The Narrow Path Ministries

It's pretty clear that a good number of professing Christians, even many active in churches, lack the love of Christ in them, and may not even appear to be truly regenerated.

By way of background, I've been engaged in an email dialog with a friend of mine who's a pastor at another church about some of the biblical teachings on "lust." He disagrees with some of my translational interpretations and semantic distinctions between what Steve calls "glandular" responses (to me not a sin) and the sinful thing we usually refer to as "lust." He seems to think the semantic distinction I'm making is dangerous because those he ministers to have such a problem with lust that all they need is an excuse to point to scripture and say "see here, I can look as long as I don't touch." I pointed out that there are plenty other scriptures than the ones we were dealing with that clearly teach against such an intentional thing which can be brought out in commentary and exposition and counseling, but that the verse in question actually refers to something else, etc. and that I think it's more dangerous to misinterpret scripture for convenience or well-intended pragmatism even if someone might use the interpretation to justify their sin.

This got me to thinking. Folks who are looking for "biblical justification" to justify their otherwise sinful activity don't seem to have the love of Christ in them, and it seems to put the cart before the horse to me to focus on holiness teaching as a first principle until you have someone's heart inclined towards Jesus and desiring to please Him rather than looking for a "loophole."

So, should a pastor be looking to clean up people's lives as a fundamental matter, or working with them to understand their proper attitude and relationship to Christ first and then focus on the Holiness teachings? The pastor's a Calvinist, and assuming the disciple is not "elect," then why even teach him the ways of Christ?

Put another way, what benefit is there to God if someone learns and even follow biblical "holiness" teachings if they don't do it out of a love of Christ? Does it even please God to see a pagan give up fornication? Wouldn't that be sort of a neutral "position change" for an atheist in God's eyes?

Our culture is pretty "holy" from that perspective compared to many earlier generations, and is still pretty far away from God. Does that in any way please Him?

Good thoughts. I agree with your ideas on this.

This got me to thinking. Folks who are looking for "biblical justification" to justify their otherwise sinful activity don't seem to have the love of Christ in them, and it seems to put the cart before the horse to me to focus on holiness teaching as a first principle until you have someone's heart inclined towards Jesus and desiring to please Him rather than looking for a "loophole."







IMO only the grace of God empowers us to incline our heart towards Jesus and live holy and be holy or righteous by faith. I think many if not most believers try to be holy through "the law" not for salvation but in their walk with Christ therefore they transfer the mindset of "by my own efforts" from salvation to their walk with Christ. Paul says the law is the strength of sin which means although the law itself is holy , because our flesh is corrupt the law unconsciencely makes sin more alluring by forbidding it. Children want what they can't have twice as much, Eve found the fruit from the forbidden tree twice as tempting because she could'nt have it because when something is forbidden it seems more desirable to man.
On the other hand receiving the full revelation of grace (unearned favor)in our hearts takes away the attraction of sin and grace makes our walk with Abba more intimate. Lastly many believers say it's the Holy Spirit who convicts us of sin but John 16 actually says He convicts the world of sin for not believing in Christ and it sounds to me that the HS convicts believers of righteousness , because in John 16 someone is convicted of righteousness and Jesus is speaking to his disciples.