Where The Thoughts Are.

(Excerpt)

 

We will begin our study this evening with Rom. 7:25: "With the mind I myself serve the law of God."

 

I repeat the expression that I made in the previous lesson--that it is in the realm of the thoughts where the law of God is served, where the contention against sin is carried on and the victory won.

 

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life--these tendencies to sin that are in the flesh,  drawing upon us--in this is the temptation. But temptation is not sin. Not until the desire is cherished is there sin.  But as soon as the desire is cherished, as soon as we consent to it and receive it into the mind and hold it there,  then there is sin; and whether that desire is carried out in action or not, the sin is committed.

 

In the mind, in fact,  we have already enjoyed the desire. In consenting to it we have already done the thing so far as the mind itself goes. All that can come after that is simply the sensual part, the sense of enjoying the satisfaction of the flesh.

 

This is shown in the Saviour's words in Matt. 5:27,28:

Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

 

Therefore the only place where the Lord could bring help and deliverance to us, is right in the place where the thoughts are, at the very root of the thing that is sin, the very point where the sin is conceived and where it begins.

 

Consequently, when tempted and tried as He was--when He was spit upon, when they struck Him in the face and on the head in the trial in Jerusalem and in all His public ministry when the Pharisees, the Sadducees,  the scribes, and the priests in their iniquity and hypocrisy, which He knew, were all doing everything they could to irritate Him and get Him stirred up--when He was constantly tried thus, His hand was never raised to return the blow. He never had to check any such motion, because not even the impulse to make any such motion was ever allowed. Yet He had our human nature in which such impulses are so natural. Why then did not these motions manifest themselves in our human nature in Him?

 

For the reason that He was so surrendered to the will of the Father that the power of God through the Holy Spirit so worked against the flesh and fought the battle right in the field of the thoughts, never, in the subtlest form of the thought was there allowed any such thing to conceive. So that under all these insults and grievous trials He was just as calm, our human nature in Him was just as calm, as it was when the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove overshadowed Him on the banks of the Jordan.

 

Now "let this mind be in you."

 

It is not enough for a Christian to become all stirred up and say a few spiteful words or raise the hand in resentment and then say to Himself, "O, I am a Christian; I must not say this or do that." No. We are to be so submitted to the power of God and to the influence of the Spirit of God that our thoughts shall be so completely controlled that the victory shall be won already and not even the impulse be allowed. Then we shall be Christians everywhere and all the time under all circumstances and against all influences. But until we do reach that point, we are not sure that we shall show a Christian spirit under all circumstances and at all times and against all insults.

 

As stated in the previous lesson, the things that were heaped upon Christ and which He bore were the very things that were the hardest for human nature to bear. And we, before we get through with the cause in which we are engaged are going to have to meet these very things that are hardest for human nature to bear, and unless we have the battle won already and are Christians indeed, we are not sure that we shall show the Christian spirit in these times when it is most needed. In fact, the time when the Christian spirit is most needed is all the time.

 

Now in Jesus the Lord has brought to us just the power that will give us into the hand of God and cause us to be so submitted to Him that He shall so fully control every thought that we shall be Christians all the time and everywhere, "bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."

 

1895 G.C. Sermon #18  by A.T. Jones