Sin and misery are the all-encompassing and inescapable realities of this life in this fallen world. Christ came into the world to redeem us from our sin and the misery of this fallen world, and to give us eternal holiness and happiness. While Jesus bore the curse in our place, took the guilt and power of our sin upon Himself at Calvary and reconciled us to God (thereby, definitively dealing with our sin), the misery that came into the world on account of the fall remains until the resurrection.
Marathons, mud runs, CrossFit, Yoga, diets, non-GMO and gluten-free foods, Christian financial programs, anti-vaccination and homeschooling have–each in their own way–taken over the driver’s seat of the lives of so many in the church. While all of these things, in and of themselves, may be good things and have their proper place in a believer’s life, they often hold too prominent a place. It is fairly easily to gauge whether we have given these things too prominent a place in our hearts and lives; we can be sure that we have when they become the overwhelming subject of conversation we have at church, when we get together with others and in what we spend out time reading or writing on social media. After all, Jesus taught us that we speak most what our hearts value most (Luke 6:45). So, what do these things–that seem so completely unassociated with one another–have in common? They can all be ways that we try to control our lives in order to escape the misery that is the effect of the fall.
“The fall brought mankind into an estate of sin and misery.” So wrote the members of the Westminster Assembly in Q. 17 of the Shorter Catechism. Everything negative in this life falls into one of these two categories–namely, sin and misery. The catechism goes on to explain the estate of misery when it says, “All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.” Sin and misery are the all-encompassing and inescapable realities of this life in this fallen world. Christ came into the world to redeem us from our sin and the misery of this fallen world, and to give us eternal holiness and happiness. While Jesus bore the curse in our place, took the guilt and power of our sin upon Himself at Calvary and reconciled us to God (thereby, definitively dealing with our sin), the misery that came into the world on account of the fall remains until the resurrection. We are all subject–no matter what physical, dietary, monetary, medical and educational decisions that we make–to “all miseries in this life, to death itself.”
The Scriptures actually have quite a lot to say about the things that we foolishly trust in order to escape the misery of life. For instance, the Apostle Paul explained to Timothy that “bodily exercise profits a little, but godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come” (1 Tim. 4:8). All forms of exercise may “profit a little;” however, they are not paramount in the life of the believer. The pursuit of “godliness” in light of “the world to come” must be of chief importance.
Concerning foods, Jesus Himself made the audacious statement (i.e. audacious in light of the temporary dietary restrictions of the Old Covenant era), “Not what goes into the mouth defiles a man; but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles a man” (Matt. 15:11). The Apostle Paul followed this with a warning about the danger of falling into the false religion of dietary asceticism when he wrote, “If you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations–‘Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,’ which all concern things which perish with the using–according to the commandments and doctrines of men” (Co. 2:20-22)? The danger of being susceptible to these things is that they “have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, humility, and neglect of the body.” However, when considered spiritually, “they are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh” (Col. 2:23).
