Bob Hamp

I read one more article last night about a pastor who had a “moral failure”.  Let’s just say it, a pastor who had sex with someone besides his wife.  Sad as this is, it was the advice of the author that made me much more sad.  He gave advice to others to help prevent such failures in the future.  He suggested four steps, implying that they would help men and women “win the spiritual battle.”  Amazingly, it is the same four steps that have been offered for decades.  This fallen pastor, and several who have gone on before, probably taught these steps to the men in his congregation.  I fear that our propensity to offer these steps to men and women is one of the most significant things we must address in this cultural shift which is the modern church culture.

Jesus had a phrase He used to uproot faulty religious thinking.  “You have heard it said do not commit adultery, but I say to you don’t even look on a woman with lust.  When you look at another with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery already.  This pattern was used throughout His sermon on the mount to help the people of His day think differently.  Many heard this and only thought different, not differently (See the entry from March 26 Adjective or Adverb…).  Jesus was not making a new and harder set of laws, He was trying to shift the understanding of His audience as to where the actual problems resided.  The problems were not simply outward behaviors which must be managed, by changing behavior, they were conditions of the heart which desperately needed transformation. 

I would like to address these four fallacies; “solutions” we hand each other regularly as if they will really work. 

1. You have heard it said memorize more scripture but I say to you learn to let the living and active word of God renew your mind.  The first implies that if you somehow exert more memory power, and retain more scriptural data you will be able to act differently.  This actually seemed to backfire for the Pharisees, who had the entire Bible memorized but were the number one enemy of the Abundant Life that Jesus offered.

Renewing our mind does not mean replacing wrong data with right data.  Paul tells us that the problem with law is that it does not have the power to transform us.  Memorizing scripture alone can simply become law, and still leaves the power of transformation in human hands. 

When God speaks He is creating.  Engage the Voice not just the letter.  Don’t just learn the data of scripture, learn to think and see like the Author.  Let the words on the pages connect you to the Person of the Kingdom.  Allow Him to point out core lies, deception in the deep places of your heart.  Deception about Him and deception about you, and about the nature of reality.   More important allow Him to tell you truth.  Even identifying lies is not sufficient to change our behavior without the corresponding truth coming in to replace the lies.

2. You have heard it said have more consistent time alone with God but I say to you when you are alone with Him practice internal surrender.  What happens during your time with God matters more than how  much time you spend.  Jesus compared two guys, both of whom were praying.  One was telling God how glad he was that he was not a bad guy, and sharing his moral resume.  Certain that God was impressed, he prayed and spent time with God.   The other stood before God, and languished in his need.  He unashamedly told God he deserved nothing, and knew that his spritual resume was a declaration of his need for help. Both were spending time with God.

Jesus came to set the captives free, not to advise us about His moral preferences.  The restoration of our hearts, not the disciplnes of our flesh, will transform our outward experience.  Let Him heal the wounds of our lives, let Him exchange our heart of stone for His heart of flesh.  Let Him do His work, instead of telling Him how well you have done yours.

3.  You have heard it said practice accountability but I say to you the Holy Spirit comes to convict us of sin and righteousness and judgment, let Him do His job in you. While it is true that Jesus tells us that in God’s economy the opposite of evil is truth not good, (John 3: 20-21) truth sometimes eludes us in our limited sight.  Even when we are trying to be ruthlessly accountable we cannot confess to another the things hidden deeply in our hearts that we ourselves have yet to see. 

Simply being able to tell another when we mess up is not sufficient to stop us from messing up.  And even if it prevents us from behaving badly, it is unlikely to transform the processes of our heart.  Fear or respect of another’s probing eyes may hold the beast at bay, but it does not have the power to crucify it.  When the Holy Spirit brings to light darkness in us, and shows us that this darkness is no longer compatible with our new nature the darkness is put to death, and the Holy Spirit ignites the righteousness of Christ in me.

4.  You have heard it said  maintain your integrity but I say to you learn how to take dominion, and practice your authority as a son or daughter of the Living God.  Somehow in our recomendations to one another we leave out one of the most siginificant aspects of Jesus framework of thought.  He clearly recognized and engaged a whole realm of reality that I will call “the invisible world”.  This is part of the creation that Adam was tasked with taking dominion over.  This is still our assignement to this day. 

I remind us again Jesus came to set captives free.  If a man or woman is under the influence of another kingdom and has no idea what Jesus has done to grant us authority in this life, and how to practice this authority we remain under the influence. 

In Jesus teachings on the sermon on the mount He was not discarding the first part of the “you have heard it said” statements, He was trying to reveal the hidden traps behind the statements.  I am in no way suggesting that we throw out Bible study, time with God, accountability and integrity.  I am, however strongly urging us that salvation and freedom are the acts of God in our lives, not the result of us arm-wrestling our behavior, thoughts and emotions into submission.  Behavior management has never been the objective, transformation of the inner man, and the restoration of God’s created design in our souls is the objective.  To offer the four solutions mentioned above as if they are sufficient for living the life we are called to, is like urging a man to swing on a trapeze, telling him the nets below will catch him if he falls, but neglecting to tell him that the nets are not anchored to their support and therefore will not hold his weight.   

God did not send His Son to command us to behave like someone we are not, He sent Him to restore our factory settings so we might behave and think and feel like who He is in us.