Fwd: November 23: The Unattainable Standards

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Ezekiel 45:13-46:24
1 Peter 1:13-2:10

Psalm 119:33-48

Proverbs 28:11

The rites described in our Old Testament reading today seem so precise to me, like excruciatingly detailed instructions putting something together where if you miss one step or one part, the whole thing collapses.  Six - not five, not 7 - male - not female - lambs...and a ram!  Or a young bull, six lambs and a ram, all without defect, and grain offerings to boot!  Enter by the north gate, exit by the south one...and vice versa!  And in rooms measured precisely, with very specific functions.  These instructions seem so very demanding!

Not that there is any respite in our New Testament reading.  We are called to be "holy in all you do", to love one another deeply, from the heart, to rid ourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.  Not a day goes by that I do not fail to meet these standards.  

I'm in the middle of a book my father recommended - Respectable Sins, by Jerry Bridges.  In it, he discusses the sins we tolerate - not the big ones we easily recognize, like murder and theft and adultery, but the ones we are more quickly able to find excuses for, like the first two I've read about so far.

The first one is ungodliness, which he defines as "living one's everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God's will, or of God's glory, or of one's dependence on God", something very distinct from unrighteousness and, consequently, something a perfectly nice, respectable person might be.  The second, taken together, are anxiety, worry and frustration, the first two of which result from a distrust of God and His providence, the latter a denial of God's sovereignty over all my circumstances.  

These are difficult sins for me, not sins I commit just once.  They are a way of life, so deeply ingrained in me as to cut almost to my very core.  Like the instructions impossible to follow in their precision, and the standards unattainable in their stringency, how is one to eradicate the sinfulness ingrained by a lifetime of practice?  Clearly not by our own strength - and the author maps a suggested course:

1.  Apply the Gospel - remember that not only has God forgiven us our sins, He has also "credit to us the perfect righteousness of Christ."
2.  Depend upon the Holy Spirit, by which the sin in our lives has been put to death - do not resort to our own willpower!
3.  Recognize that we still have a responsibility to "diligently pursue all practical steps for dealing with our sins" - an easy example:  identifying situations that make us prone to sin, and avoiding them
4.  Identify specific areas of these weaknesses, these tendencies - these sins!
5.  Arm yourself with scripture - appropriate passages, "memorized, reflected on, and prayed over as we ask God to use them to enable us to deal with those sins."
6.  Pray over those sins
7.  Involve others - accountability.  "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.  For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow.

The more I read of the Bible, the further I realize I am from deserving the salvation I need, the more I realize how each day I choose to spend on my own, by my own strength, I only serve to dig myself in deeper.  How grateful am I that I can turn to Him and as "Teach me, Lord, the way of your decrees, that I may follow it to the end.  Give me understanding, so that I may keep your law and obey it with all my heart."  How thankful am I that it was never by my strength, it was always going to be by His.

Jon Lanuza
CIMB Securities (USA) Inc
540 Madison Avenue, 11F
New York NY 10022
W +1 (212) 616-8602
M +1 (917) 743-0980
jose.lanuza@cimb.com
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