“Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, ‘I am the light of the world. If you follow Me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.” (John 8:12 NLT)
As you may be aware, this is the verse that follows the verse with which we closed yesterday’s post. Immediately following verse 11, where Jesus told the woman caught in the very act of adultery to “Go and sin no more,” He shared the words in the verse at the top of this page. Light illuminates darkness, clearly meaning, to walk in light allows us to no longer be bound by the darkness, but therein lies the rub: we tend to love darkness more than light.
Jesus explains this in John 3:16-21: “For God love the world so much that He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through Him. There is no judgment against anyone who believes in Him. But anyone who does not believe in Him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.”
Now, the plot thickens because, like the man who committed love to the young woman for life without sex in yesterday’s post, finds that life without sex, especially when you’re in the arms a woman you love, is nearly impossible. The ONLY way to accomplish that is by the power of God. Here’s the clencher, sin to a human being is as irresistible as sex to a young person, it’s humanly impossible NOT to do without the presence of almighty God enabling you to avoid it.
Similarly, how can we avoid sin, which is humanly impossible NOT to do? Walk in the Light of Christ! Seems simple enough, and it is, but it’s not easy. Loving Jesus doesn’t take away our bent to sin; our desire to sin can be just as strong as it’s ever been, but the only way to avoid sin is to learn to love Jesus more than we love our sin. We learn to love the Light more than the darkness. That’s the choice Jesus made when He was tempted and it must be the choice we make when we’re tempted. Our love for Jesus must overpower our love of ourselves and the sin that so easily attracts us.
Now, I can “hear” someone thinking: “You mean to tell me that you (me) never sin?” And I would have to admit, “No,” I do sin, but never as a habit. I do sin when I treat my wife or someone else in a manner that would not be pleasing to the Lord, or ponder inappropriate thoughts, but the second I realize what I’m doing or have done, I repent, confess my sin, and turn from it. The key is not allowing ourselves to downplay it and pretend it doesn’t matter or it’s just being human, or worse, allowing it to become a habit, at which point it becomes even more dangerous.
In essence, that’s exactly what it is, Being Human, but as a child of God, we’re no longer afforded the luxury of living as a mere human being. As a child of God, we’ve been transformed by the renewing of our mind (Romans 12:2) so, we have no excuse for pretending we’re still thinking, acting, and living with our old mind. We’re the butterfly set free from the cocoon, never again to be bound by it. That’s the picture Paul paints in 2 Corinthians 5:17.
We can quibble about words and concepts all day, but the proof is in the proverbial pudding. When we stand before the Lord to give an account of our lives, my sense is He’s not going to be interested in what we believe, He’ll be more interested in how we lived BASED ON what we professed to believe.
As believers committed to the Lordship of Jesus, not based on what we say we believe or even what WE THINK we believe, it’s based on our resultant walk of obedience to the Lordship of Jesus. How closely did we live to Him and how closely did we live to the world? Ultimately, it’s His call, but I believe, at least to me, the Lord has made our options crystal clear. Love and serve Him alone or choose to live and serve someone or something else.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 