… and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. Ephesians 4:24
It is not enough to just pray to God to make you Holy, we need to take active steps to be Wholly His. We cannot do it alone, but we must play an active role in accepting his ownership of us.
Growing up, I was taught the ten commandments and the “thou shalt nots” – but I also remember early on that being a Christian was not just about not doing certain things, but about having a positive vision of what it meant to be God’s Following the rules and just changing our behavior was not all that God had planned for us. He did not want us to be slaves to fear a master. He wanted us to be changed into his.
I was pretty young when I figured it out that being a Christian was more than a series of “thou shalt not” As a kid, I tried to be obedient to my parents which included following God’s commandments. But on some level, being obedient was kind of like eating spiritual vegetables. You had to eat them, you may want to even eat them but you did with the belief that they were good for you, not because you really liked them or enjoyed eating them. Or you ate them, because then you would get to have dessert or the real benefit of belonging to God. Eating spiritual vegetables, was not enjoyable, but a means to an end of being blessed by God.
Putting sin to death is hard, and impossible to do by ourselves. Living only with prohibitions only seemed to make those prohibitions even for enticing.
I still protest eating vegetables, but I do eat them because they are good for me and by eating them I am being a good model for my children. But now I have a desire to think on these things, because God gets the glory for who he is, and I am happy to be a better person by eating of his great dessert.
John Piper said, “I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.”[1] (Piper, Desiring God)
Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. Psalm 34:8
[1] Desiring God, p. 12
I wrote the above, several years ago, and it’s focus is on personal righteousness, I thought of this today as our pastor preached on Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
He started by saying he never really liked tomatoes, but ate them at least once when he was told they helped prevent prostrate cancer. He explained that our tastes can change, and particularly they can as we have different experiences. For example, he had a different taste of stories about lost or abducted children when he became a father, and how he had a different taste or attitude about individuals with addiction or being homeless, when people he knew personally were forced to deal with those situation.
I must admit, when I read the beatitudes, I often think of hunger nd thirst for righteousness on a very individualistic and personal way. I appreciated this focus on kingdom living, and that we should hunger and thirst for righteousness from a kingdom perspective. We live in a broken world, and the sin and darkness around shouldn’t be that way. Racism, violence, addiction, and broken families all part of the sin or unrighteousness. That is not the way God intended, and God has called us to not just ignore or bear with those things, but we should be actively thirsting and hungering for that kind of righteousness.
Our pastor said that our love for Jesus changes our appetite so we hunger and thirst for righteousness in our own lives and in the world around us.
So, maybe John Piper’s quote above still applies. Our distaste for racism, violence, addiction and and homelessness would grow when we truly hunger and thirst for righteousness, and we would have a far greater sense of fulfillment and being made whole.
A Long Intentional Walk 