moment that Christ died for you. At your worst, God gave you his best. While you were still a sinner — of the worst kind — Christ died for you (Rom. 5:8).  The Passover teaches us that no debt of sin is too great to be forgiven because the precious sacrifice of Jesus pays it all.

Now imagine your best day. You’re on your winning streak, behaving well, keeping up with your spiritual disciplines, forgiving those who wrong you, helping those in need and leading non-Christians to Jesus. In light of such stellar Christian performance, we sometimes assume forgiveness, telling ourselves, ‘Of course God forgives me; I’m on his team.’ But the Passover teaches us that we don’t — and never could — deserve God’s forgiveness. Our debt of sin to him is so great that we couldn’t possibly pay God back, not with a thousand years of perfect performance (as if that were possible). On your best day, when you can most easily see yourself as God’s friend, your sin still makes you his enemy and requires Christ’s death so that you might truly become his friend despite yourself. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 
— Mike Wilkerson
Redemption: Freed by Jesus from the Idols We Worship and the Wounds We Carry

What would you fear if anyone found out about it?

What in your life would you fear if anyone found out about it?

What would horrify you if it were exposed before your family, your friends, your acquaintances?

In gospel repentance and faith, we fearlessly expose ourselves to Judgment Day in the present. That’s what the confession of sin is, a revealing of what Jesus already promises to reveal on the Day of Christ (Luke 8:17).

Our problem is that we often, like Adam before us, want to hide our temptations, and especially our sin, to cover it over to save face. Hiding, though, is exactly the opposite of what a Christian does when confronted with satanic designs. The darkness is where these evils latch onto us. Instead we can preemptively shine light on this, with God in prayer and in our authentic accountability to the Body of Christ, his church.

Our Christian reluctance to speak honestly about temptation is precisely why Christians often believe themselves to be unbelievers. All they see of other believers is this façade of smiling, peaceful Christ-followers. They assume then that the internal life of every other Christian is just a continual festival of hymns as opposed to their own internal life in which the hymns are interrupted with constant gossipy chatter, violent rage, and hard-core pornography.

This is exactly how the satanic powers want it. They want the prideful and oblivious to stay that way, until they fall and slink away in isolation, where they can be devoured.

Preaching the gospel to ourselves, though, reminds us continually that we are sinners and that we can stand only by the blood of Jesus. We can walk only by his Spirit prodding us on. We need one another, as parts of the same body together.

Russell Moore 
Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ

Good Things Which Become Ultimate Things

Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity apart from him.....

Most people think of sin primarily as “breaking divine rules,” but Kierkegaard knows that the very first of the Ten Commandments is to “have no other gods before me.” 

So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.

-Tim Keller, The Reason For God

Indulge My Every Feeling

"The desire to be God rather than to serve God lies at the bottom of every sin that anyone has ever committed. Sin isn't first rooted in a philosophical debate of the appropriateness or healthiness of a certain ethic.  

 

No, sin is rooted in my unwillingness to find joy in living my life under the authority of, and for the glory of, Another.  Sin is rooted in my desire to live for me.  It's driven by my propensity to indulge my every feeling, satisfy my every desire, and meet my every need.....

 

Because sin is about the breaking of relationship, restoration of relationship is the only hope for us in our struggle with sin.   It's only because God is willing to love us in our struggle with sin.  It's only because God is willing to love us in a way that we refuse to love him that we have any hope of defeating sin.  It's through the gift of adoption into relationship with him that we find what we need to gain power over sin.  

 

And what do we need?  A greater love for him than we have for ourselves.  His love is the only thing that has the power to produce in us that kind of love for him."

- Paul Tripp, Whiter than Snow

 

HT: Whiter than Snow: Sin is a Relationship

        All of Grace Blog

Given to Me what I was not.

“This is that mystery which is rich in divine grace to sinners: wherein by a wonderful exchange our sins are no longer ours but Christ’s, and the righteousness of Christ not Christ’s but ours.  He has emptied himself of his righteousness that he might clothe us with it and fill us with it; and he has taken our evils upon himself that he might deliver us from them.”

“Learn Christ and him crucified.  Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say, ‘Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am thy sin.  Thou hast taken upon thyself what is mine and hast given to me what is thine.  Thou hast taken upon thyself what thou wast not and hast given to me what I was not.’”

Martin Luther, quoted in J. I. Packer and Mark Dever, In My Place Condemned He Stood

This is that mystery is a post from: Ray Ortlund

Packing

Great Post by by Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like Blog. If you haven't visited his site, go now. Hilarious and inspired. 

My friend used to deal drugs.

I tell you this, not to add an element of excitement to his testimony, as we are prone to do when we encounter someone who has a really crazy, Jason Bourne like testimony.

I tell you this, because two weeks ago he taught me an important lesson about faith.

We were talking about a famous singer who recently got arrested for having a bag of cocaine on him in a bathroom. The singer told the police that this was the first time he’s ever tried cocaine. When I told my friend that, he said it wasn’t true. He said it was virtually impossible for that to have been his first time. Knowing that my friend didn’t follow this musician or really have any knowledge of him, I asked him why he could be so sure of that.

Here is what he told me:

“No one carries drugs with them the first time they use. No one has the lack of fear it takes to carry a few grams of coke the very first time you try it. No one is alone in a bathroom, carrying a controlled substance the first time they have it. It starts slowly. You’re at a party where it is present. There are a few lines at a friend’s house. Somewhere you bump into it casually. You try it that way long before you decide you’ll be out at a nightclub with a bag of it in your pocket.”

That makes sense to me and more than that, it feels a lot like every other sin in my life.

Nothing I’ve ever done, whether lying or drugs, pornography or gossip, started out with a bag in a bathroom. As I’ve said before, no one wakes up on a Tuesday morning and says, “Today, I’m going to embezzle!” No one says, “At lunch, I’m going to get 10 DUIs and go to jail!” The path to completely destruction never starts out that way.

And neither did the Prodigal Son story. I can’t write about that story enough. It’s the perfect example of small steps to big stupid. In that story, we often like to think that the son got his inheritance from his father and then took a G6 jet straight to hookertown.

But that’s not what Luke 15 says. In fact, this is what we see in Luke 15:13

"And not many days after the younger son gathered all together and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living."

Did you see that? The Prodigal Son packed. For days, he packed his bags before he left the father’s side. He took small steps. He made small mistakes and then he left.

So my question to you today, my question to me is pretty simple:

Are you packing?

Right now, today, are you packing your things to leave the safety of the father? Are you getting your things together for a disastrous trip to somewhere you’ve been before, down a path that will leave you wounded and beaten? Is your luggage laid open on your bed and you can’t get things together fast enough?

Are you packing?

If you are, tell a friend. Tell someone who knows you. Did you ever notice that about the Prodigal Son story? He had no friends. Other than the father and the older brother, no one cared that he was gone. His was a friendless existence. He packed alone.

Let’s put the luggage down. Let’s release the baggage. It’s time to stop leaving and instead start living.

Are you packing?

It’s Time to Stop Trading

By Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like

We have a bit of a problem at our house.

One of our daughters is highly creative and one is highly generous. That means at any given time, the creative one is coming up with elaborate plans to trade rocks and sticks to the generous one for candy or toys. Thus lies the central issue at the great “Silly Bandz crisis of 2010.”

Though I swear we have given them both the same number of Silly Bandz, somehow, like a tiny, adorable Napoleon, my 6 year old has acquired most of my 4 year old’s Silly Bandz. She walks around with them all on one arm like some sort of child sized Slick Rick covered in rapper jewelry.

We’ve talked to our youngest about the outrageous trades she often agrees to, but she just can’t seem to understand how it works. You shouldn’t ever trade a lot for a very little. Ten Silly Bandz for the right to enter her sister’s room is a whack trade. Unfortunately though, my daughter is not the only one who makes wildly one-sided trades like this.

I was reminded of this recently while reading through Genesis. I’m trying to read through the Bible for a second time and I’m in the section about Joseph. Something really fascinating happens in chapter 39 when Joseph is confronted by Potiphar’s wife. (Side note, Potiphar’s wife was probably history’s first cougar. Lot of theologians won’t tell you that.)

The story is pretty simple, Joseph is in charge of running Potiphar’s entire house. And he’s all P90X’d and good looking. So Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him. How did Joseph respond? Having been sold into slavery, he could have caved and blamed his difficult childhood on his busted adulthood. But he didn’t. In 39:8-9 here is what he says:

“With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?”

Do you see what he did? He said, “I’ve got almost everything, why would I trade all of that for the one thing I don’t have? Why would I trade this big thing for that small thing?” If that sounds familiar, it should, Adam & Eve faced the same type of temptation in the Garden of Eden.

They had everything. They had it all. Adam was the Joseph of God’s house. He was in charge of naming all the animals. That is a wildly amazing honor. Do you know how badly scientists desire to discover a new species and name it after themselves? Naming something is a high honor and that was Adam’s. The Garden was theirs to live in and love. But then Satan came into the picture.

And he did something to Adam and Eve that I promise he does to you.

Everyday the enemy tries to offer you an apple, when God has already given us an orchard.

Adam and Eve had the whole garden and traded it for a single apple. Joseph had the entire household of Potiphar and was offered his wife. You’ve got the glory of God inside you and get tempted to trade it for something small and dull each day.

Trading the beauty of God’s intended gift of sex for pornography is an orchard for an apple trade.

Trading the peace of honesty for the quick fix of a lie is an orchard for an apple trade.

Trading the friendship of a neighbor for the short term hit of gossiping is an orchard for an apple trade.

Each day we are faced with dozens of orchard for apple trades. We have something so big and true and wild in us, and we give it away for a handful of temporary coins.

But Joseph didn’t and we can refuse the trade to. We can look at how small and shriveled and worm infested the apple of temptation is. And then we can remember how bright and expansive the orchard of God’s heart is. There are acres of apples waiting for us. Miles of rows of opportunities to be at peace and serve and surrender and repent to a God who gives and gives and gives.

It’s time to stop trading.

Let’s put the apples down.

We’ve already got the orchard.

“You Show Too Much Grace”

More by Jon Acuff at Stuff Christians Like Blog:

A few weeks ago, someone online requested a DVD copy of me being sent to hell. When I told my youngest brother Bennett this, his reaction was simple:

“Oh come on! DVD? Doesn’t heaven have better technology than that at this point? At the bare minimum I have to believe they’ve got Blu-ray.”

He makes a good point. If the movies “Piranha” and “Step Up” are in 3D I assume heaven is using some sort of hologram technology. But that’s not really the point of this. The point is that someone felt I was on a bullet train to Hades. Why?

I wrote a piece for CNN about the two most common ways Christians become jerks online. In it, I argued that we’re called to love our neighbor and that includes people on the Internet. The reader who wrote me and several other people felt that in the article I came across as being “soft on sin.”

Similar to how people will accuse politicians of being “soft on crime,” sometimes Christians accuse each other of being “soft on sin.” The idea is that there needs to be justice and consequences. People have to pay the cost of their actions and learn from their mistakes. When you’re “soft on sin,” you’re giving people too many second chances, you’re not holding people accountable the right way, you’re being too gracious.

So people accused me of giving evil a free pass. Have you ever heard that before? Has there ever been an issue your friend thought you weren’t mad enough about? Or a situation where you refused to let someone keep falling when everyone told you to abandon all hope? Have you ever been accused of being soft on sin?

It’s not a new phenomenon. In the Prodigal Son story, this is essentially the argument of the older brother. When he realizes his failure of a younger brother received a party instead of punishment, he is incensed. He berates the father, lists out the younger brother’s faults and refuses to attend the party.

But here’s the thing about this approach to life. Here’s the one thing I can’t get around.

You can never out grace a God who sent his son to the cross for you.

You will never have a reaction to a situation or a sin or a person or an issue that is more loving than God. Your reaction will never, ever outweigh God’s. But don’t get that twisted, God is not soft on sin.

In fact, his wrath for sin is demonstrated best in the severity of his grace.

We don’t get casual grace. We don’t get easy grace. We don’t get cheap or soft grace.

We get severe grace. We get unyielding grace. We get Christ on the cross with nails in his hands and blood on his body grace. We get severe grace.

And the reason we do is that God is not soft on sin. He is hard on sin. He is wrathful on sin. He is all knowing and all powerful on sin. He is fire and earthquakes and showers of sulfur on sin. His wrath is undeniable on sin. Which is why it took such tremendous grace to quench it.

I’m not soft on sin. I’m not shy about repentance or consequences or hurt or suffering or pain. But when it comes to loving people, our Lord has set an incredibly high bar. So love the people no one else loves. Show grace without end. Give comfort even when it makes no sense.

And as far as the DVD copy of my trip to hell goes? I’m not concerned about emails like that.

“You’re too loving” and “you show too much grace” are insults I will forever accept.