Getting death and life confused- Paul Tripp

Lord willing tonight at Bible Study we will see the issue of gluttony raised in Titus 1 v12.

Titus 1 v12

12 One of Crete’s own prophets has said it: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.”

Paul Tripp said this about gluttony-

We sinners are very good at getting death and life confused. If you pay attention, you will see it all around you. Watch television, for example, where adultery is portrayed as life. Of course, a moment of sexual lust or even the act of illicit sex will seem invigorating at first. It may feel like life at its fullest. But adultery is a cruel investment of both the body and the soul. Scripture warns us where a relationship with an adulteress is heading: “In the end she is bitter as gall, sharp as a double-edge sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lead straight to the grave” (Proverbs 5:4—5).

Or consider gluttony, which seems like a harmless enjoyment of the good things that the Lord created. It may feel like the good life, but it is actually robbing you of true life and destroying both your body and your soul.

Tripp, P. D., & Tripp, D. P. (2008). A quest for more: living for something bigger than you. Greensboro, NC: New Growth Press.

When you are committing an act of gluttony, at that moment you don’t see the idolatrous destructiveness of what you’re doing. No, you see good—the good of the smells, sights, textures, and flavors of the food you are consuming. Your problem is that what looks good isn’t in fact good.

...

When it comes to pleasure, what looks like a good thing may not be a good thing.

So, as you’re dealing with the basic pleasures that will greet you in everyday life, carry the Eden hermeneutic with you. Look at pleasure through the interpretive and protective lens of the garden. Understand pleasure, be reminded of its purpose, celebrate its joys, be warned of its danger, and most of all guard your heart.

Tripp, P. (2013). Sex and money: pleasures that leave you empty and grace that satisfies. Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Comments

John Stott on the "old man" and the "body ruled by sin" in Rom 6 v 6

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Berkoff: "The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. "

The giving of the law did not effect a fundamental change in the religion of Israel, but merely introduced a change in its external form. The law was not substituted for the promise; neither was faith supplanted by works. Many of the Israelites, indeed, looked upon the law in a purely legalistic spirit and sought to base their claim to salvation on a scrupulous fulfillment of it as a body of external precepts. But in the case of those who understood its real nature, who felt the inwardness and spirituality of the law, it served to deepen the sense of sin and to sharpen the conviction that salvation could be expected only from the grace of God . L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 498–499.

F.F. Bruce: ...know their father's will...

The NT does not contain a detailed code of rules for the Christian. Codes of rules, as Paul explains elsewhere, are suited to the period of immaturity when the children of God are still under guardians; but children who have come to years of responsibility know their father’s will without having to be provided with a long list of “Do’s” and “Don’t’s.” What the NT does provide is those basic principles of Christian living which may be applied to varying situations of life as they arise. So, after answering the Corinthian Christians’ question about the eating of food that has been offered to idols, Paul sums up his advice in the words: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). Phrases current in worship, like “to the glory of God” or (as here) “in the name of the Lord Jesus,” were given a practical relevance by being applied to the concerns of ordinary life. Bruce, F. F. (1984). The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the...

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