The Bible and...: Part 7f: Sin and Self-Love

The Bible and...: Part 7f: Sin and Self-Love
Friday, July 5, 2024 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Apologetics / Contemporary issues / Scripture discussion / Spiritual deception / The church / Thought for Today

Sin. As Christians, do we repent from it, or do we practice it? “Repent” doesn’t just mean saying, “I’m sorry,” but to actually turn away from it, stop doing it, and start doing God-approved actions instead.

In the last couple of posts, we’ve looked at the sin of pride. But as mentioned earlier, the early church considered seven sins particularly deadly. Those sins are: lust, gluttony, avarice (greed), sloth (laziness), anger, envy, and pride.

Let’s comment briefly on the other six. 1) lust: do we have a lust problem today? The lust one often thinks of is sex related. Our culture is awash with that type of sin.. But lust can be any sort of inordinate desire for something. What about lusting after power? We see individuals—not to mention entire political parties—doing everything possible to gain, or keep, power. We can lust after food, money, pleasure, possessions; the list could be quite long.

Gluttony: Do Americans have a weight problem? An anecdotal comment: when I was a kid, the average size of a soda was 8 oz. The average size today is generally 22 oz. or so, but can be as large as 32 oz. in some fast food chains. That is just one tiny example. At present, about 40% of Americans are obese, another nearly 8% are morbidly obese, and an additional 32% are overweight. That comes out to 80% of the population (I confess that I fall in the overweight category). Culturally, have we embraced the sin of gluttony? Sadly, Yes.

Greed (avarice): Greed pairs “nicely” with lust. I want what I want and the more of it I have the better. A friend has a humorous saying (and in context it was always meant humorously): “If more is enough, than too much is just right.” How much wealth is enough? The tycoon John D. Rockefeller once said, “Just one dollar more.” It doesn’t matter how much we might have, we want more. One of the worst aspects of greed is that it robs us of our ability to be thankful to God for what we do have, for what He has given us.

Sloth (laziness): How big of a problem is sloth? How many people do you know who prefer to spend all their time goofing off, playing games, engaging in social media, anything but working? And that work could be something other than a formal job. The Scriptures have a lot to say about sluggards (the lazy). Proverbs 19:24: “The sluggard buries his hand in the dish, But will not even bring it back to his mouth.” As for making an excuse to avoid work: Proverbs 22:13: “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion outside; I will be killed in the streets!’” Today we may not imagine lions, but any other fear will do.

Anger: I’ve written a lot about anger and hatred, so I won’t elaborate here. We are surrounded by angry hateful people. As stated many times, hatred is the new “love”. Yet, has their self-righteous anger actually solved anything? Not really (note: there is a type of righteous Godly anger, but that is only rarely in view).

Envy: Envy goes one step beyond jealousy. With jealousy you desire something someone else has, whether that might be their looks, their house or some other possession. With envy, not only do you want what they have, you don’t want them to have it. How much do we see that going on in our country? Of course, it gets properly labeled as being a just entitlement. How much have we seen get destroyed out of envy? This can include not only property but people’s reputations and lives.

Sin. Our culture is rife with it. But as a culture that has largely made the deliberate conscious choice to reject Jesus Christ, that is not a shock. But what about us, as Christians? How are we living our lives? What directs our lives: sin or the Scriptures?

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