Power to Change (part 2) by Dr. Bill Senyard on 09/08/13

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Power2Change 2

Gal 5:13-26

Slide 1

We have all heard the list before.  It seems so distant… so pagan.  This is the worst of the ‘sinful nature’.  “Paul’s list is random and formless, like the actions themselves.  Paul rips the masks off propaganidzing phrases like ‘self-expression,’ ‘freedom to be yourself,’ ‘doing your own thing’, and uncovers the deceptions that promise liberation but do not fulfill it.  Sin never admits its true character. (Peterson, Traveling Light, p. 154)

 

19 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

 

Our tendency is to write these off as attributes of those other guys… you know the pagans … drug dealers, criminals, perverts, etc.  But Paul doesn’t call these ‘acts of sinful people’.  Or the acts of pagans who do not know Christ.  This is the act of every human’s sinful nature.  This is fallen humanity.  This is you and me.

 

These are core values of those who have been cut adrift from their creator.  It even includes we who have fled to the cross and found Jesus our savior there.

Elysium Trailer

I am not sure what I dislike about Elysium; the script, the acting, the directing—hard to say.  But as I thought more about it, I realized that it didn’t accomplish its objective.  The whole point is to highlight the social barriers that exist—the haves and the have nots, and if only we could get rid of the barriers, then, it would only be utopia.  In the end, Elylsium is opened up to all humanity, but everyone—even Damon are flawed characters.  They each are selfish, angry, cynical.  All the end did was to lengthen the life of self-focused people—no heart healing.

 

The good news is that one of the great, understated benefits of the new creation… our salvation and adoption…. is that we now are for the first time equipped to wage hand to hand conflict with these selfish interests within us.  The battle cry has been heard.  The Holy Spirit is at enmity with the flesh and its desires.  In fact, the Holy Spirit is the only equipped, objective and powerful person enough to do anything with these influences.  You and I are often in denial… blinded by huge blindspots.

 

Let me put this in terms that we have been discussing.. speaking to Christians now…. If the context of my growth and development is the mysterious embrace of the Trinity….. if the air that I fly in is the Holy Spirit’s active powerful love and community… where I can finally reach my created potential….. these “acts of the sinful nature” outline the atmosphere where I die, shrivel up, lose personhood, become a mere thing.  These things constrict my ability to be loved, to know any intimacy with God.  To experience the present value of the blood of Christ.  It robs me of value, purpose, glory and name.  In other words, these define day-to-day life for most Americans like me.

 

The battle lines are drawn.  This morning we will look at 4 of these 15 works of the sinful nature.  Not in the order that Paul gives.  I have taken the liberty to divide them up a bit differently.  These are some of the harmful tendencies that dwell deep within my individual soul, that remove me from community and dry me up.  Hatred, selfish ambition, envy, and jealousy.  Next week we will look at the fruit of these in community and worship.

Slide 2

1) Hatred-

#6 in NIV- The NIV translates ‘echthrai’ as ‘hatred’ (#6).  Normally, we think of hatred as a function of a specific object or action.  “I hate it when…..”  “Oh I hate so and so.”  But this is in fact a generic hatred.  It will attach to any object like a carrier… but it is independent really— stealthily waiting deep in my nature, really looking for prey.  It is fundamental enmity with God and creation.  To label it even more harshly, Peterson calls it ‘paranoid loneliness’.   Ever-present though you and I will struggle to deny it.  This stuff within us  is fear that everyone is out to get us.  Everyone is a hidden enemy.  The paranoid is skeptical, hesitant, guarded, protected…. at best…. at worst, suicidal, resigned or resentful and angry.

 

Can this person love?  Can this person be loved?  No.  But this is where God finds us.  Cain felt this at the very beginning of mankind.  Not only did he kill his brother Abel in a hateful rage…. but he was afraid of the curse of God… that he would wander, because of all the others in the land.

 “Gen 4:13- My punishment is more than I can bear.  Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence, I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 

 

Do you hear the paranoia?  It is very self-centered, They are out to get me.  All who are inherently angry assume that others are also angry at them.  All Cain had to do was to look up to God’s gracious ‘face’ to see God’s love—for he is for the “them.”  God is not paranoid.  He pursues enemies.  All Cain had to do was to repent, i.e.,  admit his need, and receive God’s forgiveness.  But a paranoid cannot from their own nature do that.

 

The Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit is the enemy of paranoid loneliness. God doesn’t echthrai!  God has every reason in the world not to love us.  We have betrayed him again and again.  He has every reason in the world to hate us… to be suspicious.  And yet, He was willing to become so vulnerable (i.e., Jesus/incarnation) with us that He sent His own Son to tell us His deepest feelings toward us… to invite us to repent and receive justice paid, forgiveness and healing.  But what did we Cains do?  We brutally murdered His Son.  He has more reasons than we could ever have to store up hatred.  But He feels only love toward us.  No hesitancy… no residual anger.  In fact the gospel states that Jesus, willingly took all of God’s just hatred toward me, due to my sin… and endured it all.  So now I can see how God could not be hateful toward me anymore (through Christ by faith).  God is perfectly vulnerable to me.

 

The Spirit in us is the end to hatred, paranoid loneliness again and again and again.  And in its place?  The Alien anti-echthrai Love.  Unconditional love (i.e, conditional love paid) of God pouring through my veins at the one who I should hate.

Slide 3

2) Selfish Ambition

eritheiai (pl)- (NIV #10)- ‘an impotence to love or be loved’.  (Peterson).   “Base self-seeking”– likely selfish ambition that tends to be divisive and gives rise to rival factions and strife (cf. 2 Cor 12.20, Phil 1.17,      2.3).

“Selfishness cuts the legitimacy of personal need adrift from the continental necessities of social concern and abandons it to insularity.” (Peterson)

 

‘Eritheiai’ is the core power source for all of our selfishness.  This power always at work within us is at the opposite of the spectrum of the power of love.  Love is by nature concerned for the well-being and interests of others.  Love is community minded.  ‘Selfish ambition’ is concerned with self over others.  But aren’t we suppose to love ourselves?  Sure. Of course.  This is an extreme of that notion.

 

Peterson is correct.  The result of ‘eritheiai’ is insularity.  The selfishly ambitious must be on the guard against others who are also selfishly ambitious.  No peace.  No satisfaction or joy.  Independence and self-sufficiency.  No love going in or out.  No personal growth.  Remember from last week?  We flourish in community where there is a powerful other –oriented love…. where people freely give and receive.  We die alone…. little by little.

 

The gospel is the only effective weapon against this nature. Jesus lived out of eritheiai’s natural predator.  He willingly laid aside his rightful ‘ambition’– after all, it was His throne that he descended from, He did not have to.  He was innately not eritheiai.’  Jesus is amazingly for us… He is ambitious toward us.

Slide 4

3) Envy-

phthonos (s)- ‘envy’ (NIV #13)-‘a vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival’ (Peterson).

“Envy disengages the elements of diversity from their design in the hierarchy of being and reduces the lot to bargain basement utility.” (Peterson).

 

We are created with glorious differences.  Who can’t appreciate and wonder at the differences in the species, the races, the sexes.  Viva la difference!  God is a remarkably creative God who has woven into our fiber an appreciation for diversity in unity.  But this ‘phthonos’ has twisted the glory of diversity into a threat.  Love appreciates objects as they stand.  Love appreciates objects for their diversity without the need to devour, or compare.  ‘Phthonos’ can only see rival elements, threatening elements.  Bigotry, prejudice, self-righteousness, factions, castes.  Elysium and earth both were riddled with such phthonos. 

Matt. 27:18 For he knew it was out of envy (phthonos) that they had handed Jesus over to him.

 

This phthonos was the work of the flesh that empowered people like you and me to want to crucify Jesus.  Who could not see the attractiveness of Jesus?  He was giving, loving, healing, humorous, wonderfully human and yet far far more than that.  He was a leader, teacher, counselor.  Who could not wonder at his personhood?  But to the phthonos “they”–to them, he was a threat– a rival.

 

The gospel and ‘phthonos’.  ‘Phthonos’ is at enmity with the very core of love.  Love must appreciate the other as the other without the need to compare.  I cannot love until I also am aware of my own value… my own worth.  The key to that is to hear and know the gospel again… God loves me perfectly and totally as I am.  This is the result of the cross.  God loves me as much as He loves His own Son.  He doesn’t love anything that I do.  But He loves me.

 

Phthonos is not an attribute of God.  He exists in community, 3 persons, one God in perfect love and unity.  Complete unity in the midst of great diversity…. perfect mutual appreciation and love.  This is His desire for us.  This is why He died ultimately.  Not only that I could have a substitute for my sins… my shortcomings, my ungodliness… but that I would become ultimately one with Him…. all Phthonos gone– washed by the blood of the lamb.  This takes real power to accomplish.  I can’t merely choose to not phthonos.

Slide 5

4) Jealousy-

zelos- (NIV #8)- ‘all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied-wants’ (Peterson).  “A self-centered zeal which resents the good which another enjoys but is denied to oneself (cf. James 3.14, ‘bitter jealousy’)” (Per Fung, p. 258).

“Jealousy empties freely-offered admiration of its inner core of reverence and leaves it a green-eyed monster.” (Peterson).

 

This is a ‘wanting of anything in a dis-appropriate manner.’  When this occurs, you become its slave.  You are no longer free.  Again, this is an enemy to God’s love.  God gives.  Jesus gives…. the Spirit gives.

 

Apple Tree analogy–

 

Jealousy cannot love.  Love appreciates the object for its own merits… not for anything it can give me, do for me, add to me…. not on the basis of my need for the object or anything that the object has.  To be ‘zelos’ is to be looking for filling in all the wrong places and with wrong motives.  When we are jealous, we are betraying the fact that we are empty in some way… we are finding our identity in something else— other than God.  We know that when we do this we have entered a path of great paradox.  Though I may, in my zeal, get the immediate object of my desire, it will never satisfy my deeper longings.  ‘Zelos’ is an all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied-want.

 

The Gospel proclaims that all of the fullness of the heavenlies, all of the love, all of the wonders of the Son dwells in me.  My inheritance is majestic.  I have it all!  The very name of God Yahweh refers to the fact that He is the I AM— all sufficient, all I could ever need.

 

Summary-  Do you connect with any of these tendencies?  Maybe, you have merely justified them.  Maybe you have blameshifted.  Maybe you just apologize and try harder.  Maybe, you just argue that this is a family trait— no doubt!  Maybe you just hope that as you mature as a Christian, you will see less and less of your flesh?

 

Back one last time to Elysium.  These four works of the flesh were clearly evident in abundance in Elysium—but also on earth.  The heroic actions of Matt Damon, notwithstanding, nothing he did changed that.  It is a secular understanding of the powers that drive humanity.  Changing context will not change my heart’s inner drives, inner powers.

 

It doesn’t work that way.  The good news is that there indeed power to change.  Counselors can help you identify these deeper issues–envy, jealousy, hatred, paranoid, loneliness–just try to change them.  What power can do it?  Who is objective at this level?  Even when you think that you are successful… don’t they come back????  These are not merely a list of behaviors that need to be governed and disciplined by an act of the will.  You can now see that the ‘freedom to be yourself’ can be dangerous.  Self-expression can actually be harmful.

 

Secondly, you cannot grow in this atmosphere.  You cannot achieve the purpose for which you were created.  The oxygen is too thin.  You become more insulated… more alone, independent (in a bad way). These are tendencies that are not only sinful, they are personally harmful.  They suck life out of a person– unaware.    The entire community suffers.

 

Q: what do you think about this?

Our calling, our charge is to fight for the freedom which Christ has purchased for us.  We must not merely do it by just trying harder not to ‘hate’, envy, etc.  I cannot.  My goal is to more and more humbly see that I am impotent against these internal tendencies.  BUT… the Holy Spirit is more than sufficient.

 

God, expose the harmful tendencies.  Rip them out by the roots, one at a time and fill the space with your ‘fruit’. The only tool?  The Gospel.  The only power?  The Holy Spirit.