Being vague...

I listened to a Peter Jeffery sermon on my way to and from work today about 'Whitewashing' and Ezekiel 13. Effectively it was about false prophets and their perversion of the gospel. The whitewash reference being to how if a building is whitewashed it can camouflage the true state of the crumbling, damaged and weakened walls. The veneer of the church goer who isn’t saved – they whitewash their life in good works and regular church attendance, but inside are rotten and decaying.

Rather like the comparison made about (I can’t recall, or find, where it says so  ) the sepulchre being white and clean and well kept on the outside and rotten and dead inside.


Anyway, in Mr Jeffery’s sermon he said something which struck me as blindingly obvious, yet not always altogether clear to see. He said (here I paraphrase as best I can, hoping I can do justice to his words... and wincing at the thought of getting it wrong) that - if one is vague or ‘loose’ in one’s understanding of scripture, then so too will be one’s grasp and appreciation of what sin is and where it occurs in one’s life.

I certainly have experienced that feeling of realisation several times in the last year where I have been studying my bible only to come across a verse that allows aspects of my sin to drop firmly and clearly into focus. It was perhaps something which up to that point I hadn’t even realised was necessarily wrong.

I find it increasingly difficult to understand how Christians cannot spend more time trying to seek out and destroy sin in their lives. I realise I am ‘young’ and enthusiastic about the gospel, but its all there in His Word. All we have to do is read it! The task of ridding oneself of sin is never a finished task, until He does the job for us in Glory. But one feeds the other.


The more we know of the gospel = the more readily we can recognise and are equipped to kill sin in our lives.

The more we know of our sin = the less hypocritical we can be in living out our Christian lives and the greater our appreciation can be of the Grace God has afforded us in saving such wretches.