Romans
14:22 tells us that “whatever is not from
faith is sin” and
suggests that sin is all from lack of faith.
Paul is consistent. He says that
whatever is not of faith is sin and he tells us that Abraham believed God and
it was counted for him as righteousness (Galatians 3:6). Psalms 119:172 tells
us that God’s commands are righteousness. Yet the demons believe (James 2:19) and they
are not righteous, so clearly one can believe and sin. One could argue that the discrepancy is
explained by the object of the belief in one case not being the object of the
belief in the other, but I don’t think that is the solution.
I want to
suggest that there is something else going on behind sin. I like to describe three levels of
motivation (addictions actually) as security, sensation (pleasure) and power,
and I do this using Eve’s temptation, the temptation of Jesus in the
wilderness, the thorns (Lk 8:14)
found in the parable of the sower and seed, and John’s statement about what
motivates us (I J 2:16).
Security is the basic drive to keep alive. This
is why the tree being good for food is appealing. This is the “lust of
the flesh” John speaks of. This is the first temptation (food) of Y'shuah
in the wilderness. This is the “worries” of Luke 8:14.
Sensation or Pleasure is the drive to have the senses pleased. This is
why the tree was “pleasing to the eyes”. This is John’s “lust of the eyes”.
This is the second temptation of Jesus in the wilderness (the thrill of jumping
off from a 400 foot height). This is the “pleasures” of Luke 8:14.
Power is the basic drive to be influential. This is the appeal of
the tree being desired to make one wise. This is the “pride of life” John
refers to. This is the third temptation (rulership) of Y'shuah in the
wilderness. This is the “riches” of Luke 8:14.
Each of these three motivations acts as a filter on our
consciousness, so that when are operating from the security center of
consciousness, we blow the security aspects of any situation out of proportion
and we feel emotions such as fear. When
we are operating from the pleasure center, we feel boredom, frustration, and
disappointment. Whenever one of these 3 filters are triggered, we feel emotions
that tend involve us rejecting the here and now of our experience. Some people call these “separating emotions”
for that reason.
When the Bible says that our sins have separated us from God
(Isaiah 59:2), what is happening is that the motivation behind our sins, the
security, pleasure and power motives, are separating us from him. Not only that, but they separate us from
other people and also from reality as we have distorted perceptions of what is
really going on. We cannot and do not
operate out of love when that happens because we are turned into ourselves and
the lack of fulfillment of those basic drives is painful to us. Who finds fear, boredom and irritation
pleasurable? No, they distract us and
get in the way of love and lead us into sin.
The loving person has moved beyond these motivations. The first fruit of God’s spirit in us is love
(Galatians 5:22), and perfect love casts out fear (I John 4:18), so when you
have the love of God shed abroad in your heart (Romans 5:5) you aren’t worried
about things. You don’t have fear
standing between you and God, between you and other people and between you and
your here and now. The second fruit of God’s
spirit is joy (Ga 5:22) and
when you have that joy, the pleasures of life are not a big deal any
longer. Likewise, the third fruit,
peace, renders power something you would just as soon other people had.
Our sins separate us from God in another way and on another
level too. One would think that if we
stopped sinning, the sins would be gone and we could now experience unity with
God ---- no need for separation. That’s
because we think linearly with respect to time. God inhabits eternity. For him all that ever existed exists in his
Now. For him, even as you read this, his
son is being crucified, and your great, great grandchild is being born. He has the whole tapestry of time and space
before him and he beholds it all at the same time. The tapestry needs to be washed (Is 1:16, 18) in the blood of the Lamb
(Rv 7:14).
Keeping God’s law in the spirit is only possible when we are
centered and not being pulled this way and that by our separating
emotions. We have to operate from a Love
centre of consciousness. It is there
that we can accept instead of reject and dwell in the present instead of the
regrets of a dead past or the wishes of an unknown future. As Eric Fromm taught, "Love is primarily
giving, not receiving" and "Love is the overcoming of human
separateness, the fulfillment of the longing for union."
To get to this place requires understanding: comprehension of God’s love for us which was
so great that he did everything to remove the separation, including sending his
only begotten son. This is why Y’shuah
says of non-believers that IF they understood they would repent (Mt 13:15). By
the way, one day all the unbelievers of history shall come up again and this
time they shall understand because the scriptures shall be “open” to them (Rv
20:12). When we have the understanding God gives us, then we can move from
being motivated by security, pleasure and power to being motivated by love, and
that is provided we believe
him, so it comes around again to faith, or does it? Because once someone understands, wouldn’t he
necessarily believe?
