The Desires of the Heart: The Sanctified Imagination

Transcript (edited for readability).

Did you hear the conclusion of the Gospel that we heard in church this morning? They ate, and they were satisfied.

Let's pray. Create in me a clean heart, O holy God, my Father, and renew a right spirit within me. Amen.

The desires of the heart, part two: the sanctified imagination — or probably better, sanctified desire, purified, sanctified desire. I've spoken about how closely interrelated desire and imagination are.

Since I'm speaking about imagination, I want to begin with two pictures for you. First of all, picture yourself as a person with a very rare form of blood cancer. It's rather hard to diagnose, because the only real symptom of it is that it leads to intense cravings. And because you have this cancer, you crave chocolate and coffee. So whenever you're feeling a bit low, or at any time of the day, you have this intense craving for strong coffee, with at least three or four spoons of sugar tossed in as well. And then once you've had the coffee, and that's given you a bit of a boost, then the second craving kicks in: you just have to have some chocolate, rich black chocolate. That's the symptom.

And you've gone to a number of quacks, people who treat cravings. One of the guys that gave you treatment said that you've got to have cognitive therapy: if only you understand all the problems that you've suffered, the psychological treatment, and if you understand your relationship with your mother and father and all the other things that happened in your life, then you'll be able to abstain from too much coffee and particularly from chocolate, which you know is not good for you. However you try that, it doesn't work. The more you try to abstain from chocolate, the more you become fixated on it and desire it.

So you go to see a specialist. And this specialist discovers that the reason for your cravings is that you have this blood disease, this very rare blood disease. And there's only one known way of treating this particular form of blood cancer. That's if you get some blood from a person who's had the same kind of cancer and has been healed from it. That person has developed antibodies against the cancer. You see, your real problem isn't your cravings, but the cancer. The cravings are merely the symptoms of the cancer.

But the problem is this. Even though you have the treatment, every week you've got to go in to have a transfusion of blood from this person, because your own body doesn't produce the required antibodies. And you've got to have it at least once a week, because the symptom is that if you go too long without having a transfusion, the cravings kick in again, and they get worse. The problem also is that the more you indulge in coffee and particularly chocolate, the more toxic it becomes and the worse the cancer becomes. So the way of treating the cancer, and treating the cravings, is by having a regular blood transfusion. That's the way it is with us.

The second picture. I'd like you to put yourself in God's shoes for a moment, and just think of the difficult task that He has to do in renovating us, making new people of us. It's a bit like trying to rebuild a house while the residents still live in the house, and rebuilding it without demolishing it all at once. Now, the simple way of rebuilding a house is to knock it down and start from scratch. God chooses not to go that way. He chooses to rebuild the house while it is still standing — the house of our lives, the house of our bodies. And He starts off laying our lives on a new foundation, and then begins, with the foundation, new walls, new ceilings, new roof, everything, and then finally He refurnishes the whole house — while the house is still standing.

You see, God's dilemma, God's task, God's project is: how can He fix up a ruined person, with a ruined body, mind, and spirit — a person who lives a ruinous way of life in a ruined world, with ruined relationships to others and to God? How can God rebuild us while we're still alive, while we're still standing, so that we have new desires, new imagination?

The answer to that is the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus becomes a human being, lives a physical, fleshly life, to renew us — not just to redeem us, but to renew us. That's God's solution to the problem of our perverted desires and our perverted imagination.

Just listen to what Peter has to say in chapter 4, verses 1 to 2. He's just spoken about how Jesus suffered once and for all for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh and made alive by the Spirit. And then he goes on to talk about baptism now saving us. Then at the beginning of chapter 4 he says: Therefore, since Christ suffered — and he uses "suffered" here in the sense of "suffered death," as in the Nicene Creed — since Christ suffered death in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions or desires, but for the will of God.

Arm yourselves. The picture here is of a soldier being armed for battle. Battle against what? Battle against desire, and the world that tempts you in the wrong way. Since therefore Christ suffered death in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking. I don't know how to translate this Greek word, ennoia — "way of thinking" — but it includes the whole mentality: the way you think, the way you feel, the way you imagine, the way you desire, all that stuff, the way you see things. So a whole new way of thinking, a whole new mentality.

Christ, then, reverses the deadly results of our human pursuit of sinful desires by His life in the flesh. And He starts from the bottom up. He begins with your conception, your birth, your childhood, your teen years, your twenties, and then your adulthood, and finally your death. He does the full journey. And He's subjected to all temptations, all the desires of sinful humanity, in order to reverse it all, to turn it around, so as to turn bad desire into good desire. He lived His life in the flesh to suffer and die to put an end to your sin, and also to the results of your sin: the perverted imagination, perverted desire. He redeems you from slavery to desire by His death. And then He gives you a new sin-free life — not in yourself, but in Him. You borrow that way of life from Him.

So when St. Peter says that we are to arm ourselves with the right mentality, "we are to arm ourselves" is passive in Greek. We are to receive Christ's armor. We are to put on Jesus and His mentality, to defend us from the temptations of a desire-driven society. So God gives us the gift of Christ's mentality to live well-armed lives on earth according to His good and gracious will. So you live no longer to fulfill the desires of the flesh, human passions, but the will of God.

Now, the will of God here is God's desire. It's not just what God plans for you, but what God desires for you. It's the desire, the wishes of God. So you live according to God's wishes for you, and God wishes only good for you. You live according to His good and gracious will, trusting that He knows how to fix things up, trusting that He knows what's best for you, trusting that He gives you everything for you to enjoy. Incarnation.

And that means that you no longer live according to the law, but you live by grace. It's not a matter of you reforming yourself, turning over a new leaf, changing yourself, fixing yourself up. Everything that you lack, everything that you need, you can ask for and receive from God the Father, through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.

That's what Paul's getting at in Titus chapter 2, verses 11 through 13. When I read this passage, think of what Paul as a Pharisee would have said. He would have said: okay, the right way of life is life according to what? The law. So he'd say, when the law of God appeared on Mount Sinai, God trained Israel to lead sensible, godly lives here on earth. That's Paul the Pharisee. But now listen to what Paul the apostle, the evangelist, says. He says: For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us so that, by renouncing ungodliness and worldly desires, we may live sound-mindedly and righteously and piously, as we wait for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

There are two words that I just want to explain and fasten on for a moment. First of all, the verb "appeared." The grace of God appeared. In common English we would say, God appeared in grace, in order to deliver grace. Now, that word "appear" is epiphaneia, from which we get the word "epiphany," the season of Epiphany. That verb, and that noun, was used in the ancient world for visits by kings, to put in a visible physical appearance, to make themselves available for audience with their subjects. They didn't have television or newspapers to communicate, so they had to go around their kingdom and do an epiphany, an appearance. And they put in an appearance for three reasons: so that people could see them, so that people could have an audience with them to petition them, and to create a favorable impression. And that means that they came to give gifts. So if they'd come to visit your congregation, they'd come giving gifts to you and your people. So that's epiphany. There's a picture here that Paul's alluding to: the epiphany of the Roman emperor or important officials in the ancient world. Now, what's happened is that God has put in a physical epiphany here on earth to fix things up for us, here on earth.

The second word there is what I've translated as "sound-mindedly." So that by renouncing ungodliness and worldly desires, we may live sound-mindedly. Now, that's usually translated by the idea of self-control, and that's not completely wrong, but it misses the mark. The Greek word is sophronos. Phron- is "mindedly," having a particular frame of mind. Soph- is the same root from which we get sozo, "save," which is also the root for health. So sophron is having a particular kind of mentality — a sound or healthy mentality, sound-mindedness. And the opposite of sound-mindedness is insanity. So a spiritually sane life. So Paul here paints the picture of the incarnation of our Lord as God's physical appearance, His epiphany here on earth, by God Himself, to deliver salvation to all people. God appears not to lay down the law, but to save all people. Did you pick that up? It's all people.

However, all people don't respond. Only some do. And what's the purpose of His appearance for the people whom He's come to save, those whom He's saved? His purpose for them is to train them as disciples in a new kind of piety, a piety that is characterized by grace rather than obedience to the law — a piety of grace. And that's the hardest training of all: to live a life in which you rely every step of the way on God to give you everything. So a training in living by grace, relying on God's grace every inch of the way. That's what Jesus is training you for, more and more. The further you go in life, the more Jesus wants to lead you to rely more and more fully on the grace of God for everything — not just your salvation, by the way, but for everything in your life. You've been saved now by grace; now God wants you to live by grace.

So Jesus Himself comes and trains you. He gives you practical help to renounce the wrong kind of piety based on worldly desires. So to go back to the passage: the grace of God has appeared in Jesus, understood so that by renouncing ungodliness, or impiety, and worldly desires, we may live a godly life. He Himself trains you to renounce what's wrong, to say no to the things that mess you up, that stop you from living by grace — not living according to the law, but living by grace. Everything that gets in the road of His grace, He trains you to renounce, to a renunciation of wrong desire, which comes as a result of living by grace. And He gives you practical help, not theoretical help, to live a godly life in anticipation of your future life of glory. So you are in training here on earth. You are in training for heavenly living. And your heavenly living begins already now. And an important part of that is to say no to those passions, those desires, that muck this up for you, that hinder you in your journey.

There are three characteristics of living heavenly lives here on earth. The first one is living sound-mindedly, living sanely, living healthily — not with healthy bodies. We live in a society where people are utterly obsessed by health. And you know that the more people are obsessed by something, the less they have it. Okay? People chase health, and yet there's never been so much sickness as now, particularly not physical sickness. The more we heal physical sicknesses, the more other mysterious sicknesses pop up all over the place. So this is true, spiritually healthy living. Living righteously, living as people who are justified by grace. We live righteous lives, straight lives. And we live lives of piety. The word for piety in Greek is good devotion, right devotion, devotion to the gospel. So euangelion is good news, and you have eusebeia, good piety. They mirror each other. So we live piously with evangelical devotion. Now, what's evangelical devotion? It's living a devotional life that's based on the gospel, and not on the law. The law is important for living righteously, but your devotional life is not based on the law; it's gospel devotion.

Now, since time's short, I'd like to skip the next section. Can you turn to page 49? Peter puts it in a different way, but it's basically the same reality. In his second letter he has this to say: His — that is, Christ's — divine power (notice it's not just teaching, but power and empowerment), Christ's divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, so that through them we may become partakers of the divine nature.

Wow. Just let that sink in. Jesus has come here on earth, has become a human being, to share His divine power with you. And His power gives you the power to live a life of evangelical, gospel, grace piety. And He does so by giving you great and precious promises to trust. He doesn't give you new laws; He gives you promises. And the greatest promise of all is that you not live a just-full earthly life, but that you partake of the divine nature — you share His own nature, and you share the divine life of the Holy Trinity. Partakers of the divine nature. What's God's solution to the problem of our sinful self? It is that God allows us to share in the very nature of Christ. We become participators in the divine life of Jesus. We participate in the divine nature of the Lord Jesus. And by standing in Him, by relying on Him, by putting our faith in Him, by living according to the grace that He supplies, we escape from the corruption that is in this world through desire.

Remember, yesterday I spoke that one of the effects, one of the worst effects, of wrong desire is that it corrupts us. What does "corrupts" mean? It means that it makes us sick. It rots us. It makes us unclean, sick, and it kills us. So we escape from the corruption that is in the world through wrong desire. Remember Adam and Eve? They introduced corruption into the world by their sin.

Paul summarizes this in a very simple sentence. He says, those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Now, that doesn't mean that Jesus puts us to death and turns us into emotional zombies, people who have no desire, no passion. But what Jesus crucifies in us, with our flesh, is wrong desire and passion. Remember what I said about passion? Passion is those good emotions that God gives us, like hunger, that take over and take control of us and enslave us. So He puts to death those cravings, those things to which we become addicted. Jesus does that.

And how does He do that? He does it by giving us a complete makeover. Now, I'm told that teenage girls like to do a makeover — and maybe not just teenage girls. A makeover, which means you have a completely new image: new hairdo, new gear, new makeup, and there's the new you. Okay? The trouble is, it merely disguises the old you. But that's what we'd like to do: give ourselves a makeover. And we do it many different ways. Sometimes people leave a marriage, or they go to a different part of the world, or they get a new job, or they get a new hairdo, a new dress, to create a new image of themselves, a makeover. Well, Jesus gives us something far better and much more real than that: a complete makeover from the bottom up, from the inside out.

And how does He do this? He does it through baptism — not just the ceremony of our baptism, but the whole of our baptismal life. The makeover begins with the ceremony of baptism, and it is then enacted in our lives, so it's completed in our actual physical death. Listen to what St. Paul has to say in Titus chapter 3, verses 3 to 6. He says: We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions or desires and pleasures. All of us, without exception, slaves to passions, slaves to pleasures. But — as one of the brothers said, he loves the "buts," because the "but" usually shows that God is butting in — but the goodness, or kindness (there's a lovely Greek word there, philanthropia; anthrop- is humanity, God the lover of humanity), but the kindness and the philanthropy of God our Savior appeared. Notice the same verb as previously: to put in an appearance, to put in a visible physical appearance, in order to deliver gifts to us. The philanthropy of God our Savior appeared. When this happened, He saved us. How did He do this? By the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

God is the lover of humanity — not just the lover of your soul, not just the lover of Christians, but the lover of all the ruined sons and daughters of Adam. He's the human lover, and the only one. And He puts in two epiphanies. His first epiphany was the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus — so He put in His epiphany there. But He puts in a second epiphany at your baptism. Did you see it? "But when the kindness and philanthropy of God our Savior appeared, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit." So He comes and puts in a personal appearance to you, to take over, in order to make you over.

Now, where am I? So He saved us — from what did He save us? Well, one of the things He saved us from was slavery to our passions and desires. And we therefore are freed from slavery to our passions and desires, both by our baptismal regeneration and by the renewal that comes as a result of our baptismal regeneration, the renewal of the Holy Spirit. That doesn't end in baptism, but it merely begins with baptism. So He frees us from slavery to desire, but also from all those other things mentioned there, through baptismal regeneration and renewal. And the renewal that He brings is the renewal of the whole person, and of the whole church as a new humanity. Notice He uses the "we" there, not the singular — the "we," the whole church, as the new humanity, by the Holy Spirit, in and through and as a result of our baptism.

So that's some makeover. You have a new person, a new self, with a new status. You're now sons and daughters of God. You have the same status as Jesus, you have the same glory as Jesus, you are heirs of eternal life. The life that is given to Jesus is also given to you. You become heirs according to the hope of eternal life — not human life, but divine life, the life of Jesus. So you have, as a new person, you receive a new status, a new hope, and new desire. And with that new desire comes new imaginations, a whole new mentality. A makeover — not from the outside in, but from the inside out.

Okay, now, Paul talks a little bit more about that in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 21 to 22. He says: You were taught in Christ Jesus to put off the old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt — notice that word "corrupt" again — is corrupt through deceitful desires, delusive desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Now, there are two interesting things here before I get to the content. Paul says: you were taught to put off, to be renewed, and to put on. Now, grammarians quite rightly point out that these infinitives can be understood in two ways. What you've been taught in Christ Jesus is that you have put off the old self, that you have been renewed, and that you have put on a new self. So it's a fact, first of all. But that fact is also a demand; it's something that you already have, and yet it's something that you're called to do. Notice too the passive there, "to be renewed" — it means that you don't do it yourself. It's done to you and for you.

Secondly, notice the baptismal allusions in this passage. You remember that in the ancient world they didn't have baptismal fonts, and the normal mode of baptism was by immersion. The Baptists get that, at least, right — even if their theology is wrong, the normal mode of baptism is by immersion. And most people were baptized initially as adults. Now, the normal practice was that you would come to baptism wearing your old clothes. They might be your best clothes, but they were your old clothes. And then after baptism, when you came out of the baptismal bath, you put on a new robe, a white robe, and you would wear that. Usually baptisms occurred on Easter Saturday. And so you'd wear that white robe every day, not just when you came to church, but until the following Sunday, the Sunday of Quasimodo Geniti, "as newborn babes." And then you would keep that baptismal garment. Because guess when you would next wear it? When you died. It would be your shroud. So you'd go to the grave wearing your baptismal robe. You put it in mothballs in preparation for your actual death.

So you have the picture here of undressing — not just taking off clothes, but undressing the old self, with its corrupt way of life; the old self, with its deceitful desires; the old self, with its perverted imagination — and you put on a new self, a new self renewed by God Himself, that's created in God's likeness, in the likeness of Jesus. So as a result of baptism, you have a new self. You're changed from the inside out. You have a new sanctified self, a new sanctified spirit, a new sanctified mind, and coming out of that, that leads to a new sanctified way of life that's not driven by the indulgence of worldly desires. The new self is like God. It's recreated in the image of God, which you know is Jesus. It gives you a new spirit that's like God's Holy Spirit, a new mind that's like the mind of Christ, and a new way of life that matches, that mirrors, that copies God's way of life.

Now, lastly, I'd like to speak about the five characteristics of living by God-given desires — not living a desire-driven life, but living a life which is characterized by God-given, God-created life. What does the new life look like when it comes to imagination and desire? The New Testament mentions five things that are important, and I'll start off from the easier ones and get to the more difficult ones.

First of all, it's a life in which we say no, we renounce all evil desires. Now, that word "renunciation" reflects the language of baptism, because what do you do in baptism? You renounce the devil, and all his works like hatred and stuff, but you also renounce his ways. And one of his ways is wrong desire. So one of the things you renounce in baptism — you need to complete that list: the devil, his works, and his ways. One of the ways is a life of self-indulgence. So there's the renunciation of worldly desires, also baptismal language; again, the mortification, the putting to death, not just of the old self, but of evil desire; and then abstaining, coming out of baptism, abstaining from fleshly desires. You no longer indulge them. You no longer make them the purpose of your life. And then, positively — and this is the most important of all, these last two, in case you don't get it — there's only one way in which we can live a life of godly desire, and that's by reliance on the Holy Spirit. Reliance on the Holy Spirit. Living by grace means living by the Holy Spirit. And out of that comes a life of obedience to God's call — not just to live a new life here on earth, the same old thing in a new way, but a call to share in God's holiness, and to live a holy life already now here on earth, in preparation for what we will do forever in heaven.

So, those five characteristics of a life of godly desire. First of all, the ongoing renunciation of worldly desire. We won't look at the passage again, because we've looked at it before. Paul says the grace of God has appeared for the salvation of all men, training us to renounce worldly desire. So it's not the law that helps us renounce worldly desire, but the grace of God trains us, educates us in a practical way to say no. We don't have to go along with the world. We don't have to go along with the world that pushes us in the wrong way sexually. We don't have to go along with the world which is governed by greed, self-indulgence. We can say no. Not out of our own strength, but Jesus comes and gives us the grace, the help, to say no.

Secondly, just listen to what Paul says in Colossians chapter 3, verses 1 to 5. He says: If then you've been raised with Christ — notice the baptismal language, you've been put together with Christ, we're now raised to life with Christ — if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, the heavenly things, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds, your whole mentality, on the things that are above, the heavenly things, not on things that are on the earth, for you've died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God; and when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. Then comes the conclusion. So then, put to death what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. Put to death what? Evil desire, covetousness. Remember, I spoke about the fact that if you have a desire-driven life, you make an idol of the object of your desire. So you kill that off — not just inside, you don't just change your behavior, but as a Christian you put to death these things.

Thirdly, you abstain from fleshly desires. Just listen to what Peter has to say about this in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 11. He says: Beloved, I urge you as sojourners — that means visitors — and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Remember, later on Peter says we are to arm ourselves with the mind of Christ, the same frame of mind as Him. Why? We are to arm ourselves not against non-Christians, but we're to arm ourselves against wrong desire, which wages war against the soul. Your enemy is not out there. Your enemy is in here. Abstaining from fleshly desires. Now, I could do a whole unit on that, because one of the most important Christian practices that's been forgotten, and that we need to rediscover in our indulgent society, is the practice of fasting. Abstaining from fleshly desires, quite concretely. Peter says, if you are hooked on alcohol, abstain from alcohol. If you're hooked on coffee, abstain from that. If you're hooked on television, if you're hooked on the internet, if you're hooked on Facebook — there's some time in the year when you've got to say, okay, I'm going to fast, for a week, or four weeks, say in Advent, or in Lent. So abstain from fleshly desires. Now, it's not that the fleshly desires are wrong. Any of those things are good, but they become wrong when they take over and they control you, and you become addicted to them. That's what Peter's talking about here, I think.

Next. And even if you don't remember anything else I've said, the next two things are very important. Paul says that the only way we can live a life by the will of God, relying on the grace of God, is by the Holy Spirit. He says: But I say, walk by the Spirit, so that you do not carry out the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. So there are two kinds of desire that are at war in you. There are the desires of the flesh, that want you to indulge yourself and find heaven here on earth, in the here and now, living a hedonistic way of life; or else there are the desires of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, which wants to help you to already now live heavenly lives here on earth. So Paul says, walk by the Spirit, so that you do not carry out the desires of the flesh. Notice he doesn't say, don't carry out the desires of the flesh. He doesn't begin with that prohibition. He says, the imperative is: walk by the Spirit.

Now, what does he mean by "walk by the Spirit"? It means that you rely not on your own power, but on the power of the Holy Spirit every day of your life. Every day of your life you pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit. You pray for the things that you lack. You pray for the help that you need to lead a godly life. You rely on the Holy Spirit through daily meditation on the word of God, which brings the Spirit of God into your life. You rely on and follow the guidance of the Spirit, the leading of the Spirit, by praying for the Holy Spirit. Remember, Jesus says, if you want the Holy Spirit, it's quite simple what you do: you just ask God the Father for it. Not just once or twice, but every day of your life. So one of my daily prayers is the prayer for the Holy Spirit, because I know that I can't get through the day except by the guidance and direction of the Holy Spirit.

Now, you live in a society which is saturated by not just evangelicalism, but various brands of Pentecostal, charismatic kinds of things, and they talk a lot about guidance by the Spirit. Have you noticed? Being led by the Spirit. You know, people have a private little hotline to the Holy Spirit, who tells them that they should buy this and sell that and get rich, or whatever. Now, it's interesting: when Paul talks, when the New Testament talks about being led by the Spirit, it talks about desire and following the desires of the Spirit. That's the one way, and the other way, in Romans, is being led by the Spirit in order to pray — and it's one and the same thing.

Above all, you pray for something — a virtue. No, it's not a virtue. The Greeks regard it as a virtue, but for us Christians, it's a gift. I don't know if you ever have a close look at the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians. By the way, have you noticed that it doesn't talk about the fruits of the Spirit, but singular, the fruit? This is one single harvest, and all the things that Paul mentions there are different branches of the same tree. Now, if these things are the fruit of the Spirit, it means that you can't achieve these things by yourself, but you've got to rely on the Holy Spirit. Now, one of the things that all of us lack to a greater or lesser extent, more apparently, is self-control. Can any of you here say, "I can control myself"? Oh, I can control my actions for a while, until I get angry. And when I get angry, for a while I can repress it, but then the volcano erupts. Look, I can control my actions, but I can't control what? I can't control my thoughts, and particularly my evil desires, my imagination, my emotions. So one of the most important fruits of the Spirit — and if it's a fruit of the Spirit, that means that the Holy Spirit wants to give it to you, and you can have it from Him by praying for it. So, prayer for the fruit of the Spirit, so that we live self-controlled lives — not so much out there physically. It's not living an uptight sort of grim life, but it means that we can control our emotions, we can control our imagination, we can control our desires. That's what I'm talking about.

Lastly, most importantly, living a life of godly desire means that we live holy lives. Here again, you get a lot of half-right teaching that's very, very common here in North America, with its Puritan heritage. Most people see sanctification as something that we do — sanctification, a life of sanctification, a life of spiritual or moral self-improvement. You do it yourself. Okay, Jesus helps you a bit, and the Holy Spirit gives you a hand, but basically you do it yourself. And it's the kind of religion that suits you Americans, because you like to be self-made people, independent people. You don't like to be losers like us Aussies. Okay, now, just to give you the most important part — and there's a lot of teaching on sanctification that needs to be done — the life of sanctification means not that we do it ourselves, but that God makes us holy, and He keeps us holy. He shares His own holiness with us. He gives us Christ's own holiness.

Just listen to what Peter has to say about this. He says: As obedient children — since you are children of the heavenly Father — do not be conformed to the passions or desires of your former ignorance. That's your ignorant pagan way of life. He says, look, it's normal for pagans to conform to their desires, to fit in with their desires. But — notice the "but," again God keeps butting in — but as He who called you is holy (that's God, who's called you, is holy), so you also must be holy in all your conduct, in your whole way of life, as it is written. And here you get a deliberate ambiguity: You shall be holy, for I am holy. Now, I think it should be translated not "you shall be holy," but "you will be holy, as God is holy." So God calls us to be chips off the old block: like Father, like children; like Father, like sons. So we are not just to copy God's behavior, but we are to copy God's character. We are to be like God. God is holy, and He wants us to be holy, and He makes us holy. So you have God's promise: you will be holy, as I am holy. God gives you His own holiness in and through Jesus. And you participate in God's holiness through faith in His holy word. So when you meditate on the Scriptures in your daily devotions, you receive God's holiness; that word makes you holy. When you come to church, hear God's word, receive the sacrament, the word of God makes you holy.

And then, secondly, we have here God's demand, or God's call — I think "call" is better. God calls you to be holy — not to be holy, because you are already holy, but since you're holy, God calls you to live a holy life, to conform your behavior to your character, to act as you are, to be yourself as you are in God. So He calls you to a life of holiness, in obedience to His holy word. Why? Because He's redeemed you from your former futile way of life, which was characterized by conformity to desire. And He calls you to practice nonconformity to the world you live in, a practice of nonconformity to a desire-driven way of life in a consumer society, with all its characteristics.

Right, let me wrap up my presentation, and then we'll have some time, I think, for questions. We finish at half past, I believe. Yes. There's no responsible person here, so I'll take over. Oh, Bev, there is — look, craven apologies. The invisible woman.

Okay, what's God's remedy for our corruption — not just our physical corruption, but our spiritual, mental corruption? God's remedy is the incarnation of our Lord. And that doesn't just mean His birth; it means His whole human life, from His conception to His exaltation at God's right hand. That's God's answer to the complex problem of our perverted imagination and our perverted desires. God's Son becomes a human being, to engage us in all our five senses. Remember, that's where I started, basically. He engages us in all our five senses, to redeem us completely — not just spiritually, not just mentally, and not just physically, but completely. So the purpose of His incarnation is to renew the whole self.

And you see that most clearly, not just in baptism, but in Holy Communion. There Jesus gives Himself, body and blood, to you, to change you from the inside out. He renews your spirit, with all its powers, by the Holy Spirit. He renews your mind, so that you become healthy-minded, sound-minded, sane, sober. He even renews your bodies, with their five senses. I don't know if any of you have noticed one of the most wonderful changes that has been brought in in the new hymnal, in the post-communion blessing, which now takes up an old Lutheran dismissal formula: The body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and His holy precious blood, strengthen and preserve you — not "in true faith to life everlasting," that's good, but there's an alternate: "preserve your health, in body and soul, to life everlasting." Body and soul. You are sanctified body and soul. You are healed body and soul. You are purified body and soul. You are cleansed, you are renewed, body and soul, to life everlasting. And that renewal enables you to have a foretaste of heaven here on earth. It enables you to live heavenly lives, lives of hidden glory here on earth. God grant that to you all.

Yes?

I want to follow up on Lucas's question. You answered the first part with Genesis 3, but then Genesis 4, verses 6 and 7, when God is speaking with Cain, it says: The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it. When I've taught this before, I've been teaching that how we rule over our sin is by confessing it and giving it over to God. But here it seems — at least, you mentioned being in the word and hearing the word, but Cain didn't have that at the time — if you could just expand on that, how we rule over our desires.

Now, there are two different questions there. Just don't go away. First, the sense of that in that context; or for us. First, the context, because I teach that one often — and then if you want to do "for us," that's okay too. Okay, just stay there, because I want to answer it as quickly as I can.

It's given to Cain as a demand. The Hebrew there can be translated in one of three ways: "you must do it," you must rule over it; "you may rule over it"; or it could also be, "you will rule over it." Now, for Cain, which one of the three is it? "You must rule over it." Why? Because one part of the problem with Cain was that God accepted the other offering, the offering of his brother, and that made him angry. And that opened the door to sin and the devil. The devil got hold of his anger, and the result was the murder of his brother. So watch out for desire. It takes over, it rules, it's murderous. It doesn't just kill you; it kills your brother. Okay?

For us — but then, reading it — so how does Cain do that, then? How is God expecting Cain to do it? Was it possible? Was there something he could have done? We don't know. Okay? We don't know. God only deals — He finds the final solution to that with the incarnation of our Lord. Then it becomes a promise, I guess. But first we need to know: what was He expecting? Because then now we get to the — okay. What He was expecting is the demands of the law. God puts His law on him: you must rule over it. And God gives him no out. However, God does something very significant with Cain. God puts His mark on Cain. He puts the letter Taw on Cain, which is also the chi in Greek, which is the mark of Christ. Now, I can't unpack that, but you can work that out for yourself.

But — still, I want to push a little bit forward with this "ruling." When you teach people — please just correct me if I've been teaching wrong — I've been telling people that the more you can confess your sins over to the Lord, He also helps you to… I mean, this is what I've been getting from the lectures: the more we confess our sinful desires over to the Lord, He creates new desires in us to help us rule over them. Is that wrong to say?

No, it's absolutely right. But whether — God didn't tell Cain to do that. He didn't give any instruction to him. We don't know. I think one of the important things that we as Christians need to know is to speak where the Scriptures speak and be silent where the Scriptures are silent. The danger is that we read the Scriptures back to front. And we read the New Testament — and we must read the New Testament in the light of the Old Testament — but the danger is that we read it back completely there. Cain has been put in an awful position. And so are the descendants of Cain. Remember that most human beings are descendants of Cain. We are descendants of a brother-murderer. And God doesn't give a theoretical answer to that; He gradually leads, then, in the Old Testament, to forgiveness, atonement, leading up to Christ coming, where you have His answer to that problem.

Thank you.

I don't want to give you an easy answer. I may be asking the same thing in a different way. Are we actually able to change, or is it just our status in God's eyes that changes?

Are we able to change? We can change some things. And I guess it's — I can change my behavior, I can…

We change our desire?

Sorry?

Can we change our desire?

No.

Because it's very motivating if we can change them. It's motivating to want to change.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if we know we're not really going to change, it's hard to be motivated too.

Because one of the problems is that there's always one part of you trying to fix up another part of you. Can you see the problem? Which part of you is trying to fix up which part of you? And it just doesn't work. It's like trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. Can I say, you can change your behavior. You can change your way of thinking. So you can have certain kinds of therapy, practice certain kinds of meditation, which change the way you think and the way you feel, and sometimes you can change what you imagine. But that doesn't fix up the problem. Remember the analogy that I started with, of the guy who has this disease? He wouldn't have been fixed up by dealing with his cravings. He can change his cravings — I was going to extend the story and say, okay, there's a therapist who comes, no, a doctor who comes along and says, instead of taking coffee, you should smoke pot, and instead of eating chocolate, you should eat pig fat. But what's the problem? You go from the frying pan into the fire. That guy can't fix himself up by fixing up his cravings. It's only once the sickness is fixed up, then the cravings are fixed up too. You can't change yourself. However, you can modify not only your behavior, but you can modify your way of thinking and feeling — and psychology has a great deal of help with that. So you can modify it, but you don't really change your character.

Thank you.

Now, that's not very popular here in North America, is it, Bev?

A pastoral care question. When someone displaces the desire of the Holy Spirit and makes their own idol out to be the desire of happiness…

Yes.

…and/or against, kind of an anti-god of avoiding suffering…

Yes.

…specifically in the context of divorce. Any pastoral care thoughts for someone who is desiring my own happiness versus staying with a marriage, struggling through it, et cetera?

Wow. I knew somebody would ask me a really curly one. I can't answer that quickly, because I'd have to know the particular case. However, you'll find that it's usually futile if you just come heavy-handed and say, "This is wrong, this is against God's law." See, the problem is, in that case, the problem is not that particular marriage. It's not the problem of the affair that this man or woman has had with somebody else. It's not that this man or woman wants to divorce their spouse and enter into a new secular relationship. It lies deeper than that. What's the problem? It's the pursuit of happiness as the highest court. And happiness apart from God — not just happiness apart from God's law. And the danger is that we use the law to try to tackle that. But it's happiness apart from the gospel and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

I think, in practice, you can do very little in that situation. Once a person's decided to leave the marriage, terminated it, given up on it, there's very little you can do. I mean, you can warn them, you can speak the word of God to them, and hope that the word of God speaks into the conscience — but it very rarely registers with the conscience immediately, particularly if it's law. But you still speak the word of God into the conscience. Why? Because what's going to happen is that this person's going to go and pursue the happiness. But what will be the result of this relationship? Will the new marriage, the new relationship, deliver total bliss, happiness? No. This has consequences. And if a person doesn't listen to God's gospel, or even His law, then God uses — brings — His judgment on that person. C.S. Lewis said that God has three ways of dealing with a person who is in sin. He says, first of all, God uses the whisper of the conscience — that's His first and normal way. And he says that if we don't listen to the whisper of the conscience, guided by the word of God, then He gets a brother or sister to speak the word of God plainly to us, unmistakably. So there's the whisper, there's the telling. And he says, if we don't listen to the telling of God's word to the conscience, then He uses a heavy stick, a two-by-four. He uses His megaphone. And so, basically, the only thing you can do is to let — hand that person over, as God does with sinners, to their desires, so that God's judgment can teach them the consequence of their desires, and finally bring them to repentance.

What's important is that we, as pastors, don't have as our basic task saving marriages — no matter how important marriages are. Our task is to save souls. That's our fundamental task. But that's a far too simple answer for a very complex question.

Thank you.

And there's one more here, just to say it, and I'll try to — oh, yes, it's over time. I'll see if I can answer this in one sentence. I don't think I can, again.

I have a brother who is bipolar.

Yes.

And he cannot function in society normally. He's in a hospital. He has an uncontrollable imagination, and it seems to be that only medication can help that.

Yes.

How — I mean, you're saying that you're encouraging imagination, but in that case it's gone a little bit too far. How would you address somebody like that?

Now, there's a non-spiritual side to that, because that's a physical and mental sickness, and that can be controlled, best of all, by drugs. Okay? Bev can, if you want to see her. But what you can do as a Christian is pray for that person. It's amazing how sometimes, when a person's most disturbed — if you don't pray out loud, that's provocative, but if you start praying for that person and covering them with the blood of Jesus, very often that person will quiet down. But look, we must — okay, see Bev on that. Not me, not me.