Years ago I noticed that frigid air was seeping through the bay windows of the bedroom of our house. So I started investigating. The second sign of trouble emerged when I popped my head under the exterior flooring of the bump out and rotted wood started crumbling down—rotted wood, and carpenter ants! Awwwwe maaaan, I thought, This is not good. It kept getting worse. The floor joist were black with decay, literally falling apart at the touch. After digging away the rotted wood, there was nothing left to hold up the floor. Amazingly, the walls were still hanging by the rafters.
The water damage continued all the way to the roof, including the wall boards and window sashes. Someone had installed a piece of metal incorrectly and every time it rained, water had been pouring down the inside of the skin of the house. I had to tear out the entire bay window bump out and rebuild it from the bottom up.
The Extent of the Calamity
Sometimes we don’t realize the extent of our problems. We minimize our water damage. We realize we’re not perfect, but we don’t realize how extensive the rot of “self” is. Especially in the Western Church of Humanism where everything is catered to the customer, and to personal preference. Everything is about stroking individual choice, and freedom, and personal quality of life. The end of everything is how it benefits me, or how much I enjoy it, or how it fits into my plans for life. The “self-help” church is simply a response to this deeper epidemic. It’s a faith subtly oriented around self, and not Life-in-Christ-after-self.
As a pastor I’ve been convicted by a host of verses that we don’t talk about in church any more. Not just peripheral verses, but verses core to our faith that talk about dying to “self”, my “evil desires,” my “sin nature,” my “flesh”. Over and over again the Biblical writers warn us to put our evil desires to death. Don’t be lured away by them. Don’t try to partner with them. Don’t trust them because they will seduce you.
Here are just a few:
“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires.” Ephesians 4:22
“Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Galatians 5:24
“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit.” Galatians 5:17
“As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance.” 1 Peter 1:14
“In the last times there will be scoffers who will follow their own ungodly desires.” Jude 1:18
The Cross of Jesus As the Solution
This is what the cross is all about. The cross of Christ is God’s demolition project to tear out the rotten and decayed “self” with all of it’s self-interest, and appetites. The cross brings death. It is essential and necessary, like the forest fire that enables the forest to be born again before the old, stubborn trees choke out its life.
It’s not that God is some sour patch kid and doesn’t want you to enjoy life. It’s not that he doesn’t want you to be blessed and filled with his peace. Then, why does death and crucifixion need to be an ongoing pain and inconvenience in our lives? What is God trying to accomplish? To answer this question, let’s look at a verse together, “The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17). Notice the ephemeral nature of our self-interest. Without being plugged into the life-source our desires are dissolving away—rotted wood crumbling back into inorganic nothingness. God is trying to shift the focus of our lives away from “me” and onto him, onto his will and his desires. Only his will lasts forever. When we store up his treasures, we get to keep them forever. When we live for him, he lasts forever. That is resurrection life.
A Better Foundation
God is rehabilitating everything in my life away from the rotted “self” and towards his will and his desires. The dethronement of self isn’t always about what’s evil, it’s just displacing “me” from the center of the universe. For example, how does God want to rebuild my marriage based on his will and his desires and not what I want to get out of it? How does God want to rebuild my calling and purpose in life around his rulership and his interests and not how it fulfills my heart? What does it mean for everything in my life to revolve around God’s interests, and not my own?
This Easter week, we get to celebrate God’s mighty love for us. He loves us enough to get “self” out of the way, so that we can know him more intimately, and treasure him for an eternity.
Tags: resurrection, the cross, self, the gospel, death to self, evil desires, life in christ, evil nature
