Month: March 2017

Q: If I do wrong again and again, I feel guilty. I think it makes my mind hard, but I can’t stop. What can I do?

A: People have written entire books on this question. Therefore, like many other questions in this series, my answer will stick to broad principles and merely scratch the surface.

What you describe is what Paul describes in Romans 7: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate … For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” (vv 15, 18-19) Paul concluded from his experience that “sin … dwells in my members.” (23) In other words, he saw not just that he sins but that he is a sinner from the inside out. Your experience should make you see the same thing.

Imagine for a moment that a three-year-old boy tried to wrestle against the Olympic gold medalist in wrestling. The boy would not stand a chance. The gold medalist would defeat him, and after the boy lost, if he decided to wrestle again, the gold medalist would defeat him again. And again. And again. As many times as they wrestled, the gold medalist would win. He is much stronger than the boy. And much craftier in the art of wrestling.

Now you are the three-year-old, and sin is the gold medalist, and every time you get on the mat with sin, you lose. Sin is stronger than you. And craftier. We have to see this, and sometimes it takes the experience you describe of sinning over and over and being unable to stop ourselves to see how weak we are. The sin is not good, but when you begin to see the depths of your sin, that insight is a necessary step toward righteousness. This is when you begin to see the need for grace. This is when you begin to call upon God and say, “I can’t live without you!”

When you begin to see that you are sinful to the core, you need to deal with two things. The first is your feelings of guilt, and the second is the business of beginning to live in righteousness. The gospel deals with both these things.

First, let’s talk about your guilt feelings. Those feelings are certainly natural, but if you are in Christ, you need to understand that the sin is gone — it’s covered by the blood of Christ. You must believe this. You must hold onto it. The Cross is God’s remedy against overwhelming guilt. It is not an excuse to sin. We do not say, “Oh great! God cleanses my sin so let me roll around in it.” That thinking is an abuse of the Cross. But when we do sin, we confess it and say, “Praise you, Lord, that you have made me clean in Christ.” John said “if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I Jn 1:9)

Listen. You may be living in Romans 7 and may have committed the same sin for the 1000^th time. You may be tired of committing the same sins, and you don’t think God could ever forgive you for disobeying Him again and again. But if you are in Christ, you are clean. Period. You may not feel clean, but your feelings do not match reality. It’s time to see reality. Through the Cross, Christ has justified you, reconciled you to Himself, redeemed you from sin, and forgiven all your wrongs. Instead of doubting these truths, believe them. Praise God for them. That is how you fight the guilty feelings. You dwell on the love of God shown through the work of the Cross and you get back up.

The second part of your response will deal with living in righteousness. We must understand that while Christ may forgive our sins again and again, He does not forgive so that we may continue in sin. Forgiveness is true — praise the Lord it is — but it is not the end of the story. God is not interested in merely forgiving broken people. He wants to transform them.   The gospel is more than forgiveness. It is a new life.

From your question, however, I am guessing that sometimes you do not see this new life. This again is where the gospel comes in. In Christ, you are not just forgiven. You are new. And just as it may not feel as if you are forgiven, so too, it may not feel as if you are new. But you are new. Whether you feel it or not. The same Scripture that says you are justified and forgiven also says that you are dead to sin and alive to God (Rm 6:1-11), and that you are sanctified or holy (I Cor 1:2, 30; 6:9-11; Eph 1:4; Heb 10:10). This is your identity. Scripture says that in Christ you are clean, new, and holy. Those things are facts. We then need to align our feelings with the facts.

Please do not misunderstand. I am not saying we are perfect. Christians still sin, but even when we sin, we are still holy in Christ. It’s who we are in Him. The work of living out a holy life actually begins by believing that in Christ we are holy. We walk by faith, not by sight. So you can begin by believing that you are dead to this sin that you keep doing.

Next, it is important to know that fighting sin is not a matter of fighting sin. Think of it this way. In the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, Romeo likes a girl named Rosalind. He can’t get her off his mind. His friend Benvolio comes and tries to get him off of Rosalind, and Father Laurence chides him for thinking on Rosalind, but no one succeeds. That is, until Romeo meets Juliet. Then his passion for Rosalind disappears. “Rosalind? Who is she?” Romeo could not fight his passion for Rosalind until he found a passion for someone else. Fighting sin is the same way. You will not defeat sin by saying, “I won’t sin. I won’t sin. I won’t sin.” You will fight sin by finding a passion for Christ. Fighting sin is not a matter of keeping yourself from sin. Instead it is a matter of giving yourself to Christ. When you lose yourself in Christ you will begin to find your lifestyle changing.

Therefore, in this process of overcoming a sin that you keep falling into, I want to point you to Christ. I also want you to understand that in Christ your identity is new. You are no longer the old you who likes to argue or drink or view pornography. You are dead to those things. You are alive to God. God does not change us by changing our behavior. Instead, He changes our behavior by changing us. Therefore, do not focus on the behavior. Focus on Christ and on who He has made you to be through the gospel. Righteousness is His work, and if we will trust Him and passionately follow Him, then “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it.” (Ph 1:6)

If you want to read more, the two best resources I have read on this topic are The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification by Walter Marshall (a puritan from the 1600s) and The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee (Ni To Sheng). The book by Nee is the easier of the two to read.

The following question came from an international in our worship service.

Q: One of my relatives passed away when I was back home. And we had a three-day worship for him …  I know this situation will come again in the future because of the culture and what people think. So do you have suggestions on how to deal with this problem?

 A: I’m glad you see ancestor worship to be a problem. Not everyone does. Sometimes people view ancestor worship as just a cultural way to express grief and honor to a relative who has died. You, however, see that while your cultural practices may indeed be expressing grief and honor, they are also doing something else.

What then do you do?

1.  The first thing I would say is that you need to commit your heart and soul regularly to the Word of God, to prayer, and to God’s people. These things are essential to walking with God. I am not talking here about a specific course of action concerning this situation. I am instead talking about maintaining your spiritual health. This is just common sense. Healthy people handle difficulties better than sick people. Spiritually it is no different. You will need specific direction and strength to do God’s will. Both those things come from God. If you are not walking with God, you will conform to the culture in most every practice, but if you are walking with God, you will be in a much better condition to honor God at this difficult time.   Maintain your walk with God. Don’t let that slip.

2.  I would recommend that you find a mature believer from your culture and talk to him or her about this. I have not walked through this issue personally, but that believer probably has, and he or she will be able to give you more specific counsel than I can here. My response will stick with broad Biblical principles.

3.  It is important in this situation that you honor your family. Your family needs to know that you love and respect them, even if you might not be able to perform every function they would like you to. This means that your attitude is important. You are not to be disrespectful or arrogant about burial customs, even if you disagree with them. If you must say “no” to something, let your family know that you love them and that you want to honor them. They may interpret your “no” as disrespect, but don’t actually be disrespectful, for then you give them evidence to confirm what they think.

In order to show respect, I believe it is important for you to participate in as many of the funeral customs as you can without violating your conscience. Then, if you must say “no” to the request that you pray to a dead man, your family will see that you are making distinctions. If you say “yes” as much as you can, you are buying some trust.

But what if every aspect of the funeral and successive ceremonies requires you to violate your conscience? In other words, what if you can’t say “yes” to anything? First, I doubt that will be true. When someone dies, you will have people to visit, care to give, arrangements to make, and all sorts of activities going on. I believe you will have an opportunity to help. Death is an open door for ministry. But if the main ceremonies violate your conscience, you may need to skip them. You need to be prepared for that, and if you do skip them, you need to find another way to honor and respect your relative and family. The Holy Spirit will be crucial in communicating to you where you have a green light and where you have a red light.

4.  Because you need to honor your family, you will need to communicate well. Your family will not understand why you refuse to hold a vigil for the dead. You need to be clear to them where your boundaries are and why. If you must skip something, let your family know that your reason has nothing to do with disrespect and everything to do with the fact that you see the spiritual reality in a different way. Because you see the spiritual reality in a different way, you show honor in a different way, and you need to communicate that. They need to know that you are not rejecting them. What exactly you say, I will leave between you and the Holy Spirit.

5.  Death brings out the spiritual side of the human race, and our funeral and burial customs often reflect specific spiritual beliefs.   What you want to avoid is personal involvement in or endorsement of an alternate spiritual system. Worship of the dead, praying to the dead, leaving food out for the dead to eat, holding vigils for the dead, burning incense to the dead, reading unbiblical spiritual writings, and other similar practices are tied to a spiritual system. In Christ, you do not want to participate in that system.

Of course, your family may perform such practices while not believing any of the spiritual stuff. That does not mean, however, that the spiritual stuff is absent. When you pray to someone who is not God, you are doing something spiritual whether you know it or not. And if your family does not believe the spiritual teachings, their unbelief may be a path toward helping them understand you. That’s common ground.

6.  Some questions to ask yourself to help navigate what you can and cannot do.

• Is the practice I am being asked to do tied to an alternate spiritual belief system? Not every funeral custom involves unbiblical spirituality. If someone asks you to bring food to the widow, you may be just caring for the widow. If a funeral custom involves viewing a body, you may be merely showing respect. If you are asked to give a speech about your memories of the person, you may be showing him honor. None of these practices is necessarily tied to an unbiblical belief. You can think of other such practices.

• How central are the spiritual practices to what I am being asked to attend? Let me illustrate. Are you being asked to attend a worship service for the dead? Or a memorial that may include objectionable elements? In the first situation, the whole point of the event involves an unbiblical spiritual purpose. In the second situation, the whole point of the event may be to show respect to your dead relative. In the first situation, your presence could be considered an endorsement of the spiritual belief system. That’s the point of the event. In the second situation, your presence is not necessarily an endorsement of the spiritual practices that go on. That’s not why you are there. You’re there to honor your grandfather. In reality, over the course of several days, you may be asked to participate in both types of events.

• Are you an observer or a practitioner? Are you watching someone burn the incense or are you burning it? Are you merely present when someone asks the dead for good fortune or are you asking the dead yourself? Do your parents have an altar to the dead in their home or do you have one in your home? Do you merely see the feast left to the ghosts or are you laying out the feast? It is true that in some situations, God may not want you even to observe, for sometimes observation is participation. But that is not always the case, and when you move from observing to practicing, you are going to a different level. Observing may be OK in some situations. You can’t control what other people do. But you can control what you practice.

7.  Be prepared for difficulty. Peter tells his readers that they are aliens, exiles, foreigners, outsiders in their land (I Pet 1:1,17; 2:11). Christ makes us an alien where we live. In the case of ancestor worship, you see this. In Christ, you have become a spiritual alien within your own family. This is not bad. In fact, you can love your family better because of Christ in you, but it does cause problems. Your family may be angry. Your parents may slander and insult you because of your stance just as the Roman culture in the first century slandered and reviled the Christians Peter wrote to (I Pet 3:9, 16-17). You may face difficulty, but in Christ you are victorious in the end. Let that fact encourage you. Be patient with your family. They do not understand Christ. And if you must suffer their scorn, do so with joy, for God sees your faithfulness and He will reward it in the end.

I pray that when this happens again, Christ will fill you with His wisdom, grace, and strength to honor Him and your family.