Once in a while, as I see some of your comments that are well thought through and on topic I will comment or even re-post them and add my comments. This is one such post.

INTELLECTUALIZING SIN
Our trying to intellectualize or systemize sin is difficult because of the fallen condition of the mind of man. However, I believe this is why the Apostle Paul exhorted us to be “renewed in the Spirit of our mind.” It is only through internal spiritual transformation by the Holy Spirit that we can dissipate the fog of our own agenda. It is also why Jesus told us to judge no one after the flesh, but after the spirit. We can also look at ourselves in this same light – asking the Holy Spirit to reveal those things we need to let go of or be transformed in. However, it will take a true spiritual, disciplined effort to do this - thus one of the benefits of practicing the disciplines of Spirit.

SIN AND GOD’S LOVE
Because sin is a destroyer of the life God wants His children to have it has to sadden God’s heart to see us choose a lesser life all the while we think we are choosing the more pleasurable road. As Sam Biggar said, sin “has a devastating effect on his children,” and I (JPJ) might add on His creation. “Further, God hates sin because He loves us so much.”

SIN CONSCIOUSNESS
Sin consciousness is not what should be our focus; because what we focus on we make room for. Thus, if we focus on sin we make room for sin. Transformation is what we should be after. When we are transformed we automatically have a clear view of the choice before us and from which tree the opportunity comes from. ‘Christ-consciousness’ is good, but we really cannot know what Jesus would do when we do not truly “know” Him. On the wonderful side of this thought is the reality that the more time we spend with Him and closer we get to Him, the more conscious we are of Him.

DNA AND SIN
One of my best friends e-mailed this to me. I have been preparing an article on this very topic, sin and DNA. Bill touches on this. It is a difficult topic and requires a lot of thought. There is some new scientific evidence for this line of thinking.

Meanwhile, Bill wrote, “I think sin is more than actions, thoughts and attitudes…there is something cellular about sin and our Adamic sin nature. The sin problem is embedded in our being. Without regeneration (transformation), forgiveness and propitiation [revival] is like a blood transfusion…it only works to cleanse for a while. … I [believe] we need to be cleansed and regenerated/transformed at the cellular/DNA level. It appears that cleansing and regeneration are complete in our salvation from an eternal perspective, but are somehow progressive from a temporal perspective.”

The progress nature of Salvation, not reconciliation to the Father, is the focus of Romans 5:10, we shall be saved by His [Jesus} life. Could it be that the curse of sin going to the third and fourth generation and in some cases down to ten generations is from sin being transmitted to the cellular/DNA levels? I believe there is a strong chance the answer might well be “yes.”

IGNORING YOUR COMMENTS
One last note, I am deeply sorry that some of you feel ignored. I really wish it were possible for me to address every question that is asked and every problem that is sent in, in every posting, but there is neither the space here nor the time. I believe the Lord is taking me in a certain direction, one that He has uniquely equipped me in and I must continue along those lines. I pray each of you have a church family that can and does support you on the various issues that I cannot address. This is one of the hard issues I came to grips with when I made the decision to start this blog. Thank you for your understanding.

Blessings,
John Paul

If sin means to miss the mark, what mark are we talking about? That is the key question and the very reason I tackled the enormous subject of absolutes before I dared to lunge at this topic. You see we humans have this need to justify our thoughts and actions, especially those we know are less than spiritual. Often, we logically and perhaps with subconscious systemization, work through a list of criteria designed to prove we were not wrong or that what we did was not sinful. The way we handle this is to discard absolutes.

The problem with this line of thought is that we tend to think that we can easily detect right from wrong and good from evil and that it is personal because these things change with the situation and/or culture. This is seldom true or at least not fully accurate. Our motives are often impure, and our perceptions are jaded and so we, like the apostle Paul, think we are right – when we are woefully wrong. We then complicate matters by judging others from our jaded religious heights. This is especially true in the relativistic culture now growing within Christendom.

DETERIORATED THINKING
This jaded thinking causes a distorted understanding of things we know. One of the result is that we often do not get what we pray for because we ask “amiss.” Asking amiss or with the wrong motive and from a degenerate perspective causes us to ask for things that will not further God’s purpose or will. It may even battle against the very thing we deeply want. And as Marilyn wrote, we exert our will over God’s – knowingly or unknowingly. When we are immature we do not even know that what we do is less than righteous, thus it is not sin, it is immaturity. However, as we mature we learn and we recognize more of God’s ways and sin becomes an issue. God is very merciful with us Earthlings – especially the ones who are trying to live in honor of Him.

GOD’S PLAN
This is why it is important to know God, not just know about Him. The church in this era has taught about God, but few teach us the ways of God. Moses said that the way to know God is to know His ways. This is remarkable in light of the fact that Moses had worked many miracles before he made this statement. In effect he said, though I have done all of these things, I have no clue who you are, so help me to know you.

What I’ve noticed is this, like Moses, when we rely on external sources to fill the God gap in us we eventually fail. Why? Because, we have no root of Him in us – everything we experience is from the outside in. This is one reason revivals end. Individuals come to receive without the understanding that external Spiritual stimuli must produce internal change. This is called transformation. Without transformation revivals make us feel better, but our choices and therefore our lives are no different a year later.

TRANSFORMATION AND SIN
Without being internally changed by external spiritual stimulus we will revert to our old selves when temptation comes. In turn we fall. It is this deep internal “knowing” that allows us to resist temptation. Otherwise, as one of you noted, we will be like Adam and Eve, walking in the supernatural glory of God and still falling to temptation. This is why it was to our advantage that Jesus ascended to the Father and sent the One, True, Pure, Holy Spirit. As Jesus stated, He is with you and shall be in you. This “in you” is vitally important to transformation and the overcoming of temptation.

Thus the law is now written on the tablets of our hearts, hearts of flesh and not of stone. This law helps us to “know” the truth not just the facts. This law helps us choose the correct tree as the basis for any decision. This law, God’s law is remarkable and it is absolute in it’s application.

There are may things that we may believe are okay to do, but we will find that we can be or are blinded by our own desires for pleasure that war within our own members.

Jesus had nothing in common with Satan or sin. He recognized at every moment what was right and what was wrong. He had no agenda but the Father’s. He was not legalistic, He was life giving. He did not try to see how much He could get away with, but who He could impact and transform. His life holds the keys to full transformation and the resisting of any and all temptation.

WHAT IS SIN?
Sin is simply, anything that kills, steals from, destroys or deteriorates God’s design. This includes His creation, His Son, the view of the Holy Spirit, and our view of God and how we come to Him. His design is His will. Our will is to become indistinguishable from His will and to the degree we rebel against all that is His will - this is sin.

Blessings,
John Paul

Very good responses to this post. I am impressed once again, though I am sure it is not the last time I will be impressed with what the Lord is doing in and through you.
THOUGHTS AND TEMPTATION
In particular I liked what David said, “Thoughts can turn into temptations,” and if I might be allowed to paraphrase, he went on to state “Especially self righteous thoughts.” Very good, and if I might add, that is why we are warned to take every thought captive. It nips the opportunity for temptation to arise – before it actually comes on the scene.
OUR PERCEPTION OF GOD
Joshua also hit on a key and that is the issue of our perception of God and the resulting lack of the fear of God (the type of fear that is the beginning of wisdom). When we fear God, we not only fear the consequence but we fear the pain it causes Him. (Read Isaiah 63:9 for the text on this)
SURRENDER
Nameless&faceless hit a home run concerning the issue of surrender, that we surrender our wants when we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness – in other words we place God’s wants above our wants. Nameless&faceless went on to insinuate that temptation becomes less of a problem as we grow in this practice. True, but notice the word surrender, which is a higher form of obedience.
You see, we can obey without surrendering. For example, God tells us to “give,” but we grudgingly give. Cheerful giving is surrender; it involves the surrender of our emotions, our will, and/or our intellect for God’s purpose. In the discipline of surrender, our will perfectly aligns with His. I might add that we do not have to even know what His will or purpose is, or in this case why we should give.  We simply trust God and know that if He said to give there is a greater reason that we presently know, and the reason is perfect in nature.
TEMPTATION AND SIN
Now, I am going to dig a little deeper in your understanding of the ways of God.  Concerning the issue of temptation and sin, I simply ask this, is temptation actually sin or is the sin actually found in the submission to the temptation?

Next, what is sin? Is it harder or easier to understand than we think? Hummmm.

I’ll deal with these matters in my next post. But let’s see what you think.

Blessings,
John Paul

How can humans love darkness rather than light, is on one hand somewhat perplexing to me, and on the other is totally understandable - I know for I have been guilty of loving it. If one can discipline themselves to remember that darkness is merely an absence of light or should I say, “that to the degree light is, darkness is not,” then there is no choice, but when the passion of the soul grips us, spiritual thoughts seem to be nonexistent.

Both natural light and spiritual light are proven to be good for us. If light is good and it is, just ask those who live in northern areas where light is almost a luxury, therefore it makes sense that we should long for light, right? So why would anyone love darkness when it is not good for you? One would not, unless they first perceived that evil was good, but then evil seldom appears as evil does it?

Before we get too far out on this topic, bear with me while I make a couple of statements.

Loving darkness rather than light, hummmm – First, we have to consider that if one did not love darkness there would be no temptation, or would there?.

Second, to be tempted one has to want that which they are tempted with. Conversely, without the “want” there is no temptation. The key to overcoming any temptation is to stay out of darkness and get rid of the “want” in our lives. The term want is, at its root, a very selfish term and most of us learn this at a very early age. So I wonder, can temptation and darkness exist without each other?

Third, darkness hides the act or the fact that we succumbed to the temptation. For those who want to pretend they did not sin, darkness is then good – but wrong tree thinking. Why hide the act? Perhaps it is to keep others from thinking less of us? Perhaps it is so we do not have to face the realization that we obtained something that is not the best for us? Or, perhaps it is to be justified in self-deception – we can say, “I didn’t know …,” when we really did. Darkness is a great hider of temptation. It allows for all sorts of excuses. No wonder humanity loves it!

Finally, there is a flip side to temporal joy of temptation and that is the side of regret. No one ever yields to temptation without the aftermath of regret. Oh sure, the regret may be infinitesimally small and short lived. Still the more we yield to it the smaller the tinge of regret becomes until we eventually become calloused, at which time regret passes through our heart hardly noticed. This condition is Scripturally called hardness of heart.

We seem to find that darkness hides all manner of things that can hurt and even kill us. Also, we find that temptation flourishes in darkness and it begins more often than not as a small seed that is hardly noticeable. You see the serpent is shrewd, he knows more radical things jar our spirit and we quickly and easily run from the danger. Thus, he plants small things that enter here and there and in so doing these tiny seeds become insignificant to us as we rush through our lives. This is just one of the reasons for quieting ourselves, but that is a different topic.

Along this smallish line of thinking, a friend of mine nearly died once of Deer Fever that most likely started from an unnoticed mosquito bite months earlier. How, could the small amount of bacteria on the tip of the needle like nose of a mosquito kill a large human? It multiplies, and like the bacteria of Deer Fever, the small unnoticed bacteria of darkness multiplies within us, and as it does it affects and effects everything it touches within our lives and relationships.

What are some characteristics of temptation and/or darkness that you have noticed in conversations with others, or perhaps in yourself?

Blessings,

John Paul

I do not want to name names lest I fall into the same critical nature as those who malign many servants of God. However, I do want to address the philosophy of self appointed, online, protectors of the faith who, as one of you so aptly wrote, are at best “watchmen acting like Pharisee’s.” The woman in Song of Solomon who was with great passion chasing after her love experienced the same when it was penned, “The watchmen who went about the city found me. They struck me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took my veil away from me.” Song of Solomon 5:7

Far too many times I have seen those who were to guard our dwellings, strike the very ones they were to protect. I have witnessed harsh distortion of facts, mere theological differences labeled as heresies, and flat out lies repeated, and repeated, and repeated, time and time again until the lie becomes fact and truth lies buried in the street.

THE EGO OF MAN

I have observed ego-centric behavior from the religious critics who are more concerned with the sensational than the spiritual, who seldom if ever check to see if the facts are right, let alone search for the truth. Who, trying to raise their reputation or gain a following, use the Internet gossip columns as if they were the gospel and write whatever they find as if they had seen or experienced the moment themselves – not knowing the lies, distortions, and perversions they propagate. And because they are not judged immediately for this as being sin they think they get away with it.

THE JUSTICE OF GOD

In the end the Justice of God will be rendered to the innocent. Just because a decision is not rendered as soon as we think it should be is no sign the Judge has lost interest in the case. God is not mocked; whatever we sow we will reap. If we sow righteousness we will receive the same. And to those who sow lies, distortions, and divide the household of faith for their own gain … well, their fate will be settled by the Judge of Heaven and Earth. He alone will decide how to fulfill His Word. Rest assured – He will.

Perhaps the Psalmist stated it best when he wrote about those who find themselves in the position of the critic.

“You give your mouth to evil, and your tongue frames deceit. You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son. These things you have done, and I kept silent; you thought that I was altogether like you; but I will rebuke you, and set them in order before your eyes. “Now consider this, you who forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver: Whoever offers praise glorifies Me; and to him who orders his conversation aright I will show the salvation of God.” Psalms 50:19-23

May the Body of Christ become unified and overflowing with the Fruit of the Holy Spirit. That would take care of a lot of issues wouldn’t it?

Blessings,
John Paul

I am sitting in LAX airport and I have just finished reading comments from so called watchmen as they are attempting to lynch some of my friends in ministry. So I may be a little sensitive on the following topic of “Truth and Fact.”

So I ask you, is truth and fact the same thing? That ought to make one stop and think a bit. I do not think they necessarily are. There are two things that separate truth from fact or make fact truth, the first is context, and the second is motive.

CONTEXT
Contest is the tone, attitude and environment of the moment something was spoken or revealed. I have watched, and read articles that crucify some of my ministry friends These watchmen typically take facts out of context, then distort and twist the fact to make it seem like error and heresy and then label my friends as heretics. In this day of sound-bites and editing technology, one can make anyone say anything about any topic.

MOTIVE
The famous quote of former President Clinton, “it depends on what your definition of ‘is’ ‘is’,” actually becomes the quintessential example of motive’s involvement with truth and fact. What said was fact, but it was not truth, why? Because it was being spun or inappropriately used to make it seem as if he was innocent of the charges.

Truth takes into consideration the hidden reasons why we say what we say. Fact only addresses the words that were said.

Why is this important? Because the Holy Spirit is not the spirit of fact – He is the Spirit of Truth. He knows the thoughts and intents of our heart. He know where we come from to get to where we are. He knows our life in Jesus is a process. To know Him is to know truth and truth sets us free. Fact on the other hand imprisons us and leads us astray.

To live a true, pure spiritual life, one must be able to differentiate between truth and fact. The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and evil contained the “fact” of good knowledge and evil knowledge. The Tree of Life was full of Truth.

Blessings,
John Paul

Now that you have had a Selah moment or a chance to ponder my last posting I want to continue this train of thought for just a little longer. Why? Because I do not want you to misunderstand what I am writing and I also want you to understand what Paul wrote in the Book of Romans.

What I have written is what the Apostle Paul wrote, only using a little different vocabulary. True, Pure, Deep, Spirituality cannot happen as long as we think absolutes are dead. Yes, once the absolutes are written on our heart, we do not have to think on absolutes, they become spiritual habits or a way of life. But, we need to know they are there when confusing choices lie before us. They help us separate the Tree of Life from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and every choice comes from one of those two trees.

IS THE LAW DEAD
Therefore, I am not saying the Law is to be carried out to the letter, the letter of the Law still kills. However, we keep thinking this means the Law is dead, yet isn’t what Jesus said true? He came not to end the Law, but to fulfill the law – how? So how is the Law fulfilled but not dead? Simply this, Jesus was the bodily representation or application of the Law among us. When we look at Him we see the Law of God applied.

In following Him, the Law should move from our head to our heart. The Pharisees could not make that transition thus Jesus spoke to them and said, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” In other words they did not want to apply the Law to their theology – their logic, pride and personal agendas blinded them and kept the Law the Law and they missed the application of God’s Love applied to their life.

If we would pause to think about it, the very embodiment of Scripture, the Word, the Son of God, was standing there among them and they thought He was the son of Beelzebub.

It is the application of the Law that allows us to know that stealing is still illegal, murder is illegal, adultery is still immoral, incest is still a crime; all are part of the Law – all are absolutes applied to life. Only the True, Pure, Holy Spirit of God can reveal the application of the Law to turn the Law into the absolutes of life.

SATAN IN HEAVEN
Think about this - Satan was in Heaven for a long time before he fell. He fell because he did not acknowledge the absolutes of God. Satan actually thought that God’s absolute attributes of Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Immutability were not absolute. If He knew they actually were absolute, then he was stupid to try supplant God. I doubt Satan is stupid, because as the “anointed cherub” that would mean God created a stupid cherub to hover over His throne – NOT!

Satan must have thought God was not absolute in any way to think he could win that battle. We can make the same mistake today. We can misjudge God’s absolute nature and think He is just a higher life form that is making suggestions as to how we should live. No wonder Jesus told the Pharisees their father was the devil – in principle, they thought the same way Satan did when he tried to overthrow God. Let’s not make the same mistake.

SELAH
John Paul