Mark 7: 14-15, 20-23
“Jesus called the crowd together again and said’ “Listen now, all of you – take this to heart. It’s not what you swallow that pollutes life; it’s what you vomit – that’s the real pollution.”
He went on: “It’s what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness, and at this very moment in history while witnessing the world’s culmination of hatred toward the Jews, our distinct inability and confusion to demonstrate sacrificially Christ’s love to all of our enemies, including all of His children, (everyone made in His image) regardless of race or origin – for all these diverse and evil consuming behaviors, are vomited from the heart. This is the source of your pollution!” (Crude perhaps… but double dead on!)
So, why is it we North American Christians have such a remarkable tendency to focus exclusively on the behavioral “fruit” of our problems; whereas Christ addressed the “root cause” of our problems?
Does this focus on “fruit” rather than “roots” remind you of our addictive symptom driven prescription American healthcare system today? Is this “behavioral fruit vs. root causes” driving us as parents asunder with our children; or pastors with our parishioners, or husbands with wives, and wives with husbands? And yes indeed, we even do this with ourselves in the darker corners of our consciousness…
Notice though, how the gospel on the other hand, addresses the root of our problems. And these roots are not merely bad behavior! Bad behavior is merely the symptom, like a fever, of a hidden much deeper root cause, such as an infection. Our chief problem, as Jesus made exponentially clear, is not “what goes into a man,” but rather its hardened, wooden, defiled, perhaps even necrotic, heart. Indeed, the causal root!
Consider how Christian growth absolutely consists not of behavior modification but of the daily realization that in Christ we have died and in Christ we have been raised. Daily reformation, therefore, is the fruit of daily resurrection (Romans 6:1-11). To get it the other way around (which we tend to do by default; ignorance is not bliss!) is to miss the power and point of the gospel. In his book God in the Dock, C. S. Lewis makes the obvious point that “you can’t get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first.” Behavior (good or bad) is a second thing.
“Life is a web of trials and temptations,” said Robert Capon, Episcopal priest and author, “but only one of them can ever be fatal, and that is the temptation to think it is by further, better, and more aggressive living that we can have life.” The truth is, you can’t live your way to life – you can only die [your] way there, and lose [your] way there … For Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to reward the re-wardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable; he came simply to be the resurrection and the life for those who will take their stand on a death He can use instead of on a life He cannot.”
BOTTOM LINE:
Moral renovation, in other words, is to refocus our eyes away from ourselves:
to that man’s obedience,
to that man’s cross,
to that man’s blood,
to that man’s death and resurrection,
by daily accepting to love the glorious exchange (our sin for His Righteousness),
to lean on its finished – ness,
and to live under its banner.
That is His plan for us to be morally reformed.
Now, consider the Fruits of the Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23 as the living proof of His transformation and empowerment in your life as well as the lives of others. Remember the famous nine: Love Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-control.
PS: The main characteristic which is the proof of th indwelling Spirit is an amazing tenderness in personal dealing, and a blazing truthfulness with regard to God’s Word. Oswald Chambers from Disciples Indeed 386 R
Inspired, modified, & expanded from Tuillian Tchividjian’s devotional book IT IS FINISHED: 365 Days of Good News, 2015 June 20