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Becoming Like God (Again)
Brian Mashburn
April 3, 2016
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The Psychology of Sin
If it is true that the Christ-like life is the best possible way to live, then why would anyone live any other way?
Well, Paul says, it is because we develop hard hearts. We become ignorant of the reality of God. This darkens our understanding about everything, and makes us think futile thoughts. In turn, we are looking in all the wrong places for the feeling of "life."
Every human being is rigged with the passionate desire for life. We each WILL try to have it. But if we do not understand that there is a God, then we will give ourselves over to anything that "feels good" or at least promises us something that we think will "be good". It never works, mind you, but the void of understanding reality combined with the innate desire for "life" causes us to keep trying to find it in the wrong things, or trying things in the wrong way.
The result is a callousness that allows us to do anything. Eventually, even our shame at indulging impure things goes away. Just as long as we get what we think we want.
In Ephesians 4:17-24, Paul proves that he can sit with us in the counselor's chair as much as he can preach to us from the pulpit. Sin is not merely the result of inappropriate outward actions; it is also an inward condition in need of change.
Paul says that the gospel of Jesus penetrates and speaks to the whole person, from the inside out, giving us the resources we need to change even attitudes and desires.
Breath, church, and allow the gospel to do what it did to the first hearers of it in Acts 2 - cut you to the heart. The resulting healing and new life, that will restore you to how God originally created us back in the beginning, will be worth it.