Unless We Are Willing

August 11

“Therefore put to death…fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry,” Colossians 3:5.

“For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them,” Ephesians 5:5-7.

The essential nature of this idolatry is selfishness, the worship of the self. A person's desire becomes the object of his affections and devotion. This sin is readily discernible in the ‘driven’ individual who pursues his goal without regard to cost. The driven individual will sacrifice anything—his marriage, his relationship with his children, his standing in the community, his faith—in order to obtain the object of his desire.

That object might be an elicit love that causes him to fly in the face of the Tenth Commandment (see Deuteronomy 5:21). As the Word states clearly, “ You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor."

Yet, covetousness, the desire for more, the lust for what is not ours, drives many people to sin. Just as an illicit attraction can drive us to commit adultery, the desire to possess wealth, to own more things can drive us to rob ourselves of quality relationships with our families and friends in order to pursue the fruit of wealth. Some of us are driven to steal from others in variance to the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shall not steal, “ (see Exodus 20:15).

If we are professing believers in Christ, the ultimate theft is of our relationship with the Holy One, for He is not deceived by our pseudo surrender to Him while we are actually negating everything He stands for by the pursuit of “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life,” I John 2:16.

If we do not espouse Christ, none of this matters to us, for we are creatures of the world and we are subject to its goals and desires. We will spend ourselves to attain the trappings of wealth and power and to indulge every guilty pleasure the world can afford to us.

But if we are the Lord’s; if we have laid our lives at His feet, He expects a change in us—He expects a transformative change away from the enticements of the temporal which are fleeting and toward the promises of Heaven which are eternal. Which direction will we take our faith?

Will we compartmentalize our lives into segments—some worldly and some spiritual—believing that we are giving God His due by allocating a portion of our lives to church attendance and fellowship with others of “like precious faith,” II Peter 1:1 while being at the same time consumed with the world?

Or will we be among those who forsake all in order to fulfill the plan and purpose of God for our lives? Unless we are willing to abandon our ‘self’ to the Lord’s higher purpose, we cannot obtain the totality of His provision for us in time, nor can we achieve life’s greatest goal—the assurance of Heaven.