#DailyDevotion You Know What The Problem With People Is?

Lent Day 7

James 1: 14But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

Sin is utterly sinful. It adheres to flesh in such a way sometimes it is hard to distinguish between it and the material and sin. But when Paul talks about the flesh he is not speaking of the material God has made but of its corruption. When we are tempted it is sin itself, that has totally corrupted our human nature which tempts us.

So we get a thought, a sinful thought. Where did it come from? It comes from our flesh, our fallen hearts. The desire in us to rebel and sin against God tempts us. Then we think about it, contemplate it. Wouldn’t it be fun? Can I get away with it? I’m important so I must get my way! It is in the contemplation of the desire that sin is given birth. You can’t keep sinful thoughts from coming up in your mind but you don’t have to get attached to them or contemplate them. But once you do, boom, the desire has given birth to sin. Will you carry it out or not? If you do, you have compounded the sin. If you don’t you are still guilty because your intent was to do it. You wanted you. But from fear of being caught, of being punished, you decided not to do it. If you are a Christian, the Holy Spirit may have called to you repent and you don’t want to do it anymore because it would not be pleasing to your Lord.

Paul talks about it in Romans, Rom 7:5 “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death.” Sin, our desires, hear a law and says, “hold my beer.” Sin, lustful desires, cannot bear being told what to do and not do. It hates God. We deceive ourselves in thinking that we are really good people and don’t need the Lord’s grace and mercy. So He gave us the Law. Paul writes, Rom 5:20 “Now the law came in to increase the trespass.” Why would God give us the Law to increase the trespass? Paul says, Rom 7:13 “in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.” It is only through our failed attempts to keep the Law that we can see how utterly sinful we are and sin is within us.

When the Law finally, ultimately does the work the Lord has intended for it to do, show us all that we are indeed helpless sinners in need of God’s grace and mercy that His grace and mercy which is the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus, can work in us by the Holy Spirit to create in us a new heart. Through Jesus’ justification of us through faith in him and his work for our salvation, we get a new spirit and a new hearts. These create in us new desires, new thoughts, new affections which love God’s Law, want to do God’s Law and carry out God’s Law. He does this through and continues to do this through the Word of Truth.

Gracious God, heavenly Father, through the Word of Jesus, conceive in us a new heart, a new spirit that confesses our sins, repents of our sinful desires and seeks to carry out your love in our lives and has true fear of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His Name we pray. Amen.