Spiritual vs. Physical Eyes

Here we come across a very familiar story about Adam and Eve. From this story, we can get some familiar, but important lessons--don't blame your sin on others, your sin is your sin; all temptation is deceivingly pretty; the love of man for self and to deify self causes sin, etc.

But today, I want to look at another aspect of this passage. In verse xxx, the serpent tells Eve that she will surely not die when she eats of the fruit even though God clearly says they will die when they of the fruit. Sure enough, after they ate the fruit, they did not die immediately in the physical sense, but they died--whether it was referring to the death of the close relationship between God or whether it was referring to the death of the bodies they had in the garden of Eden I can't say for sure--but they DID die.

We can see one of Satan's tactics in this passage that works deceivingly well in this passage. He makes us focus on the natural consequences of our sin, instead of the more important spiritual consequences of our sin. We always worry things like, "will someone see me sinning?" "will people think badly of me if they find out?" "will i get sick or STD's?" "will i ruin this friendship?" "will this sin affect anything after today?". Our minds get so focused on the natural consequences that we oftentimes forget the much greater consequence of being distanced from God because of our sin (He always forgives if we genuinely ask for forgiveness, but oh how often do we cling onto our sin and let our own guilty minds separate us from God.)

While these natural consequences are sometimes good because they cause us to pause and think if we really want to sin, or sometimes even prevents us from sinning, these natural consequences can also be very deceptive. When they steal the focus of our attention, we forget how bad the spiritual consequences are. While the thought of, "will someone see me sinning?" might keep the sin at bay for a little while, it will not always keep it at bay. Eventually we will find a way around it and we'll do it in a way where it minimizes people from seeing our ugly sin. We will hide and lie and put up a face. In such a place, we will ONLY be looking at the natural consequences and not the spiritual consequences.

However, recently, I've been learning to look at the spiritual consequences. To see how much damage it does to my relationship with God--the ultimate thing that matters in the end. When I start to focus on this, I think I find a kind of strength within me that can keep me from sinning for the long run. Let me explain through this analogy below:

I LOVE playing guitar and singing. I simply love it. I will do many things to improve my skills as a guitar player and as a singer. However, I also love to scream on roller coasters...I'm not quite sure why. There is a certain thrill and humor about it all. It just is mindless fun. However, after coming back from the amusement park one day, I realized that my screaming was not good for my voice. Screaming to me..like I said is pure fun, and there is no doubt about it. But since it was going to ruin my ability to sing and enjoy music in that sense, I willingly...easily,..gave up screaming for my singing's sake. Even though screaming was fun, I considered singing more important so it was easy to give up screaming.

Sin is very similar. Sin, in certain respects, gives us very temporary, unsatisfying thrills--but, nonetheless, thrills. To give up sin simply because of natural consequences is good, but this will eventually fall through because..it is a thrill. However, when we open up our spiritual eyes to see the joy we have in God and the affects of sin on our joy in God, we can see that we would never replace anything for the joy we find in God.

Are you only looking at the natural consequences? Have you considered the spiritual consequences of your actions? Are you going to open you spiritual eyes? Would you sacrifice fake joys to find the ultimate joy (and I don't mean some christian lingo, but I mean actual ultimate joy) that is found in God alone?

Created about 2 years ago