You clean the outside of the cup… but inside… self-indulgence (I)

Someone I know and love told me one time, “I didn’t realize how selfish I was until I got married.” I would like to say that this is a very common thing, but I don’t believe it is. What I do believe is that the things that compelled this young woman to come to this conclusion, are very common. What seems to happens, is that we present ourselves as “clean cups.” I mean by this the same thing that Jesus meant in this partial quote from Matthew 23:25. He was talking to the Scribes and the Pharisees and complaining that they were all about external purity, looking good on the outside. But the inner workings of the heart were “like dead men’s bones full of corruption” (verse 27). And in marriage, after the honeymoon is over, it is “out of the heart of man, that the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). What I am saying, is that when the honeymoon is over our behaviour, and what comes out of our mouths, is what is really there on the inside even, perhaps especially, the blame!

I have often thought that there is a kind of a Catch-22 with the gospel. The good news that God gave His Son to rescue us from ourselves makes no sense, when we are in denial of our need to be rescued. And many times we are in denial of our need to be rescued, because though we know at some level that we are fatally flawed, we don’t see any way out of our predicament. This is where those with a serious substance abuse have an advantage. It is that there seems to be a lot of truth in the saying that we will not change, until the pain of being stuck becomes greater than the pain and fear of change. And in substance abuse, the consequences mount, and mount , and mount. C. S. Lewis said it well when he said that pain is God’s megaphone shouting at us that something is wrong. In fact, it was pain that helped me to come out of denial, and to cry out to God for help!

So then God is at work drawing us to Himself in and through the pain. And the good news is that when we repent and turn to Him we received His unconditional love and acceptance. And as we start to see and feel this unconditional love and acceptance, we received the courage and the grace to bring to Him to fix, what without Him we cannot fix. When Jesus said that we cannot be His disciple unless we take up our cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23), He was talking about our cooperating with Him in putting to death the self-indulgence that is part and parcel of our fallen human condition. You see if we are to be made fit for heaven, then there needs to be radical change on the inside. For if there is no change on the inside, it will come out on the outside! So then our entrance into heaven, it is not about being good enough, rather it is about our willingness to cooperate with Him in being changed from the inside out! It is here that we truly find life (Matthew 10:39).

Father, there cannot be any self indulgence in heaven, or it wouldn’t be heaven. There can be no manipulation or backbiting our selfishness or putting one another down etc., etc. And so Lord we need to be changed! Thank You that when we see You we will be like You, because we will see You as You are (1 John 3:2). In the meantime Lord, open our eyes more and more to see You as You are in the here and now, and so in and through Your tender mercies to be in the process of being transformed. And we will give you all the honour, all the glory and all the praise in Jesus Name Amen