Church bulletin for September
Animals have unsavoury habits. The other week our dog Rhino started licking one of Lewis’ classmates on the face. As I pulled him away, the teacher said with a contorted face, “yuk, you don’t know where his tongue has been!” “That’s the problem”, I responded, “I do know where his tongue has been”. Occasionally when we let him in the house his breath indicates that he has been up to no good. He does things which turn the stomach, but for him it’s perfectly natural. As repugnant as it is, can we be like Rhino in a spiritual sense?
2 Peter 2:22, “But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” When a dog vomits it rids its body of contamination; yet it returns to the putrid mess to lap it up again. A pig may be scrubbed by its handler; yet it returns to rolling around in its own excrement and mud. Peter uses these illustrations in the context of false teachers. He could be describing the false teachers themselves or those they lure back into a life of sin. it’s not unreasonable to suggest both.
When a person professes faith in Christ and then throws themselves into sin, they behave like dogs and pigs. The reality is, we all sin, but we should not see it as a minor thing. To indulge in sin is to do something disgusting and unfitting as God’s people. If we allow ourselves to dwell in thoughts of lust, or bitterness, or covetousness, or pride, we are returning to the spiritual vomit of which we were rid; we are returning to the spiritual excrement of which we were washed. Would we be happy for others to see what often passes through our minds? Of course not, because it is filth.
We are children of the King; in Christ we are seated in heavenly places; why play in the mud; why revel in practices enjoyed by the ignorant. To make idols of “things” when we have Christ is unthinkable, it is to have a banquet of the finest cuisine and yet to eat rubbish fit for vermin. Let the worldly have their fill of sin – they do what is natural to them; I do not begrudge Rhino his practices, he does what comes natural to him. As God’s people we are called to better things – “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you” May we live as though we believe it.