Sins of the Spirit

Did you every stop to think, “our pride, our legalism, our self-focus, our self-righteousness, our bitterness, and our hatred can all be far worse to deal with than the more obvious sins of the flesh” (Guzik).

This was yet another eye opener to me this morning during my study time.

2nd Corinithians, 7:1 “…let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit…”

How do we cleanse ourselves from the defilement of the spirit?  All of the sins mentioned by Guzik are issues of the spirit.  They all take place on the inside.  The sins of the flesh can be easier to see and deal with.  But how do we deal with the heart issues?

Charles Spurgeon said “I wish we were more concerned about cleansing ourselves from the filthiness of the spirit“.  We must see the importance of this cleansing and we must deal with these spirit issues.

2nd Corinthians 7:10 “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation, but the sorrow of the world produces death”.

That is a big verse that would take hours to unfold.  But the part that spoke to me this morning is that Godly sorrow will produce repentance.  If you are just sorry, it won’t produce anything except bad feelings.  Perhaps even bad and angry feelings with ourselves.  I think this is what I do.  When I see my inside sins, I usually get angry with myself for not having self control.  Or I get angry with God for not healing me already.  So what am I doing?  I am taking an issue of the heart, and turning it into another issue of the heart…anger or bitterness.  I am sure this only magnifies the issue.  And then, the anger or bitterness probably triggers another issue of the spirit…you can see how this can be a problem.

However, if you have Godly sorrow, it will produce repentance, and repentance is taking action to change.  I believe when dealing with issues of the spirit, it requires daily repentance.  I think the first step in cleansing the spirit is recognizing the filthiness of the spirit in your life.  This is what happened to me this morning.  I realized my biggest sin issues are issues of the spirit.  As a matter of fact, my husband always teases me, and says my sins are small, that I don’t really do anything that bad.  Well, he only sees my fleshly sins.  If my biggest sins are of the spirit, of course he wouldn’t see those things. Only the Lord knows my thoughts and my heart.  What I realized this morning is that these sins of the spirit are just as important as fleshly sins, or perhaps even more important, since they are harder to deal with.  So yes, my sins are big and they are “that bad”.

When we see these sins of the spirit taking hold in our life, we must repent, and truly trust God to transformation us.  We must not feel bad, and let those feelings cause others sins of the spirit.  If we do feel sorrow, we need to remember it is He who will comfort us – 2nd Corinithians 7:6 – But God, who comforts the depressed…”.

I thank God for showing me this issue in my life.

~ by Karla on August 25, 2009.