Tag Archives: Sermon on the Mount

Consider the Lilies in Kierkegaard.

13 Tuesday Mar 2018

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This is not a comprehensive analysis of Kierkegaard on this point — just a demonstration that one cannot simply quote from one of his books and say, “Kierkegaard” says. In book II of Either/Or, Judge Wilhelm  (Equilibrium) extols work for a man:

The question whether it might not be possible to imagine a world in which it was not necessary to work in order to live is really  an idle question since it does not deal with the given reality but with a feigned situation. This, however, is always an attempt to belittle the ethical view. For if it were a perfection on the part of existence not to have to work, then man’s life would be the most perfect who didn’t have to. Then one could say that it was a duty to work only by attaching the word duty to a sense of dolorous necessity….The duty of working in order to live expresses the universal-human, and it expresses the universal also in another sense because it expresses freedom. It is precisely by working that man makes himself free, by working he become lord over nature, by working he shows he is higher than nature.

Or might life lose its beauty for the fact that a man must work in order to live? We are back again at the same only point: everything depends upon what one understands by beauty. It is beautiful to see the lilies of the field (though they sew not neither do they spin) so clothed that even Solomon in all his glory was not so magnificent; it is beautiful to see birds without anxiety finding their food; it is beautiful to see Adam and Eve in Paradise whether they could get everything they pointed at; but it is still more beautiful to see a man earning by his work what he has need of. (Loire, 286-287).

Now there are number of problems with Judge Wilhelm’s statement. Just to take two, Adam and Eve did have work in the Garden, and the work we experience now suffers from the Curse.  He captures the duty (but misses all else). He also gets the lilies wrong. He treats the lilies and birds, as yes, yes, but the important thing is duty and effort.

In Consider the Lilies, Kierkegaard also takes up Jesus’ observation from the Sermon on the Mount to, “consider the lilies”:

This is how it is with the gospel. The most important thing for the gospel is not to reprimand and scold; what is most important for the gospel is to get human beings to follow its guidance. That is why it says, “Seek first.” In so doing, it muzzles, so to speak, all of a  persona objects, brings him to silence, and gets him actually to being first this seeking. And then this seeking satisfies a human being in such a way that it now becomes true that he simply and solely seeks God’s kingdom.

(Kirmmse, 38). Finally, let us consider the original and ask which Kierkegaard came more in line with Jesus:

Matthew 6:25–34 (ESV)

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Richard Sibbes, The Art of Self-Humbling.1

11 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in Humility, Richard Sibbes, Uncategorized

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Sibbes sermon, “The Art of Self-Humbling” sets forth the “what”, “how” and “why” of humility: why should we humble ourselves.  We should not that “humiliation” and humbling are not matters which are prized by our culture. In “Humiliation: Its Nature and Consequences” (Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online June 2010,  38 (2) 195-204) note that humiliation takes place when, ” an individual suffers humiliation when he makes a bid or claim to a certain social status, has this bid or claim fail publicly, and has it fail at the hands of another person or persons who have the status necessary to reject the claim. Finally, what is denied is not only the status claim itself, but also and more fundamentally the individual’s very status to have made such a claim at all.”  The results of such humiliation are substantial: “Suffering severe humiliation has been shown empirically to plunge individuals into major depressions, suicidal states, and severe anxiety states, including ones characteristic of posttraumatic stress disorder.”

Yet, Sibbes in this sermon commends humbling oneself. How can such things be squared? How can humility be good and yet humiliation be troublesome? Before we get into Sibbes’ help on this issue, we should consider this point. The trouble of humiliation is that one claims to a social status which cannot be maintained: it is an attack upon one’s identity. The identity is predicated upon what other people think of you.  When you fail to maintain your anticipated status, you feel humiliation.

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount repeatedly warns against being “seen” by others and establishing some status on the basis of what others think about you (or what you cause others to think about you). Matt. 6:1. When it comes to any sort of good work, giving alms, praying, fasting, he warns against doing such things so that others can see you and praise you. Jesus calls these people hypocrites.

Our identity is to be grounded in God’s judgment — not the judgment of others. Paul can so far as to say that no charge can be brought against God’s elect, “It is God who justifies”. Rom. 8:33. When it comes to what others think of him, Paul writes, “If I must boast, I will boast of the things which show my weakness.”  2 Cor. 11:30.

The humility of a Christian is our humility before God. We measure ourselves before God and care only of God’s judgment: that is the basis of our humility and our honor. If we are right before our king, then we are freed to disregard what other think of us.

The humility of a Christian frees one from the psychological “need” to be thought well of by others.  But we must humble ourselves before God — even a king who has the greatest social status of any group:

Therefore it is not unbefitting kings to humble themselves before God, seeing they have to deal with him who is a ‘consuming fire,’ Heb. 12:29, before whom the very angels cover their faces. I say it is no shame for the greatest monarch of the earth to abase himself when he hath to do with God; yea, kings, of all other persons, ought most to humble themselves, to shew their thankfulness to God, who hath raised them from their brethren to be heads of his people. And considering the endowments which kings usually have, they are bound to humble themselves, as also in regard of the authority and power which God hath put into their hands, saying, ‘By me kings reign,’ Prov. 8:15. But usually we see, from the beginning of the world, that kings forget God. Where there is not grace above nature, there kings will not stoop to Christ; but so far as it agrees with their pleasure and will, so far shall Christ be served, and no farther.

 Richard Sibbes, “The Art of Self-Humbling”, The Complete Works of Richard Sibbes, ed. Alexander Balloch Grosart, vol. 6 (Edinburgh; London; Dublin: James Nichol; James Nisbet and Co.; W. Robertson, 1863), 45.

Jeremiah Burroughs on Inheriting the Earth

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

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Now I come to that which I have here in the Text.
For they shall inherit the earth.

It’s as strange a promise as any we have in Scripture, As much against carnal reason as any thing almost in all the book of God: —— Blessed are the meeke: —— I you will say they are blessed, they may get to heaven when they dye, but they are like to suffer a great deale of wrong while they live: Nay if we do put up wrongs and beare with others that do us injuries, we may have wrongs enough, and we may quickly loose all that ever we have, this is the reasoning of a carnal heart, but Jesus Christ if you dare trust him, he professes that of all men in the world the meek are those that shall inherit the earth, it shall be better with them in the earth then with other men.

Jeremiah Burroughs, “Sermon XII or Meeke Persons Subjects for Christ to Comfort,” in The Saints’ Happiness (London: William Greenhill; John Yates; William Bridge; William Aderly; Philip Nye; Mathew Mead, 1660), 190.

Blessed are Those Who Mourn

04 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in Matthew, Peacemaking, Peacemaking, Uncategorized

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Tomorrow night at Vertical Church Burbank (a church plant in Burbank), I will be teaching the second lesson in a series for a Peacemaking Culture, Blessed are Those Who Mourn. Here is the first section:

Blessed are those who mourn
For they shall be comforted.

A promise:
To mourn is to be blessed

Four points:
What sort of mourning is blessed?
What hinders mourning?
What does it mean to be comforted?
How does this relate to peacemaking?

I. What sort of mourning is blessed?

A. You mourn when you lose something you love.

1. A lost coffee cup. You mourn little because you love the thing lost little.

2. A lost child: Jacob in Genesis 38: “No, I shall go down to Sheol mourning.” Jacob mourned greatly because he loved greatly. Other examples, David and Bathsheba’s son. 2 Sam. 12:16. Absalom 2 Sam. 18:33. Jesus and Lazarus John 11:35.

B. Mourning exposes the true treasures of our heart. It is easy to fake words, smiles, deeds. But one cannot fake true tears. Mourning is an x-ray of the soul, it exposes our true love. There is a direct line from the depth of the heart to our tears.

1. Not all mourning is for a good cause: 2 Kings 21. Ahab covets Naboth’s vineyard. When Naboth refuses to sin and lose his family’s land, Ahab mourns the loss of his wicked coveting. He was “vexed and sullen”. 2 Kings 21:4. Ahab’s coveting exposed the wicked coveting of Ahab’s heart.

2. Mourning is a truth-telling mechanism. The Proverbs warn us against the man who “winks with his eye.” Prov. 10:10. We can easily be taken in by pleasant shows.

3. Inside the church, the trick is called hypocrisy. Jesus speaks of the hypocrite who pretends to sorrow:

a. Matthew 6:16–18 (ESV)

16 And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

b. Do you see what the hypocrite loves? He does not love the praise of God, but rather loves the praise of other people. What I want you to see now is that he can only pretend to mourn — he does not actually mourn. He wears mourning like a coat to pretend that he loves the praise of God.

4. We know that God will not bless Ahab’s mourning. Psalm 5 says that God does not delight in wickedness. We know that God will not bless the hypocrite’s false mourning.

C. Since mourning reveals the love and treasure of our heart, we know that God will only bless those who love the things which God loves. What love does God seek to reward: Note the shift: God does not reward because we are merely sad: otherwise Ahab and the hypocrite would be rewarded. God rewards us because our sorrow flows from a right love.

D. Context for the promise that God will bless mourning.

1. The immediate context: This promise comes between poor in spirit and meekness. Poor in spirit means to be completely empty of self-righteousness and self-importance. Meekness is to be led by God.

2. It comes after Matt. 4:17 which marked the beginning of Jesus’ ministry: “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”It comes after John the Baptist’s call for repentance.

3. The Epistle of James can give us insight into the Sermon on the Mount, because it is largely derived from the Sermon. In James 4:6-10 we find the same combination of repentance, mourning and humility as the ground for God’s comfort:

James 4:6–10 (ESV)

6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.

Here we see mourning tied to repentance.

4. In the remainder of the Scripture we see the relationship between repentance for sin and mourning:

a. Psalm 40:12 (ESV)

12  For evils have encompassed me
beyond number;
my iniquities have overtaken me,
and I cannot see;
they are more than the hairs of my head;
my heart fails me.

b. The entire book of Lamentations works out this relationship between sin and mourning at great length.

5. Mourning in repentance will be blessed.

a. Since blessed mourning is the mourning of true repentance, we know that such mourning is a gift of God.

b. Thomas Watson on the proper object of spiritual mourning:

There are two objects of spiritual mourning—sin and misery.
The first object of spiritual mourning is SIN; and that twofold, our own sin; and the sin of others.
1. Our own sin. Sin must have tears. While we carry the fire of sin about with us—we must carry the water of tears to quench it! (Ezekiel 7:16). ‘They are not blessed’ (says Chrysostom) ‘who mourn for the dead—but rather those who mourn for sin.’ And indeed it is with good reason we mourn for sin, if we consider the guilt of sin, which binds over to wrath. Will not a guilty person weep, who is to be bound over to the penalty? Every sinner is to be tried for his life and is sure to be cast away—if sovereign mercy does not become an advocate for him.
The pollution of sin. Sin is a plague spot, and will you not labor to wash away this spot with your tears? Sin makes a man worse than a toad or serpent. The serpent has nothing but what God has put into —but the sinner has that which the devil has put into him. ‘Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?’ (Acts 5:3). What a strange metamorphosis has sin made! The soul, which was once of an azure brightness, sin has made of a sable color! We have in our hearts the seed of the unpardonable sin. We have the seed of all those sins for which the damned are now tormented! And shall we not mourn? He who does not mourn, has surely lost the use of his reason. But every mourning for sin is not sufficient to entitle a man to blessedness. I shall show what is not the right gospel-mourning for sin, and then what is the right gospel-mourning for sin.

The Beatitudes, Sermon 6.

c. True spiritual mourning will only come we have a love which is fixed upon the right object, and we realize that we have lost something we love. We mourn because we have sinned God, and thus rightly incur God’s judgment. We mourning because we have thrown away holiness, “without which no one will see God”. Heb. 12:14. In sin we have lost both God and our own life.

d. Even as believers we are still in a state where mourning is appropriate, because we still continue to sin and could even be said to presume upon the grace of God:

A man who truly faces himself, and examines himself and his life, is a man who must of necessity mourn for his sins also, for the things he does. Now the great experts in the life of the spirit have always recommended self–examination. They all recommend and practice it themselves. They say it is a good thing for every man to pause at the end of the day and meditate upon himself, to run quickly over his life, and ask, what have I done, what have I said, what have I thought, how have I behaved with respect others? Now if you do that any night of your life, you’ll find that you have done things which you should not have done, you will be conscious of having harbored thoughts and ideas and feelings which are quite unworthy. And, as he realizes these things, any man who is it all Christian is smitten with the sense of grief and sorrow that he was ever capable of such things in action or in thought, and that makes him mourn. But he does not stop merely at things he has done, he meditates upon and contemplates his actions and his state and condition of sinfulness, and as he thus examines himself, he must go through the experience of Romans 7. He must become aware of these evil principles that are with in him. He must ask himself, what is it in me that it makes me behave like that? Why should I be irritable? Why should I be bad tempered? Why am I not able to control myself? Why do I harbor that unkind, jealous and envious thought? What is it in me? And he discovers this war in his members, and he hates it and mourns because of it. It is quite inevitable. Now this is not imagination; it is actual experience and true to fact. Is a very thoroughgoing test. If I object to this kind of teaching, it just means that I do not mourn and therefore I am not one of the people who, or Lord says, are blessed. If I regard this as nothing but morbidity, something a man should not do, I am simply proclaiming the fact that I am not spiritual[.]

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed Are They That Mourn”.

E. A Mourning Mixed With Longing

The spiritual mourning which God blesses, is a mourning for the loss of the beloved — but also a mourning which moves toward the beloved. We mourn over our sin because it entails the loss of God, but that mourning clears our soul and moves us toward God. Repentance also turns from sin and to God.

True Gospel-mourning which God blesses is a mourning which desires God.

Growing Peace in a Garden

19 Friday Aug 2016

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(Monet, Garden Gate, 1881)

Beginning this week, I have been tasked with teaching a series to help create a peacemaking culture in the local congregation. We hope that this will be something which may be of use to others in the future. Anyway, here is the series introduction:

The Goal of this Series

I have a garden. But nothing will grow there, if I do not plant and water; care for the soil, drive off pests, prune, support. Nothing I do makes the seed grow; but if I do not work, nothing will grow.

My garden takes constant care. If I fail to water, the plants will die. If I do not tend the soil, the plants will be weak. If I do not drive off insects and vermin, I will lose all my work. My garden may never be perfect; but if I do my work, my garden will be fruitful.

A congregation of God’s people, gathered for worship is a garden, a vineyard. God calls his people his vineyard from whom God expects fruit. And one of sweetest fruits, one with a beautiful color and a ravishing scent is the fruit of peace.

Paul begins each of his letter with a prayer for peace: “and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Peter prays, “peace be multiplied to you” (1 Peter 1:2). If we must pray for it, then it is something given to us. And if it something which the apostles constantly pray that God will bestow, then peace must be very precious.

Peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace ….” (Gal. 5:22). Jesus says that he is the one who gives peace, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” (John 14:27).  Paul says that God is the “God of peace” (Rom. 15:33).

Jesus is “our peace” (Eph. 2:14). And so we have “peace with God” (Rom. 5:1), and there is also peace among men. (Eph. 2:14-15). Indeed, when the Son came into the world, the angels sang of the peace brought into creation:

Glory to God in the highest

And on earth peace among those with whom he is well pleased.

Luke 2:14. This peace of God, this peace which passes all understanding, is the divine gift of the sovereign God. Just as the gardener cannot make the seed grow, so the Christian cannot force the gift of peace.

Although we know that peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, we can so desire the good of peace and unity that we can try and force a peace. There can be a peace of silence and acquiescence, in which we are peaceful because we simply don’t care. There is a political peace, where we are peace in our actions but not in our hearts. It is a lack of fighting, and yet without any divine love. We can have a manipulative peace, or a fearful peace. We can have a peace which is based upon all of us getting along – but it is a peace which does not require Christ.

These false varieties of peace are like weeds growing bright green in the garden – they may even be strong and healthy, but there is no fruit. Or perhaps we could think of them like plastic grapes and silk flowers which look real from a distance.

And so we cannot obtain peace directly anymore than we can make the seed grow. Rather, to obtain peace we must learn to tend the garden of the church in such a way that peace naturally grows from the soil. We will have a great deal of work; we will need to water, and prune and support and drive off squirrels. But, we know from the promise of God and the constant demonstration of his work in the church, that peace – not perfect, due to our ongoing sin – will blossom and come to fruition.

In this series, our goal is to learn and live that sort of life which most naturally flowers into peace.  To do that, we will work through the Sermon on the Mount.

As obvious as it may be to jump ahead to love one’s enemies, or turn the other check, we are going to start at the beginning. We will trust there is wisdom in the Scripture to teach us in the right order, to uncover our weakness and correct those thing which are twisted in just the right order.

 

 

Persecuted Peacemakers

06 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Matthew, Ministry, Peacemaking

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Now it is interesting to observe that this particular Beatitude follows immediately the reference to the peacemakers. In a since it is because the Christian is a peacemaker that he is persecuted. What a wealth of insight and understanding this gives us into the nature of the Christian life! I do not think you will ever find the biblical doctrines of sin and the world put more perfectly anywhere in Scripture than in just these two Beatitudes — “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.” If a Christian man is a peacemaker this is what happens to him.

Martyn Llody-Jones, “The Christian and Persecution”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones, “Blessed are the Poor in Spirit”

19 Friday Jun 2015

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Blessed are the poor in Spirit

For theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Summary of the Sermon

“[T]hese Beattitudes indicate more clearly than anything else in Scripture the utter and essential difference between the natural man and the Christian….Now there is perhaps no statement that underlies and emphasizes that difference more than this ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’ Let me show the contrast. This is something which is not only not admired in the world; it is despised by it….What emphasis the world places on its belief in self-reliance, self-confidence and self-expression!” (35)

MLJ then develops the concept of “poor in spirit” in concrete examples.

First, it is a matter of seeing one’s sinfulness and poverty before God — not as a matter of being better or worse than other human beings.

Second, to be “poor in spirit” is different than the emphasis on “personality” — by this I believe he means the charismatic leader type, the one who is able to gain a great deal of personal attention, attention directed to him (or her). He contrasts this to the truly great leaders of the Church, “You read the old recovers of the activities of God’s greatest workers, the great evangelists and others, and you observe how self-effacing they were. But, today, we are experiencing something that is almost a complete reversal of this. Advertisements and photographs are being put into the foreground.” (37)

He then has this footnote, “I was interested to observe, since stating the above, Bishop Frank Houghton’s tribute in The Christian to the late Miss Amy Carmichael. He points out how one who made such free use of pictures and photographs in all her books never once inserted a photograph of herself.”

Third, to be “poor in spirit” is not a groveling humility, the Uriah Heep, “I’m just a humble man shtick.”

Fourth, nor is it the suppression of one’s actual personality, it is not the crushing of one’s humanity.

What is it then: It is a human being before God:

Isaiah 57:15 (ESV)
15  For thus says the One who is high and lifted up,
who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy:
“I dwell in the high and holy place,
and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly,
and to revive the heart of the contrite.

That then is what it meant by being “poor in spirit.” It means a complete absence of pride, a complete absence of self-assurance and of self-reliance. it means a consciousness that we are nothing in the presence of God. It is nothing, then, that we can produce; it is nothing that we can do in ourselves. It is just this tremendous awareness of our utter nothingness as we come face-to-face with God. That is to be “poor in spirit.” Let me put it as strongly as I can, and I do so on the basis of the teaching of the Bible. It means this, that if we are truly Christian we shall not rely upon our natural birth.” 40-41

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How May a Beloved Lust be Discovered and Mortified? (Part 1)

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Matthew, Mortification, Sanctification

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How May Beloved Lusts Be Discovered and Mortified

Benjamin Needler’s sermon How May Beloved Lusts be Discovered and Mortified? Considers the text of Matthew 5:29-30:

29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Matthew 5:29–30 (ESV)

We Must Kill Our Sin

He first makes a series of observations on the text. He principally takes the text as referring to the need to stop all beloved lusts which draw us unto sin. He explains that mortification is a synergistic act of human and God:

(i.) That we ourselves must engage in the mortifying of our lusts.—Sinners, with their own hands, must pull out their own eyes. It is not enough to cry unto God for help, and, in the mean time, to be careless and idle, as if nothing were to be done on our part. Mortification is a work incumbent upon us, although we are empowered thereunto by the Spirit: “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” (Rom. 8:13.) We must mortify, although by the Spirit. The duty is ours, though the strength be God’s. So here: “If thy right eye offend thee, thou thyself pluck it out, and cast it from thee.”

(ii.) That we must be a willing people in this, as in all other duties.—A Christian dieth to sin, is not put to death.

(2.) It is not said, “If thine eye offend thee, observe it more than ordinarily, look narrowly to it,” but, “pluck it out;” to note, that nothing less is like to do our souls good, than the mortifying, the killing, the cutting off of our corruptions.—

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 52. The degree of this break must be absolute, a death:

It is not only said, “Pluck it out,” but, “Cast it from thee;” to note, that it is not enough for a man to leave his sin for the present, but he must renounce it for ever.—We must not part with sin, as with a friend, with a purpose to see it again, and to have the same familiarity with it as before, or possibly greater. Amantium irœ amoris redintegratio est: “The falling-out of lovers is the renewing of love.” We must not only shake hands with it, but shake our hands of it, as Paul did shake the viper off his hand into the fire: “Pluck it out, and cast it from thee.”

James Nichols, Puritan Sermons, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1981), 53.

Our Particular Life Will Affect Our Particular Sins

After a discussion as to why sin is often denoted by terms for the body, he asks the question of why some people have inclinations toward particular sin. He gives four reasons: First, there are differences in our bodies. Second, there are sins which are which are most common for those of certain stages of life: children have different temptations than old men. Third, there are differences in our circumstances. Fourth, there are differences in our upbringing.

Notice the subtle difference between Needler’s understanding of sin and our general contemporary understanding of behavior. We might say that one’s circumstance (body, education, age, et cetera) somehow causes  the life we see manifested. A man’s childhood caused him to be a criminal. Needler does not discount a contribution of circumstance. However, the circumstances conditioned rather than cause the adult life.

The sin exists in the God-ward relationship (or lack thereof). The circumstances affect how that sin is expressed.

This is a particular nuance which Christians must realize when looking at various sinful actions; many of which are being normalized on the basis  of circumstance (If one has a question as to whether this line of argument goes, consider this: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/01/many-experts-now-view-pedophilia-as-a-sexual-orientation-google-hangout.html). For the person who experiences the inclination toward a particular sin, the experience may very well seem automatic. Temptation is not a rational process, but rather the process of a lust (which is a broader word than sexual desire).

Part of the difficulty Christians have had when considering the relationship between sin, temptation & circumstance lies a failure to take seriously the biblical instruction on heart desires, lust, sin & the ability of one’s circumstances to affect the temptation. Moreover, the argument “God made me this way” need not be immediately dismissed as irrelevant. Romans 1 portrays strong inclinations towards sin as judgment themselves (God gave them over) which ends in a mind which cannot rightly think.

The difficulty is so great that only the supernatural invention of God can disrupt the experience and behavior.