Sin Of Man Stems From Greed And Self-Worship: Know Christ Jesus As Savior

Today’s message by Dr. John MacArthur at Grace Church live stream was about sanctification and how we are called to be separated from sin unto God.  His teaching came from  Colossians 3:1-9 and how we must mortify our flesh that still is tainted by our fallenness.

⁵ Put to death therefore what is earthly in you:  sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. ⁶ On account of these the wrath of God is coming. ⁷ In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. ⁸ But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.⁹ Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices – Colossians 3:5-9

Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden after listening to Satan who lied and convinced Eve that she could eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.  These were our original parents who allowed sin to come into their lives.  All people have been born into sin from their “original sin”.

John MacArthur’s main message was that we must be realistic about our sin and deal with sin directly that is found deep within us and that we should not ignore sin, we should be “killing” our sin that starts deep within our hearts and rises into our behavior.  

The way to deal with sin is by knowing Jesus Christ.

MacArthur referred to Colossians 3:5-9 as describing the “Pathology of Sin”, and broke these verses down into two basic lists; sexual immorality and sin as the result of anger. 

List 1 is evil, sexually perverted action, where action flows into motive.  He said that any unlawful sexual act is outside of one man and one woman in marriage, that marriage is the only place where sex is “legal”.  Our culture today finds much of its identity in immoral sexual acts.  List one encompasses Impurity of thought and uncleanness, defiling behavior with within the hearts of man, how passion lies behind impure thoughts and evil desires are found even deeper into what we really are.  Evil desire is built into our evil natures, that greed activates evil desire, or “covetousness”.

Greed is the basic motive of all sin and was behind Satan’s being thrown out of heaven.  Satan coveted God’s place and so we have a built in desire for what is not ours.  We  have ingratitude for what we have, we have a desire that will never be satisfied, we are self-seeking and prideful, and have a lack of contentment.  This causes stealing, boasting, selfish ambition, exploitation, intimidation and tyranny, sexual sin.  Every sin comes from greed.

We are to control our minds in order that we control our sexual conduct.

List 2 covers verses 8 and 9 where mankind has a perverted hate against people, where motive moves toward deed.  This list starts with anger leading to wrath, wrath leads to malice, malice leads to slander, slander leads to abusive speech, and abusive speech leads to lying.

We are to put off our anger for our mouth is a vicious verbal member that can produce violent sin.  This hostility comes from our idolatry of ourselves.  We have anger deep inside of us that leads to self-worship. 

We must live in a way to reflect heavenly virtues and mortify our flesh by dealing directly with sin.  We have to quit our self-worship and love Christ, becoming more and more knowledgeable of who He is so that we submit willingly to Him.  In so doing the battle against our sin is won.  

May you find the words of Christ Jesus of comfort, and may they always guide your hearts and minds each day.