Morning By Morning #150

You…hate wickedness.

Psalm 45:7

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

“Be angry and do not sin” (Eph. 4:26 ESV). There can hardly be any goodness in a person if he is not angry at sin, for he who loves truth must hate every evil. Oh, how our Lord Jesus hated it when temptation came to Him! Three times it attacked Him in different ways, but He always confronted it with: “Get thee behind me, Satan” (Luke 4:8 KJV). He hated it in others no less fervently, yet He showed His hate more often through tears of pity than through words of rebuke. What words could be more stern and “Elijah-like,” however, than the statement, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for [you] devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer” (Matt. 23:14 KJV).

Jesus hated wickedness so much that He shed His blood in order to wound it to the heart, He died that it would die, He was buried so He could bury it in His tomb, and He rose again that He could forever trample it beneath His feet. Christ is the gospel and that gospel is opposed to wickedness in every form. Wickedness adorns itself in beautiful garments and imitates the language of holiness; but the teachings of Jesus, like His “whip…of cords” (John 2:15), chase it out of the temple and will not tolerate it in the church.

Thus, what a war also rages “between Christ and Belial” (2 Cor. 6:15) inside the heart where Jesus reigns! And when our Redeemer returns as Judge with the thundering words, “Away from me, all you evildoers!” (Luke 13:27), these very words will be nothing but a continuation of His earthly teaching concerning sin and will show His abhorrence of iniquity. As warm as His love is for sinners is how hot is His hatred of sin; and as perfect as is His righteousness is how complete will be the destruction of every kind of wickedness.

Oh, You glorious champion of right and destroyer of wrong! For this very cause “God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointingyou with the oil of joy” (Heb. 1:9).

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Some people criticize Christians who believe in the doctrine of grace known as the perseverance of the saints. They often say something along the lines of, “You only believe you are eternally secure in Christ so you can have a license to sin.” This shows a total misunderstanding of the nature of a mature believer’s heart, for a mature believer desires to walk in obedience, yet still struggles with the inner battle common to all of us. The Scriptures even warn us about “godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 4).

Even the apostle Paul was a person like us who struggled with sin, for he wrote, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing” (Rom. 7:15, 18 – 19). Just a few verses later he complained and asked, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (v. 24). Then he gave us the glorious answer:

“Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (v. 25).