Christian Fellowship Community Group
A safe place for Christians who Love Jesus Christ to meet and ask for prayer and share scriptures from the bible. We value the posting of Christian music, poems, stories and also personal testimonies. Please let us know your needs, concerns and have some fun getting to know each other. We treat each other with respect.
"The wisdom of the fathers"
THE VERY ESSENCE OF SIN Part 1
In this utter dependence of all things upon the creative will of God lies the possibility for both holiness and sin. One of the marks of Gods image in man is his ability to exercise moral choice. The teaching of Christianity is that man chose to be independent of God and confirmed his choice by deliberately disobeying a divine command. This act violated the relationship that normally existed between God and His creature; it rejected God as the ground of existence and threw man back upon himself. Thereafter he became not a planet revolving around the central Sun, but a sun in his own right, around which everything else must revolve.
A more positive assertion of self-hood could not be imagined than those words of God to Moses: I AM WHO I AM. Everything God is, everything that is God, is set forth in that unqualified declaration of independent being. Yet in God, self is not sin but the quintessence of all possible goodness, holiness and truth.
The natural man is a sinner because and only because he challenges Gods self-hood in relation to his own. In all else he may willingly accept the sovereignty of God; in his own life he rejects it. For him, Gods dominion ends where his begins. For him, self becomes Self, and in this he unconsciously imitates Lucifer, that fallen son of the morning who said in his heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God… . I will be like the Most High.
Yet so subtle is self that scarcely anyone is conscious of its presence. Because man is born a rebel, he is unaware that he is one. His constant assertion of self, as far as he thinks of it at all, appears to him a perfectly normal thing. He is willing to share himself, sometimes even to sacrifice himself for a desired end, but never to dethrone himself. No matter how far down the scale of social acceptance he may slide, he is still in his own eyes a king on a throne, and no one, not even God, can take that throne from him.
Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, I AM. That is sin in its concentrated essence; yet because it is natural it appears to be good. It is only when in the gospel the soul is brought before the face of the Most Holy One without the protective shield of ignorance that the frightful moral incongruity is brought home to the conscience. In the language of evangelism the man who is thus confronted by the fiery presence of Almighty God is said to be under conviction. Christ referred to this when He said of the Spirit whom He would send to the world, "And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." TO BE CONTINUED
(by A. W. Tozer)
THE VERY ESSENCE OF SIN Part 1
In this utter dependence of all things upon the creative will of God lies the possibility for both holiness and sin. One of the marks of Gods image in man is his ability to exercise moral choice. The teaching of Christianity is that man chose to be independent of God and confirmed his choice by deliberately disobeying a divine command. This act violated the relationship that normally existed between God and His creature; it rejected God as the ground of existence and threw man back upon himself. Thereafter he became not a planet revolving around the central Sun, but a sun in his own right, around which everything else must revolve.
A more positive assertion of self-hood could not be imagined than those words of God to Moses: I AM WHO I AM. Everything God is, everything that is God, is set forth in that unqualified declaration of independent being. Yet in God, self is not sin but the quintessence of all possible goodness, holiness and truth.
The natural man is a sinner because and only because he challenges Gods self-hood in relation to his own. In all else he may willingly accept the sovereignty of God; in his own life he rejects it. For him, Gods dominion ends where his begins. For him, self becomes Self, and in this he unconsciously imitates Lucifer, that fallen son of the morning who said in his heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God… . I will be like the Most High.
Yet so subtle is self that scarcely anyone is conscious of its presence. Because man is born a rebel, he is unaware that he is one. His constant assertion of self, as far as he thinks of it at all, appears to him a perfectly normal thing. He is willing to share himself, sometimes even to sacrifice himself for a desired end, but never to dethrone himself. No matter how far down the scale of social acceptance he may slide, he is still in his own eyes a king on a throne, and no one, not even God, can take that throne from him.
Sin has many manifestations but its essence is one. A moral being, created to worship before the throne of God, sits on the throne of his own selfhood and from that elevated position declares, I AM. That is sin in its concentrated essence; yet because it is natural it appears to be good. It is only when in the gospel the soul is brought before the face of the Most Holy One without the protective shield of ignorance that the frightful moral incongruity is brought home to the conscience. In the language of evangelism the man who is thus confronted by the fiery presence of Almighty God is said to be under conviction. Christ referred to this when He said of the Spirit whom He would send to the world, "And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." TO BE CONTINUED
(by A. W. Tozer)
roseBud23
Very well put. I read something similar that said the same thing in the words that "sin revolves around Ego". One who is able to recognize this, put his ego aside and is able to dethrone himself in order to ask our lord Jesus to take complete control of our lives is one who knows how to walk with our lord. You cannot know Jesus if your ego and pride is getting in your way. Being in a humbled loving state towards God is the only genuine form of worship.
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