I am considering a pastor’s advice offered in another blog as an example of confusing directions and as a case in point: If wicked (râshâʽ, לרשע) sinners (raʽ, רע) are those who refuse to stop trusting in human beings, whether others or themselves, we all qualify. And this journey to discover just who these sinners are was prompted by my bias that—He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked[1] (râshâʽ, רשע)—prophesies Jesus’ return to earth to preach the Gospel effectively (as opposed to executing people for a thousand years).
The pastor’s advice was essentially a to-do list: refuse, consider the consequences, focus on God and ignore the lies of the enemy, avoid/run, and accountability. I considered the first two in the previous essay and will pick up again here.
Focus on God and ignore the lies of the enemy
Find fulfillment in your first love and ignore the enemy’s temptation towards the satisfaction of the flesh.
I have no quarrel with this if it is by the Holy Spirit. This should be item number one on the list. I, however, found a way to attempt this in the flesh. My Dad could calculate how much I cost him to the penny, even a scuff mark on the floor. I had already cost Jesus his life. I didn’t want to cost Him anything more. I thought my emotions in response to his sacrifice should motivate me to live a sinless life. (I don’t think I even considered righteousness at the time or anything beyond not sinning.) So, I didn’t believe Paul’s words in the sixth chapter of Romans were true, but merely hyperbole to affect my emotions, to motivate ME to action, not something I should believe to be saved (Romans 6:3, 4 NET):
Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life.
That new life (ἐν καινότητι ζωῆς περιπατήσωμεν; walk in newness of life [ESV]) is here and now: Now this is eternal life – that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you sent.[2] For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death,[3] Paul continued; that is if we believe that we have been buried with him through baptism into death, then and only then we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection.[4]
We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.[5] Should I deny this because of my behavior? No, I believe until it changes my behavior. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.[6] Paul continued (Romans 6:11-14 NET):
So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, and do not present your members to sin as instruments to be used for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness. For sin will have no mastery over you, because you are not under law but under grace.
But if I attempt to find fulfillment in laws or rules or procedures, even the pastor’s to-do list, I have fallen away from grace and committed a superπορνεία. And that is essentially the context of the concept first [e.g., foremost as opposed to first in temporal order] love: But I have this against you, Jesus said to the church at Ephesus, You have departed from your first love![7]
[Addendum 8/16/16: The words translated you and your are singular. Though the letters were intended to be read by the churches the content is addressed primarily to the angel of each individual church. I found a pdf online with color codes highlighting when the pronouns and verbs are singular and plural. The commentary to the right of this pdf assumes that angel meant human pastor, which I also assumed until very recently. I haven’t thought through the implications yet of angel as a higher order being in this particular context. I don’t know whether a plural church might be addressed with singular pronouns and verbs. My understanding of the message to/about the church in Ephesus which follows was predicated on a false assumption that the pronouns and verbs were plural.]
I know your works as well as your labor and steadfast endurance, He had said previously, and that you cannot tolerate evil. You have even put to the test those who refer to themselves as apostles (but are not), and have discovered that they are false. I am also aware that you have persisted steadfastly, endured much for the sake of my name, and have not grown weary.[8]
The Ephesian church was a successful church. Am I wrong to imagine that they had developed offices and procedures, filled with officers operating under strict protocols? That they had constructed this self-sustaining church with their own hands? But what happens when the love which is the fulfillment (πλήρωμα) of the law[9] becomes an office, a ministry, a subdivision of the Church rather than the fruit of the Spirit empowering every individual believer? Therefore, remember from what high state you have fallen and repent, Jesus continued. Do the deeds you did at the first [e.g., first in temporal order since knowing Christ]; if not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place – that is, if you do not repent.[10] In other words, their first (πρῶτα, a form of πρῶτος) deeds when they were more faithful and less successfully sophisticated were their foremost (πρώτην, another form of πρῶτος) in Jesus’ eyes.
What was that high state? I take Paul’s prayer as my starting point (Ephesians 3:14-19 NET):
I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on the earth is named. I pray that according to the wealth of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit (πνεύματος, a form of πνεῦμα) in the inner person, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, so that, because you have been rooted and grounded in love, you may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and thus to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled up (πληρωθῆτε, another form of πληρόω) to all the fullness (πλήρωμα) of God.
I don’t have much to say about ignoring “the enemy’s temptation toward the satisfaction of the flesh.” Satan is finite. I doubt that many of us merit his personal attention. I was confronted by what I assume was a demon once. I don’t recall what it said. I said something like, “Jesus wouldn’t like it if I did that.” It growled and left. No, I wasn’t frightened in the moment, but the memory of it bothered me for weeks. That’s probably why I don’t remember what it said.
So submit to God, James wrote. But resist the devil and he will flee from you.[11] I’ve never found resisting the devil particularly helpful since temptation usually comes from my own desires: But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires.[12] Though I didn’t always think so, I now assume that the sin in my flesh (Romans 7:15-20) and the evil ideas, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, and slander that come out of my heart function apart from the inspiration or activation of demons, evil spirits or devils. Believing the Gospel is far more fruitful as it pertains to sin and righteousness. Perhaps I am being very slow and dense. Believing the Gospel is probably the best way to submit to God which is in turn the most powerful way to resist the devil relative to any frontal assault I might mount on my own.
Nathan’s response to David, however, has been particularly helpful with sexual temptation (2 Samuel 12:1-4 NET):
So the Lord (yehôvâh, יהוה) sent Nathan to David. When he came to David, Nathan said, “There were two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor (Table). The rich man had a great many flocks and herds (Table). But the poor man had nothing except for a little lamb he had acquired. He raised it, and it grew up alongside him and his children. It used to eat his food, drink from his cup, and sleep in his arms. It was just like a daughter to him (Table).
“When a traveler arrived at the rich man’s home, he did not want to use one of his own sheep or cattle to feed the traveler who had come to visit him. Instead, he took the poor man’s lamb and cooked it for the man who had come to visit him (Table).”
Here there is no mention of resisting the devil or the “lies of the enemy.” After David committed adultery with Uriah’s wife, Nathan as yehôvâh’s prophet pictured sexual desire as a hungry traveler who should be shown hospitality with that which is one’s own as opposed to that belonging to another.
Avoid/Run
Keep yourself out of a situation that may cause you to fall. If tempted, run while it’s still light.
Flee sexual immorality (πορνείαν, a form of πορνεία),[13] Paul wrote the Corinthians. I’ve written elsewhere what I think about πορνεία, that it can mean adultery. I think the “sin of premarital sex,” however, has more to do with middle-class values than yehôvâh’s law. It is unfortunate, to say the least, that the meaning of πορνεία was stretched to free young men primarily (when they repent of their “sins of premarital sex”) from their marital obligations to pursue their educations and higher earning potentials.
I expect Jesus to speak to us as He spoke to other religious people (Mark 7:6-9 NET):
“Isaiah prophesied correctly about you hypocrites [e.g., actors], as it is written: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.’ Having no regard for the command of God, you hold fast to human tradition.” He also said to them, “You neatly reject the commandment of God in order to set up your tradition.”
Be that as it may if temptation is external to the one being tempted, leaving is good advice. If you find that you only lust in your heart during or after your visit to a strip club, stop going to strip clubs. I think that coincides well with flee πορνείαν if Paul meant sexualized pagan worship: Don’t go to church there.
I won’t eat at Hooter’s, not because I lust after the young waitresses. I stared a nude woman dead in the eyes when I needed to talk to her on set. But put a clothed woman in front of me with great cleavage and my eyes wander away from hers, even away from her lips (and I do a lot more lip reading as I age). Well, they don’t mind, a friend told me. I do. An old man like me staring at young women’s cleavage is embarrassing and not worth the effort it takes not to do it. I get my chicken wings to go (and, yes, I tip my waitress).
Music was the big thing for me. I consider myself a recovering musician. For years I played nothing but hymns and tried to compose a non-sensual music. I didn’t know how to do that so I wrote music to accompany Scripture. The only thing that changed was the calendar-age of the women I gave goose bumps when I played. Eventually I gave it up and have been relieved not to have music in my head all the time. This is not to say that playing or composing music is inherently evil. I am considering only my hyper-sensual relationship to music. Frank Zappa described it best. Who knows, maybe it was his relationship, too.
I would like to highlight two rather obvious limits to fleeing and to the meaning of πορνεία. If anyone thinks he is acting inappropriately toward his virgin, if she is past the bloom of youth and it seems necessary, he should do what he wishes; he does not sin. Let them marry.[14] The Greek word translated thinks he is acting inappropriately is ἀσχημονεῖν (a form of ἀσχημονέω). To what manner of inappropriateness does ἀσχημονεῖν refer? It comes from ἀσχήμων, which Paul used obliquely for the penis or vagina a little later in this letter: and those members we consider less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our unpresentable members (ἀσχήμονα, a form of ἀσχήμων) are clothed with dignity…[15]
Love, by the way, does not act inappropriately: It is not rude (ἀσχημονεῖ, another form of ἀσχημονέω).[16] So we have behavior between a man and his woman that is not sin: Let them marry. And it is not love either. Again, I will make my appeal for fuck and fucking. They are very evocative words in the English language, distinguished and distinguishable from love, if we abandon our religious pretensions in favor of accurate verbal communication.
Therefore they were seeking again to seize Him, and He eluded their grasp.[17] I remember vividly the moment I stared at this verse and realized it wasn’t describing some otherworldly event. Jesus hiked up his skirt, hoofed it and outran the old men who wanted to stone Him. And I imagine young John was huffing it out right beside Him. As they lost their pursuers around a corner, leaned against a wall to catch their breath and laughed together, the Son of God became human to me.
Perhaps Simon the Pharisee expected Jesus to hike up his skirt and hoof it, if He were a prophet. Had Jesus fled from Mary we would have a very different story to consider. Maybe it would be more to our liking; that’s difficult to say.
I’ll conclude this in another essay.
Condemnation or Judgment? – Part 13
Back to The Angels Will Gather
Back to Paul’s Religious Mind Revisited – Part 1
[13] 1 Corinthians 6:18a (NET)
[15] 1 Corinthians 12:23 (NET)