What is it that makes the worst sins in the Christian life seldom resemble scandal? The sternest warnings of Scripture are those which strike at secret habits young poses of the inner man, which may prosper in church life, and family life, and on the ambitious working days. They do not identify themselves as rebellion.
They pass as experience, reasonable exasperation, harmless hyperbole, or regular cravings. What these patterns are doing to relationships is not the only problem. It is what they teach the soul to anticipate of something besides God.
1. Vanity that is like being cool without God
Pride often manifests itself as self-sufficiency: a defense mechanism to avoid acknowledgment, not to confess, and define success as a personal accomplishment. In part, this is because Proverbs by warning that destruction may be the consequence of the pride train, pride teaches someone to live like it is a sign of weakness to rely on. Moderation, on the other hand, is not necessarily self-hate; it is correct self-knowledge in the face of God, as manifested in thanksgiving and being subject to correction.
2. Anger, which turns to deep harm in the heart
The sixth commandment was taken to a spiritual level by Jesus when he taught in Matthew 5 that anger and contempt are equally serious in the spirit. Practically, one does not have to shout anger to kill but can also take anger quiet. The more the anger is practiced, the more it justifies verbal viciousness, interpersonal withdrawal, and the denial to make peace. Peacemaking safeguards society and soul as called upon by Scripture.
3. Cheating that restores life on broken trust
White lies are tactical, yet they may also be minor reflections in order to control some results: saving face, avoiding pain, or editing a narrative. With the passage of time, lying does not only deceive other people but also conditions the person who lies to live a divided life. The telling of the truth is very expensive, nevertheless, it will reinstate the truth and reopen relationships.
4. Long before an affair, marital unfaithfulness starts
Before it comes into the limelight, the words of Jesus regarding lust reveal the adultery as a heart-problem. It is private fantasies, flirtations attempting to gain power, as well as the covert consumption of pornography that all treat people as instruments, other than neighbors. Protecting the heart has its limits that are pragmatic and prosaic, and involves a rearrangement of unchecked desire toward covenant faithfulness or, in the case of the single, to integrity and worship.
5. Idolatry in the form of hard work
In modern idolatry, statues are not often used. It appears more frequently when the good things, in this case, career, success, influence, start acting as savior. A useful diagnosis would be include whether desire has come to replace God as the paramount treasure: Is what I am desiring starting to become more precious than god? Rest becomes impossible and nothing comes before enough when work replaces the fruit of grace as the source of identity.
6. Greed that spoils the happiness and wears the brightest mask
Envy is not merely desiring what somebody possesses; it may encompass jealousy towards the calling, achievement or being pardoned by another person. The Bible associates it with chaos and the heart knows its flavor: comparison that rejoice not. Bible defines envy as a silent rusting- away-envy make the bones to rot (Proverbs 14:30). Gratitude and humility does not disavow pain, but rather reject the idea that God has not been fair.
7. The gluttony that begs food to perform the work of God
Gluttony does not apply to the consumption of excess food; it is a spiritual anticipation on eating. It may be summed up as working to get the food that dies (John 6:27), it is the meals and treats or even restriction itself that is sought as where comfort has to be found. Scripture has nothing against feasting, but it spurns the hope that satiety of soul can be attained by satiety of stomach. The threshold may be reached when it is no longer the amount of what is being consumed but rather the demand of what is being consumed.
8. Blasphemy as inaccommodate resistance to the work of the Spirit
Blasphemy is not a simple word of religion; it is a fixed, determined attitude to God described in the Gospels. Close instruction has made clear that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is a definite, obstinate resistance to Jesus that characterizes the work of the Spirit as evil. That difference is important as tender consciences are able to perceive simple failure as the portal of ultimate, rebellious denial. The warnings in Scripture are very heavy, not meant to bury repentance.
9. A longing to such turns to fainting hunger
The coveting may appear in the form of ambition, yet it is more appropriate to say that it is a desire that cannot resist limits and does not want to be thankful. The harsh judgment of the coveting as idolatry that Paul makes puts the desire of the heart into the picture of seeking life by possessing or by being of a status or experience. Finding contentment does not mean that one is inactive, rather it is a belief that God is really there and He is providing and that giving is not wasteful.
10. Planting division that seems to be merely telling the truth
Division is hardly ever named as discord. It usually comes in the garb of worry: the forwarded story, the side discussion, the prayer request that makes everybody suspicious. Proverbs considers the provocation of strife as an abomination since it disintegrates unity more easily than it is restored. Silence in the face of actual damage is not the other option, but speech that is directed toward peace, which is direct, careful and accountable.
These sins maintain as they can be exercised and seemed to work in a spiritual manner. They blossom in the busy lives, in comparison on the net and in the thought life alone, no one to distract them. But the revelation of Scripture is a mercy too: to name that which is hid that it might be revealed, and brought into the light, and made known without doing, and opposed with the common weapons of grace by which a life is restored internally;
