Lost Souls Let Go of Self!
Last Sunday — To be Christ-Centered means total surrender to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. When Jesus is at the center of our lives, we will increasingly think and talk, do and live like Him. Therefore, we must be disciples, students, apprentices of Jesus. Today, we focus on a very important truth about humanity and the world. We are lost souls who must let go of self to come back, surrender to God, and let God be God in our lives.
1. Lost Souls
Our souls are lost. We are lost. We are not just a self, a person, a human being. We are a soul. We are a soul made by God when He breathed the breath of life into us. We are made for God. We are made to need God, which means we were not made to be self-sufficient. Our soul is what integrates our will (intentions), our mind (thoughts), our heart (feelings), and our body (actions) into a single life, into a whole being (Ortberg & Willard). When our souls are broken and ruined, then we, our whole being is ruined and hurting. Spiritual transformation and growth can only begin when we recognize and acknowledge the radical evil and sin that is in the world and in our hearts, minds, and bodies.
When God created the world and humans in his image, it was good. It was very good (Gen 1:31) — exceptionally good, the very best quality. Adam & Eve lived the perfect life. Their souls were whole and healthy because they were in a good place, with God. Lived the perfect life in God’s presence, in total surrender and absolute trust.
But then they disobeyed God. They did not trust God, that He is in control, all-powerful, all-sufficient and provides all they need. Not thankful for and satisfied with what God gave them. Desired more — desired to be like God, to be their own gods, to be in control.
Sin and evil entered God’s creation — its effect was so pervasive that it affected everything — creation & humankind. Our souls are broken and ruined. We are lost because we have been removed from God’s presence and we live life separated from the life of God.
As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.” “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” ( Rom 3:10-18)
Note — “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” (Prov 9:10) Where there is no fear of the Lord, there is a progressive slide into evil and sin — the soul becoming increasingly corrupt, ruined, and lost. When people don’t return to God in faith and repentance, when they abandon God, God abandons them and gives them over to their sinful hearts. We read about this in Rom 1:18-32:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator … Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.
Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
In Ephesians Paul explains it like this — They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. (Eph 4:18-19)
2. Self-Worship
Col. 3:5 — greed (to covet) is idolatry. Instead of being God-centered we have become self-centered. Self-worship, self-idolatry is the radical evil and root sin of the human heart. We want to be our own gods, in control. We are lost because we are obsessed with self. We are enslaved by the desperate need and relentless drive to fulfill our selfish desires. Therefore, we are given over to sensuality. Self-worship becomes body worship — always seeking self-gratification, filled with desires that can. never be satisfied. Thus, this relentless drive to seek pleasure and gratification enslaves us.
Paul — Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. (Phil 3:19) For such people are not serving our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. … (Rom 16:18)
Self-worship destroys relationships and fellowship with others. It prevents us from being community-concerned — For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. (Jam. 3:16) What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. (Jam. 4:1-2) John Calvin — “So blindly do we all rush in the direction of self-love, that everyone thinks he has a good reason for exalting himself and despising all others in comparison.” We are living in the last days and difficult times where people are “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God—having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.” (2 Tim 3:1-5) Our self-centered pride puts ourselves at the center of the universe. Ruined and lost souls are so enslaved by self-worship that they don’t want God to be God in their lives. Everyone is a god unto him/herself.
When you heard all this, where did your mind go and of whom did you think? Easy to point fingers and judge others but we know how easily Christians fall into sin and fall away. Old self and Satan are still battling for our souls. Pray always — Have mercy on me a sinner. There by the grace of God goes I.
3. Who Can Save Us?
Our souls are ruined. We are lost. Our broken, hurting souls needs saving, restoration, and healing. Once we realize and acknowledge this, then we cry out with Paul — What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 7:24-25)
Sin does not make our souls worthless but only ruined and lost. God still loves us, even in our ruined, broken, and lost condition. God sees us and values us as something immensely worth saving. In his amazing grace and love He sent His Son to save us and bring out souls back to the life with Him.
Therefore, we believe and repent. We acknowledge deep in our souls that we are not being God. We recognize our lostness and helplessness. We surrender in faith to Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. (Rom 3:22-24)
God the Father “has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Col 1:13-14)
So important and as we are celebrating Lord’s Supper, read again — For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation (Col 1:19-22).
We have been buried with Christ and we were also raised with him through our faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. (Col 2:12) Our lost souls are saved and we have been given the new life in Christ. For this reason —
Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming. You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. (Col. 3:5-11)
And so, our journey to wholeness, healing, and Christlikeness begins. The first actions of faith, the first steps in this journey is to die to self, to let go, and let God be God in our lives. We must quit playing God and allow God Himself to play God in our lives. Dying to self and letting God be God are not only the first steps but also the daily, moment-by-moment steps of surrender we must take to become and remain Christ-Centered.
Next week — Let go by dying to self and letting God be God in our lives.