Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
10/13/2022
How do Christians belittle God?
What is sin? How would you define it? Let’s look at Romans 3:23 “Sin is first the disposition of the human heart to prefer human glory — especially self-glory — over God’s glory.” So we have exchanged God’s glory for something that we prefer more. That is sin! That is what separates us from God.
So how does NOT honoring God belittle him?
That’s verse 23. Verse 24 is the opposite. One verse defining sin, the other defining God’s response to that sin — and that holds the key to how we become unshakable people in this world. Vs 24 says, “ we must be justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is Christ Jesus”
John Piper said that “these words of God through the apostle Paul tells us about our true condition and they tell us about what God has done to remedy that condition. In fact, he says that we should take these two verses and make them the foundation of our lives because they will carry us through 1000 crises.
He said to put them at the center of your life, just like the sun is at the center of the planets in the solar system. God’s truth…his word… is that singular truth that God designed to be at the center of your life because His truth will hold the orbiting planets of all the concerns and aspects of your life in place.
Can you visualize that?
But if you allow the truth of Romans 3;23 and 24 to be marginalized and slip out to the rim like Neptune and Pluto are out there – do you know what would happen? If the sun were moved from the center to the periphery of the solar system, everything would be destroyed. Everything would be confusing, and out of sync and there would be utter destruction. Which is why so many church-going Christians stumble through life wondering why their lives are so strangely perplexed, so out of sync and out of order because nothing seems to be working right.”
It’s because the truth of the magnificent gospel is no longer at the center anymore. It’s not the Son that’s holding everything in place. It doesn’t have the weight of gravity to pull all things together. Something else is at the center.
And every single one of us should be asking ourselves right now,
what’s that in my life?
What is that something in my life that keeps coming back again and again and again? I go there in the morning and I go at noon time I go there at night, what is it for you? verse 23 says that the universal need in the world of every person has to do with sin. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
There are no exceptions.
There is another way to say it ”all have sinned and are lacking
the glory of God.”
Everybody in the world is a truth-suppressor until God gets ahold of us. We suppress the truth in our own unrighteousness. And then look at verse 23 “they exchange the glory of the immortal god for images “ Romans 1: 23 -28 says something especially poignant, it says “they disapproved of having God in their knowledge.” that’s a literal translation.
“They disapproved of having God in their knowledge”! Wow!
So let’s go back to the beginning. God designed the world to display his glory and mankind chooses to dispense with his glory to put something else at the center of their lives and love it, live for it, and think about it, and dwell on it, and value it, so it’s not surprising that the design of God…the joy of God…
the peace of God would be destroyed in their life.
There is dysfunction and chaos and misery all over the world because the whole world is in rebellion against valuing the glory of God above all things. That’s why the world and your life are in the condition that it’s in. Sin simply rejects the supreme value of God, meaning that we’ve belittled God, by exchanging his glory for some kind of substitute. I hope you will take the time this morning and examine what that is in your life.
So how do we get right with God when we have belittled him? Romans 3:24 “and all are justified by his grace, as a gift, to the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus.” There’s no other way.
Lord open our hearts and minds to see with spirit eyes…the truth. Amen
Casting Crowns Who Am I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBcqria2wmg
Excerpts are taken from Desiring God Becoming Unshakable in a World of Pain
