Sometimes a word is dirty just by association.

A good example would be the term “sensualism,” a human condition precipitated by any kind of gratification to the senses—that is, by touch, sight, hearing, smell or taste.  The senses are a good thing, of course, having been created by God as part of the human makeup.

It’s just that they were never meant to heavily influence deliberated choices.

But don’t expect anyone to encourage you to discipline yourself against experiencing things sensually—unless it’s a dietitian.  The world revolves around the marketing of wanton pleasure on demand.  Anything sensual is good, and the more often, the better.

That must be why four different Biblical authors of the New Testament cautioned their readers against making provisions in their lives for sensuality.  Eight times, the word translated as “sensuality” was the Greek noun ἀσέλγεια [âsélgeia], referring to licentiousness, wantonness, sensuality, indecency, or vice.  Most of the uses of ἀσέλγεια were included as part of a list of sexually immoral practices.

On the other hand, everything sensual isn’t unclean for Jesus Christ’s disciples.  No lasting, intimate relationship can exist outside of the very necessary sensual realm of human sexuality that grows out of a legitimate covenantal marriage.  Nor can one absorb the beauty of a landscape, the voices of happy grandchildren, or the aroma of a pot luck dinner without the miracle of sensory awareness.

So, experiencing sensuality may or may not always qualify as sinful behavior.  But I can be sure that it’ll point me in that direction.

I simply cannot become mature living a lifestyle of unchecked sensual stimulation.  If I learn to engage every daily task or challenge using my senses rather than my rational faculties, it’s only a matter of time before I start choosing the path of least resistance.

Nor am I able to worship and experience the presence of the Lord exclusively through my senses.  Some congregations which claim to belong to Christ attempt to build and sustain membership by tapping in to the sensually triggered temperaments of visitors. This practice is utterly reprehensible and clearly distorts the intent of corporate Biblical worship. [see: 1Cor. 14]

Things that are sensual often invoke pleasure.  Pleasure is good.  But it cannot exist in constancy and continue to serve that purpose.

Sensualism isn’t the guy I want to hang out with all the time.  Nor is it the old friend I go see a lot to relive the good times.  It is, rather, that welcomed friend who knocks on my door from time to time.

But I’m never afraid to show him the door.

I hear this question raised too many times:

“Why do people who call themselves Christians rarely find the courage to act upon that conviction when they’re challenged on a personal level?”

One could argue, of course, that there’s more than one reason.  But, asking another question might easily explain why there’s usually just one reason.

For example, why will people who call themselves die-hard Kansas City Chiefs fans fight to the death to defend the reputation of a particular player or the team?  Because, aside from the money they spend on team paraphernalia and season tickets, it doesn’t cost them anything to do it.

That’s not to say passionate pursuits aren’t without emotional forfeiture from time to time, but the ones which could really cost us, we tend to avoid, and being a die-hard faithful disciple of Jesus Christ isn’t cheap.

Think about it.

Our congregations are stocked with principled, faithful members, many of which fearlessly defend unborn children, the Biblical institution of marriage and the authority of a moral system of governance.

However, embedded in these bastions of Christian fellowship are bargain-hunters looking for a discount on the price of inevitable conflict. They seek challenges to confirm their faith by responding solely to the charitable needs of the Body of Christ—good works which are indeed critical, but demand little expenditure of defensive, emotional capital.

But they don’t have to look far.  

The Great Deceiver sits among them in the pews, passing out the coupons. And he has the ability to convince them that any formidable resistance in the face of evil is a high-risk enterprise, and that simply being a nice guy and doing nice things is all that’s necessary to do the Lord’s work effectively.

Sin has the power to persuade me to stay in my comfort zone.  And I can testify from personal experience that an immature disciple is an easy target for this type of emotional manipulation. Hence, the otherwise virile man is rendered silent in the face of evil.  But that doesn’t mean he’s capitulated to its ideology.

Oh no, he really does hate it. He’s just decided that the price of acting to stop its advance is too costly.

And, on the basis of that high expense, he somehow justifies his decision, even though  “…any decision Jesus Christ’s disciple makes not to stand up in the face of evil is an open denial of our Lord’s authority to accomplish an effective line of resistance through the actions of that disciple.”  

[Read how this is happening today:  Are We a Body of Cowards?]

The reality is that, even though He could accomplish anything by His own devices, God clearly uses men and women He’s called to help prosecute and defend His divine plan for the ages.  [see: Titus 2:11-14]

So, I have to ask myself:  If I consider His expectations for me not to be worth the cost, I wonder how He‘s gonna’ consider mine when He returns?

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil.  God will not hold us guiltless.  Not to speak is to speak.  Not to act is to act.”  —Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Some would argue that adoption isn’t what it used to be.

Even though the legal process behind it has remained somewhat unchanged over the past two millennia, most decisions to assume custody of another person have evolved from being grounded in a spirit of pragmatism to an act of selfless charity.

In the First Century, for example, it wasn’t uncommon for an adult male Roman citizen to either seek or readily accept legal adoption by a wealthy guardian who sought a qualified, responsible heir to protect and increase his fortune and lineage.

In other words, you were more likely to get adopted because you were needed rather than because you were in need.

I think this is an unusual practice for many to imagine today, perhaps seeming a little detached from what we’re accustomed to as being a proper motive.   But, consider that even the Biblical authors’ references to adoption reflected a legitimate human aspiration—that is, to become an heir to wealth, and then, to actually receive it.

[Why is it important to understand what an heir is?  see: Birthright Through Redemption]

In his letter to “all who [were] beloved of God in Rome, called as saints,” the apostle Paul exhorted the reader to fully appropriate the mindset of a lawfully adopted heir:

“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.  For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!”  [Rom. 8:14-15]  [my emphasis]

If I’m being led by the Spirit, I’m able to recognize the Spirit who freed me from the slave market of sin.  That Spirit is the source of my joyful spirit [of adoption] which also anticipates the confirmation of my inheritance at the redemption of my body in a future resurrection!  [see: Rom. 8:23]

In order for me to truly grasp the significance of inheriting what God has to offer, it’s critical for me to be able to remain steadfast in obedience to the commands of Jesus Christ.

So, things certainly aren’t like they used to be.  The reasons for adopting have varied over the centuries, being driven by everything from sincere empathy to rabid greed.  But a true paradigm of its function has always been made visible by the original Designer.

And it has always revolved around the need to either have—or share what is priceless.

That’s why we long to cry out “Abba! Father!”

I’ve got enough to be concerned about without trying to manipulate the climate.

As part of the human race, I’m obligated to abide in the Lord’s directive given to the first man Adam—that is, to “…be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” [Gen. 1:28]  [my emphasis]

But if I consider myself to be a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, I should be able to recognize the difference between acting as a good steward of the earth and trying to control it. Because to think that I’m actually able to alter the progression of the Created order is the epitome of arrogance.  

Not only that, ungodly pride hones the cutting edges of unbelief, allowing them to slice deep into the fibrous bonds which sustain Christian fellowship.  And when these tendons of His Body begin to unravel, its members become vulnerable to a host of other worldly fables.

The result is chaos in a Body whose purpose is to serve Its Head and one another by remaining steadfast and confident in the Lord’s promises, and to be a beacon of light to the fearful, dithering masses as well.

So where does the Bible confirm the durability of seasons and climate?

How about the Lord’s promise to Noah immediately after the flood waters receded:

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” [Gen. 8:22]  [my emphasis]

This isn’t a verse that can be easily extracted from its proper context.  It was a Divine proclamation which coincided [somewhat] with the covenant God made between Noah and all successive generations that water never again shall “become a flood to destroy all flesh.”

If I believe what the Lord says about not flooding the Earth again, is it too much to include His guarantee of seasonal consistency too, or do I need more rainbows to convince me?

l’d say we either believe what the Scriptures teach, or we don’t.  It’s impossible to pick and choose.

C.S. Lewis once made a profound observation exposing the hypocrisy of Biblical cherry picking.  He noted that one cannot simply acknowledge Christ’s teaching as true and useful yet deny His Deity at the same time.

The reason is obvious.  Jesus said He and the Father were One—i.e., He was God.  If He was God, nothing but truth could come out of His mouth.  If he wasn’t God, he was a lunatic, because He said he was God.  How can I believe anything a lunatic says?

It defies logic to have it both ways.

There’s plenty of empirical evidence to suggest that the Earth’s climate is cyclical to some degree.  Temperature and weather patterns have been documented to fluctuate—sometimes even drastically over time.

But the Lord has promised me cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night as long as the earth remains.

And the last time I looked, it’s still here.

Just finding myself on the right side of the good fight isn’t always enough.

Knowing why I’m there is just as important.

If I say that I’ve set myself apart from the depravity this world reveres, I need to be able to defend that position with an attitude of love and respect for every form of life created in God’s image.

If I can’t do that, the world will see me as an intolerant bigot rather than a soldier of truth, and truth is the only effective weapon in the battle against lies.

The word “tolerant” is defined in The Oxford Dictionary as “…showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with.”  So, based on this definition, wasn’t the man Jesus Christ on record as having been about as tolerant to choices as anyone could be?

He clearly rebuked His people’s behavior and warned them to repent because of the consequences it would bring.  Yet, the Biblical record reveals that He never threatened, physically punished or verbally abused anyone on an individual level because of their behavior or opinions.

He sought, rather, to enlighten.  He knocked on the door of the human will, pleading with it to engage the obvious. [see: Rom. 1:18-32]

Interestingly enough though, none of the gospel accounts recorded a narrative where His authority to moralize the dialog was challenged.  For example, apparently nobody attempted to legitimize his own homosexual passions or lifestyle during the course of any conversation with Him—nor anybody else’s!

Do you think maybe they were simply too ashamed to do something like that?

Could it have been because, whether they realized it or not, they were literally looking Truth in the face?

Is it not possible then, that, because the Person of Jesus Christ isn’t physically walking around today, dispensing His convicting grace of shame in the flesh, the world is much more at ease trying to re-define the boundaries of just about any form of perverted sexual conduct?

Or can someone explain to me why the shame of adultery remains a cultural scourge while that of homosexual behavior is often ballyhooed and given a pass?

The Bible tells us that Jesus grieved over the devastation He witnessed because of the deceitfulness of sin in this world.  He surely understood better than anyone that unchallenged lies metastasize and proliferate in innocent hearts and minds, leaving them vulnerable to “…being handed over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper…”[Rom. 1:28]

In the same way, the challenge for Christ’s disciple today is identical to that of his Firstborn Brother.  I can’t always identify with another’s offenses before the Lord, nor can they with mine.  I can, however, relate personally to the brutal impact of sin’s deception—that is, how it will hand the reckless heart a shovel to dig its hole, only to scoop it back in with the dirt it produces.

With that in mind, I have to base any attempt to caution and encourage the shameless of this world with a sincere spirit of compassion and concern for their welfare—as well as their destiny.

It could be their shame is buried so deep they can’t see it anymore.  But that doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Somehow, they need to see the Truth in my face.

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?  Do not be deceived.  Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.  Such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”  [1Cor. 6:9-11]  [my emphasis]

It doesn’t take me long to get my fill of something.

That’s because everyone has a limit to what he can consume and digest, regardless of its palatability.  I’m sure Rod Serling understood this well.

As a teenager, I wasn’t necessarily a big fan of The Twilight Zone, but one episode is seared in my memory:  A criminal was killed in the line of work and “crossed over” into an endless cornucopia of luxury, women, booze and good fortune—all the things he sought diligently prior to his demise.  At some point, however, he grew weary of his monotonous excess and pled for mercy to an “angel” dressed in a white suit:

“I can’t do this anymore…I actually think I’d rather just…be in…you know…the other place!“

The angel [actor Burl Ives] responded with a hearty laugh and bellowed:

“This IS the other place!

So, when I first read the apostle Paul’s letter to “…the saints who [were] at Ephesus and who [were] faithful in Christ Jesus, the phrase “filled up into all the fullness of God” brought that ridiculous television episode to mind:

“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in the heavens and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, for Christ to dwell in your hearts through faith, having laid a foundation [which is] rooted in love, in order that you might be strong enough to comprehend [along] with all the saints the love of Christ—[that is] the breadth and length and height and depth [of it], which goes beyond knowledge, in order that you might be filled up into all the fullness of God.”   [Eph. 3:14-19]  [my emphasis]

At the same time, though, I was just Biblically astute enough to realize that being “filled with God” could never be compared to overindulging in any fleshly aspiration.

So, I wondered…how much of God is really possible?

Not only that, it seemed unrealistic to assume that my Creator could somehow exist fully in me yet maintain His Holy Nature at the same time.  Eventually, though, I came to understand that every Biblical text has a context, and that context is built upon a holistic interpretation of surrounding sentences and key words.  And the key word in the quoted passage above is “love.”

Paul prayed that the faithful saints in Ephesus would, after having established a solid infrastructure of love, gain strength through the Holy Spirit.  He did this in the hope that they might acquire the needed strength to be able to both perceive and experience the true dimensions of that which would be otherwise incomprehensible—that is, the loving essence of the Christ and therefore the Father.

Aγάπη [âgâpāy, or agape] love is the contextual relationship to fullness here.  This Greek word is the marrow of a spiritual bone which both defines and sustains the Christian experience.  A body cannot live without marrow.  In the same way, the Body of Christ can’t fully experience the magnitude of His love without the life-giving blood in the agape marrow.

Just like carbohydrates, agape love never signals the brain that you’ve had enough.  But, unlike bean burritos and potato chips, agape love is healthy.

You really can’t have too much of it.

There’s a passage in the Bible that just won’t preach.

Maybe it’s because “the devil’s in the pronouns.”  After all, any pastor willing to provoke the flock to Scriptural literacy is bound to open up a can of worms.  And worms in the pews take valuable seating space away from itching ears wearing deep pockets.

I wonder if that’s what was on the apostle Paul’s mind when he wrote his second letter to “his beloved son, Timothy?“

“I solemnly testify before God and Christ Jesus, who is about to judge living and dead [at] His appearing and His reign:  Preach the word.  Be persistent in season [and] out of season.  Expose, rebuke, [and] encourage with all patience and instruction.  For [the] time shall come when they will not put up with sound teaching, but, they shall accumulate teachers for themselves according to their own desires, having an itch [for] hearing [something different], and they shall turn away from the hearing of truth and they shall wander away to myths.”  [2Tim. 4:1-4]  [my emphasis]

I had to stumble across these sentences on my own.  I’ve never heard anyone preach about them, teach about them, or bring them to my attention.  Yet, even when I first read them, the pronoun “they” seemed to spring up off the page as if it were in bold print.

So who were “they?”

I did a lot of speculating.  And since I’d always understood unholiness to be something found only outside of the Lord’s congregations, I was satisfied to reckon “them” to be there as well. But then, I found myself burdened with the tool of inductive knowledge.  As a result, I became helplessly aware of a troubling scenario Paul was laying out in the previous chapter:

“The Lord’s bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will.”  [2Tim. 2:24-26]  [my emphasis]

The sentences that followed pre-warned the readers of the repercussions for failing to “…expose, rebuke, [and] encourage with all patience and instruction.”  In such a case, there was only one course of action that could be taken:

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times shall be present.  For men shall be lovers of self…holding [to a] form of godliness, [though] having denied its authority.  Have nothing to do [with] these [men].“  [2Tim. 3:1-2a, 5]  [my emphasis]

[What’s the “tool of inductive knowledge?”  see: Inductive Study? Sounds Like a Plan.]

If Paul wasn’t referring to certain members of the congregation in the church in Ephesus above, but rather pagans on the “outside,” would they really have been concerned about “holding” to any form of godliness?

I’m convinced that anybody who isn’t a little bit unsettled about what Paul wrote to Timothy here might very well be part of a problem rather than a solution.  He’s probably the same one who denies that money ever blows a sermon’s sails while he simultaneously helps to row his congregational ship into the waters of irrelevancy.

Look around.

Paul charged the “saints and faithful brethren [who were] in Christ at Colossae” to conduct themselves wisely around outsiders [Col. 4:5], yet reminded “the church of God which [was] at Corinth” that the Body of Christ was to administer to itself—exclusively:

“For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church?” [1Cor. 5:12]

[Are Christ’s disciples never to “judge” one another?  see: The Second Biggest Lie.]

Having the confidence to make a judgement [or speaking the truth in love] is a necessary attribute for developing the skill to be able to “expose, rebuke, and encourage with all patience and instruction.”  But confidence doesn’t just fall out of the sky.

Timothy gained the confidence to do these things by knowing what the Scriptures actually said. [2Tim 3:14-15]

How do you gain yours?