SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/20/2017
10:48 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “Sins of Perverted Love”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
3:5b
Message of the
verses: “immorality, impurity,
passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry.”
Passion and Evil Desire: John MacArthur states that the distinction
between these two is not great. “Pathos (‘Passion’) refers to sexual
passion set loose in the body, as its two other occurrences in the New
Testament indicate (cf. Rom. 1:26; 1 Thess. 4:5). In this context, evil desire undoubtedly also
refers to the sexual lust created in the mind (cf. James 1:15). Perhaps the difference between the two terms
is that passion is the physical and evil desire the mental side of the same
vice. The two terms appear together in 1
Thessalonians 4:5, where Paul commands Christians not to live ‘in lustful
passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God.’ Such behavior is completely inappropriate for
believer.”
Greed: We could
also see this word as covetousness and it is last because this is the evil root
from which every one of the previous sins spring up from. I might add that in the Ten Commandments that
Covetousness is also listed last. “Pleonexia”
is the Greek word for greed “greedy desire to have more, covetousness, avarice.” It is translated covetousness eight times in
the KJV. MacArthur adds that this word
in the Greek “comes from two Greek words:
pleon, ‘more,’ and ‘exo’ ‘to have.’ It is the insatiable desire to have more, to
have what is forbidden. As such, it is
the source of fights and quarrels (James 4:2), as well as lusts, passion, and
sin.”
Why doe se see at the end
of our verse “which amounts to idolatry?”
Answer is because it places these selfish desires above obedience to God
as greed amounts to idolatry. John
MacArthur quotes William Barclay who wrote “It is, therefore, a sin with a very
wide range. If it is the desire for
money, it leads to theft. If it is the
desire for prestige, it leads to evil ambition.
If it is the desire for power, it leads to sadistic tyranny. If it is the desire for a person, it leads to
sexual sin.” MacArthur states that
covetousness is the root cause of all sin.
When we look at the fall of Lucifer we see that he coveted what God had,
and so we could say that this being the first sin makes a good case for
this. However I have been thinking that
perhaps selfishness is the root of all sins and the reason is similar to
covetousness in that when one sins he is most always thinking about himself,
thus being selfish, as people are doing what they desire to do, and perhaps we
could say that this is the opposite of love.
God so loved that He gave. When
we sin we are doing something for ourselves and not doing what God desires and
this is, in essence, to worship ourselves instead of God and that makes it
idolatry.
John MacArthur quotes the Puritan Stephen Charnock:
“All sin is founded in
secret atheism…All the wicked inclinations in the heart…are sparks from this
latent fire; the language of every one of these is, ‘I would be a Lord myself,
and would not have a God superior to me.’…In sins of omission we own not God,
in neglecting to perform what is enjoins; in sins of commission we set up some
lust in the place of God, and pay to that the homage which is due to our Maker…We
deny his sovereignty when we violate his laws…Every sin invades the rights of
God, and strips him of one or other of his perfections…Every sin is a kind of
cursing God in the heart; an aim at the destruction of the being of God; not
actually, but virtually…A man in every sin aims to set up his own will as his
rule, and his own glory as the end of his actions against the will and glory of
God.”
4/20/2017 11:17 PM
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