Thursday, January 26, 2012

The Cost of Discipleship - Chapter 10

Woman

Adherence to Jesus allows no free rein to desire unless it be accompanied by love. To follow Jesus means self-renunciation and absolute adherence to him, and therefore a will dominated by lust can never be allowed to do what it likes.

Yeah, you guessed it... This chapter deals with lust.

In this chapter Bonhoeffer makes a biblically supported argument against sexual immorality. I would consider the message of xxxchurch to be some sort of contemporary to what Bonhoeffer (and many other prominent theologians of the past) was (were) saying.

The idea of sexual purity is not a very popular one. In the university setting in which I find myself, it is not uncommon to come to class on a Monday morning and to hear someone boast of their sexual accomplishments that took place over the weekend. Man, we were made for so much more than to screw around on weekends and slave through our weeks...

I find Romans 6:11-14 particularly powerful when tackling the issue of sin...

"So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace."

To rid ourselves of sin is the key to closeness with the Lord. This is something that we have to understand before we start to question why we can't hear from God.

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