November 2 Daily Devotional

Bible Reading:

Hebrews 12:4:

⁴Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.

Devotional:

One who in mature years and in his right mind does not at times fight against this or that sin is almost unimaginable. The human heart is such an unfathomable riddle, even with highway robbers and drunkards we have been surprised sometimes by a shy tenderness, which manifested itself in an aversion to more than one sin which in better circles is given all too frequently free passage.

But this does not make every resistance that is offered to some striking sin, whether in oneself or in others, by any means always what the Apostle calls striving against sin (Hebrews 12:4).

Everything here hinges upon the question of what it is that moves you to oppose this or that sin. One will avoid a sin from concern for his health. Especially with sensual sin this motive is often preponderant. Another is on his guard, lest, if his sin became known, it would injure his good name. A third resists a temptation because yielding to it would ruin him financially. A fourth puts a mark against a particular sin because in his narrow circle of life it is sharply condemned. Just call to mind Sabbath desecration. And in this way and by all sorts of persons this or that sin is put under the ban from reasons that have nothing to do with the real striving against sin. With not a few there is even no mention of a conscious motive, and all their opposition to this or that sin springs from a certain moral instinct, from the judgment of public opinion, or from a certain impulse to be decent. So in our civilized circles profanity has noticeably decreased, but far more because it is now looked upon as coarse and impolite than from fear of the Holy God.

Now you should not look down from your own heights upon all this opposition to all sorts of sin and count it indifferent.

Because of its great contagiousness, every sin that comes into prominence is so dangerous. Sin, apart from its guilt before God, is by itself a moral disease, and everything that reacts against the outbreak or the progress of this disease is gain.

Only this opposition to any sin whatever without higher motive brings no spiritual gain.

What David exclaimed: "Against thee, thee only have I sinned" remains the maxim here. And only when you strive against sin because sin opposes God, does your striving obtain the holy, higher character.

Striving against sin, because sin resists God and God resists sin, brings you close to Him. Your struggle then remains no merely moral conflict, but it becomes religious, it becomes an expression of godliness, and at the same time a precious means of extending your being near unto God into your whole life.

See it in the life of nations and of societies, how the waging of a common war creates alliances, makes close affiliations and knits ties for the present and the future.

The same is seen in church and public life. When some great political issue awaits decision by ballot the preliminary campaign will create fellowships between temporary fellow-members of clubs which affects their whole future. Yea, in every department of life it is evident, again and again that nothing unites so closely and brings people so near together as a fight against a common foe.

The same applies to the striving against sin, if in all honesty you wage this war because sin is inimical to God.

For then God and you fight one and the selfsame battle. Then this conflict of itself impels you to join forces with Him. Then you do not fight alone but with God, and with the weapons which He furnishes you for this battle, under Christ as your Captain. There is nothing that makes you come so near unto God, and remain there, as this lifelong continuance of the bitter fight against the enemy of God, and of your own soul, and of the souls of your loved ones.

But, then, let it be a lifelong striving not against one particular sin, but against sin, against all the sinful influences, instigations and workings that go out from Satan upon yourself and upon all your surroundings.

Surely, there are bosom sins, and it is no minor fault when you know your heart so little that you should not be able to confess before God what sin most assaults and vanquishes you. It cannot be otherwise, therefore, but that every one who takes his inner life seriously is more specially on his guard against certain besetting sins, and is more exercised in his thoughts and in his prayers with these than with other sins. His effort directs itself most strongly against that evil which overcame him most frequently and worked him most harm. And in the remembrance, the shame and the sorrow at having been vanquished in the battle against this particular sin will obtrude themselves most strongly upon him. It was this sin that inflicted upon him the most cruel wound and left the blackest mark.

But do not overlook the danger that lurks in this.

For is it not heart-breaking to see to what a number of lesser sins in their character-life even seriously-minded Christians are almost stone blind?

And for this, one-sided striving against some special sin is largely responsible.

Where a greater danger threatens, all lesser dangers that might harm us are almost of themselves lost from sight.

When one of your loved ones lies at the point of death, no one inquires after the concerns of cellar and kitchen. When a runaway horse races through the streets no one looks out to avoid muddy places but scurries out of the way. When fire breaks out in your house no one is troubled about the draught from an open window. When someone in the water is in danger of drowning, the rescuer does not ask whether in doing it he might tear his clothes. When war breaks out, all sorts of other quarrels however important are silenced. And thus a more serious wrong will always cause the fight against a lesser wrong to weaken.

And such, likewise, is the course of things, in your soul.

As long as you continue to struggle to resist and to avert the one sin which tempts you the strongest, many other sins have almost free play and their progress is unnoticed. He who continues to wage the main fight against his arrogance and pride, against his sensual propensity or against his thirst for gold, thereby actually exposes himself to the danger that little untruths, dishonesties, infidelities, bitter animosities, vanities, selfishnesses, and so on, become almost a second nature to him, strike root ever more deeply in his heart and sully his inner life.

This, then, is only noticed when the worst enemy has at last been as good as worsted [defeated]. Then the tenderness of conscience concerns itself at once with these erstwhile neglected sins, and it frightens one to see the luxurious growth of weeds in the garden of his heart.

And to what cause is this disheartening result to be attributed save to this fact, that one indeed strove to undo himself of his worst foe, but had no consideration for the fight against sin on the ground that God fights against it.

Thereby it remained an effort on his part to liberate his person, to measure his strength of spirit and of will against the strength of this particular sin. A being dissatisfied with oneself every time defeat was suffered, and the will not to rest until victory was achieved. But it went on outside of the hidden walk with God. There was invocation of God's help to overcome the enemy of your soul, but there was no awakening on the part of your soul to beat off as a poisonous adder the enemy of your God. And, therefore, such a battle could not bring you nearer to God, but threw you every time again back upon yourself.

Should you, therefore, give up the fight against the sin that tempts you most and only give your attention to your numerous lesser sins ?

Of course not. He who would leave the main entrance to the fortress unprotected in order to resist the assault at the side entrances, would soon find himself attacked in the rear and be forced to abandon all resistance.

No, what you should do is, with an eye open to the moral danger that threatens you, by a far more serious exercise of your powers, to fight to the finish, the sooner the better, the battle against your special sin, not by giving it free play but by breaking with it once and for all.

Thus only will you obtain free hands, in the Lord's strength, to bring spiritual harmony into the further discords of your soul.

And that this is possible is evident from the witness on the part of many a disciplined child of God who finally girded on the whole armor of God and triumphed gloriously.

For this is the wrong in question, that one makes his besetting sin his bosom sin, and so comes to regard this particular sin as an evil that by a certain fatality he is doomed to fight till his death.

The enigma of our human heart is, that we fight our besetting sin and at the same time cozen it. A duality within whereby, through lack of heroic action, we accustom ourselves to it as to a necessity of life.

It is, then, not the spirit in us, which, united with the Spirit of God, fights in our soul God's battle against sin for God's sake, but a dual which we fight within ourselves for reasons of our own.

But this evil must be overcome.

It must become a lifelong fight against every sin, against our evil nature for the sake of the holiness of God.

The child of God, for the sake of coming closer to his holy God, must take service under Christ in the warfare which God himself wages against Satan and his workings; and thus simultaneously reach the twofold result: that he overcomes where thus far he suffered defeat, and whereas he wandered away from his God, now he knows himself to be near to Him.