Romans 7:18-20 “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin living in me that does it.”

I want to love other people. I really do. That’s good. It generally makes them like me in return. It makes it pleasant to be around them. Everyone is happy when we all get along.

Then Jesus comes along and says, “Love your enemies, the people who use you and persecute you and say bad things about you.” You know that cousin who dragged you into court over grandma’s will and kind of ate up the inheritance in the process; you know that ex who doesn’t pay child support or who is always defying the judge’s custody orders; you know that coworker who is always throwing you under the bus and setting you up to fail because she doesn’t want you competing for the next promotion–love them.

“Why? Why should I love them?” we may ask. “What do I get out of if?” And Jesus answer may come back, “Your relationship will improve.” But his answer may also come back, “You get nothing. But this is how I loved you all the way to the cross even when you didn’t love me. I loved these morons, these destroyers of your happiness, so much that I died to save and forgive them, just like I died to save and forgive you. You signed up to follow me when you took my forgiveness and became my disciple. So love your enemies.”

The new me gets it. I believe that this is the right thing. “I have the desire to do what is good.” It’s more than feeling guilty because Jesus loved me when I was his enemy. It is not a matter of feeling coerced. It’s the kind of person I want to be. I want to be that guy, the one who loves even the people who have spent their lives making my life miserable. This is the new me, the real me, the person Jesus says I am by faith.

But so often “I cannot carry it out…the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.” We still struggle with sin because we are torn between two wills, two sets of desires living in us. And too many times, it seems like the wrong side wins. “Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.”

Do you see the silver lining in this dark cloud? Do you see the positive sign in our struggle with sin? It’s a good thing that we are torn between two wills. The presence of that no-good sinful flesh in us is a given. If we had only one will, one set of desires, the sinful flesh would be it. The fact that we fight, we struggle inside, says that there is a second thing, something new and good inside. As long as there is a fight, there is faith. As long as there is faith, we are still living in God’s grace.

Romans 7:18 “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.”

Everyone wants to be considered a “good person.” I was once talking to another minister about a difficult counseling case. He didn’t like the problem person very much. After going on about his negative qualities, he checked himself and said, “But, of course, no one is all good or all bad.” Well, sort of. Paul explains it more carefully here.

When Paul says, “Nothing good lives in me,” he isn’t referring to himself alone, as though he were an exceptional case. While he speaks from personal experience, he speaks for us all. These same thoughts can be found in the words of Jesus, the prophets, and the other apostles as well. These same words apply to us all.

When he talks about “nothing good,” he isn’t denying that sometimes people do nice things to each other, especially the people they love. Even terrorists and evil, mass-murdering dictators do kind things for their own families. Our experience tells us that people, even non-Christians, are often helpful and polite. Paul would not disagree. In chapter 2 of this same letter he acknowledges that even the heathen have a conscience. They do things that agree with God’s law part of the time.

When Paul talks about “nothing good,” he is talking about our broken relationship with God. The human race fell out of love for God and divorced themselves from him when our first parents fell into sin in the Garden of Eden. It was and is a nasty, hostile, messy divorce, not one of these “mutual consent” kind you sometimes hear about. We don’t want him as a partner. We want to run our own lives our own way. Nothing good remains between us.

This is how each new human being enters the world. Paul further explains, “nothing good lives in me,” by stating, “that is, in my sinful nature.” More literally, he says in Greek, “in my flesh.” This is what we are before faith. This is all we are before faith. In John chapter 3 Jesus explained in his secret meeting with the Jewish Pharisee Nicodemus: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” In order to be anything else than flesh, we have to be born again, a second time, by God’s Spirit.

Even after we have been born again, this no-good sinful flesh doesn’t go away. It doesn’t get better. It just has competition. It is the same self-centered, God-hating package of attitudes and desires it has always been. That’s why Paul can say nothing good “lives” in it, present tense, today, even though I am a Christian. In light of the fact that each of us is lugging around this no-good, sinful flesh, it should not come as a surprise that we struggle with sin.

Paul’s description of our condition may feel like an exaggeration at first. It may seem to contradict our experience. If you can remember a time before being a Christian, you may remember desiring to do good things, and even doing them. But there are long lists of reasons people, ourselves included, may do kind things that have nothing to do with loving God. Self-interest is not incompatible with enjoying human relationships, or finding satisfaction and a sense of self-worth in helping others.

Thank God for giving us the Spirit-birth that makes us more than our sinful nature inside. We have new life, and new powers, living inside by faith. With a new person of faith living in us, our sinful nature is in for a fight. And that’s a good thing!

1 Timothy 6:12 “Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Sometimes the Bible uses military imagery for the Christian life, but that is not the kind of “fight” Paul has in mind here. This isn’t two guys slugging it out because they don’t like each other, either. This is “fight” like we fight the other side in an athletic contest. It is competing the good competition of the faith. It is contending for the prize.  Living out our Christian faith is never an easy thing we can coast through passively if we want to make it to the finish line. There is a struggle, something that takes intense effort and makes you sweat.

And the whole Christian team wants to win. There will always be competing forces proposing alternative ideas about God, promoting other ways of salvation, suggesting other standards of right and wrong. We struggle, we contend, to push the Christian faith forward, to advance it and defend it. We fight this fight door to door when we canvass in our neighborhoods. We fight this fight in Sunday School rooms and Bible classes. It’s not a violent attack. On the outside it might look quiet and gentle. But there is a strenuous push of ideas and teachings and beliefs moving Christian faith forward, into more and more hearts that believe, and overcoming the darkness of unbelief.

What are we fighting for? “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses.”

Instead of loving money, which is all about your life here, take hold of eternal life. The idea is not that we have to go out and get eternal life ourselves. Everything Paul writes everywhere makes it clear that eternal life is God’s gift, purchased for us by Jesus when he paid for our sins at the cross, brought to us by his word and sealed for us in our baptisms. Timothy’s own baptism seems to be what Paul has in mind when he refers to Timothy’s good confession. There, Timothy was already called to eternal life. There he already had received it by faith.

Now he is urging Timothy, and us, not to let it slip through our fingers. Don’t take it for granted. Don’t let competing interests like money or earthly success, get in the way. This is no small gift to lose. When my wife and I visited Rome a few years ago, I kept my wallet in my front pocket, or in a belt underneath my shirt. The city had a reputation for pick-pockets. My hand often went to my pocket or my belt to make sure everything was still there, especially in crowded quarters. I didn’t want to suffer the fate of other tourists who lost their money, credit cards, and passports.

The “pocket” in which eternal life sits is the faith in your heart. Keep it strong. Check it often. Protect it from thieves. Tend to your faith and take hold of eternal life by living in God’s word.

1 Timothy 6:11 “Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”

This list of virtues is the alternative to loving money. They seem to work in pairs. First “righteousness and godliness.” Sometimes Paul uses “righteousness” to refer to our guilt-free condition after God has forgiven our sins. He sees us as sinless for Jesus’ sake. It’s not really something to pursue. It is something he gave us as a gift. Here he is referring to behavior that actually lines up with what our Lord says is good and avoids what he says is bad. Telling a child, “you’re a great athlete or musician,” moves them to want to become that more and more. God telling us, “You’re my righteous, holy child” makes us want to match that description with our way of life more and more.

“Godliness” is very similar. The Greek word behind it describes “good religion,” “piety,” a lifestyle that is interested in honoring God more than pleasing myself. Together with “righteousness” Paul is saying to us, “You want to know what to do with your life other than obsessing about money? Why don’t you occupy yourself with learning what God says is good, really make it a fascination and a study, and pursue that?”
Next come “faith and love.” Paul is not suggesting that Timothy has yet to come to faith. But in as much as faith is trust in the God who saves us, it is something to deepen and grow our entire lives. The more we trust and love God, the less we will trust our “stuff” to take care of us and make us happy.

So how do we “pursue” these things, and make them stronger? What if it were your boyfriend or girlfriend, you husband or wife? How would you build the trust and love then? I believe you would spend time together. You would communicate. You would talk some, but you would also listen. You would do things for each other, find ways to express your love. It is much the same in this case. Faith and love grow when we spend time with God, listen to him, pray and serve him to express our love, yes, but especially see his love expressed to us in the way that he has served us. Where is that going to happen? When our nose is in a Bible, and our bottoms are sitting in church.

The last pair Paul urges us to pursue are “endurance and gentleness.” Doing things God’s way comes with its own set of challenges. It introduces us to all kinds of challenging people. We don’t have to go looking for trouble. If we are pursuing a life in line with his commands because we trust what he has to say and want to show real love to him and others, not just float along with the tides of popular opinion, then trouble will find us. People will criticize us, like they criticized Jesus, like they criticized his apostles. Timothy understood by now that where Paul preached the gospel, some mob of people who didn’t like it eventually drove him out of town. That’s an opportunity to become more and more patient, and a chance to learn how to treat others with gentleness.

1 Timothy 6:11 “But you, man of God, flee from all this (the love of money), and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.”

In life there are times to stand and fight. Ladies, if a man attacks you, the consensus is now that you should put up a resistance. Don’t think that you can appease him. By all means, don’t get into his car. Resist. If a hijacker were to hijack your airplane, the thought used to be that hostages should simply comply with his demands. In this day of suicide terrorism, that may not be the best plan anymore.

The same is true of temptations. There is a time to stand and fight. If someone is gossiping, mocking someone else, dragging down their reputation, there may be a temptation to join in, or a temptation to leave and say nothing. But for the sake of your neighbor’s good name, this is a time to hit the temptation head on. Stand and fight for his reputation.

That is not the case with so many of the temptations that appeal to our senses. Then the Bible urges us to “flee”, retreat, run for your life. “Flee the sinful desires of youth,” Paul warns Timothy in his next letter to him. “Flee sexual immorality” he wrote to the Corinthians. And here he suggests that we do the same thing when we are tempted with the love of money. “Flee from all this.” The danger to our faith is simply too strong. The inner appeal of the temptation is simply too powerful to stand there and see how long we can hold out. We are standing in a burning house without a fire hose, with hardly a cup of water to throw on the flames. Get out while you still can!

Paul addresses this to Timothy with a rather unusual title. “You, man of God, flee from all this.” Some people who become wealthy, remain humble, approachable, down to earth people even after they become rich. It doesn’t seem to change them. But you know that some of them develop a kind of attitude, a new identity, that suggests they are somehow more important than other people because they have money. More than one celebrity has tried to pull, “Do you know who I am?” when the wait staff, or security, or the person behind the desk wasn’t letting them do what they want.

Paul is reminding Timothy, “Don’t forget who you are.” You are a man of God. That’s not just a phrase for clergy. You, we, are all God’s men and women. We were sinners God should have wanted nothing to do with. But he rescued us from our sins, bled and died to redeem us, sought and found us to bring us to faith and make us his own. We don’t have to pretend we are important or valuable if we have money, or doubt our importance and value if we don’t. We are all forgiven failures, loved by Jesus the same as everyone else. We are God’s people, so we flee, run away from the lure of loving money with all its dangers to our faith.

1 Timothy 6:10 “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

We are all vaguely aware that we live in a wealthy nation and enjoy a high standard of living. If the annual income for your household averages $20,000 per person, your income is in the top five percent worldwide. If it averages $30,000 per person, you’re in the top one percent. The “average” annual income per person in the world is about $10,000, but half of all the people in the world make less than $1300 per year.

We are vaguely aware of all this, because we don’t feel so rich. Compared to other people we know or see on TV, we seem to have less. Many of us have too much debt. There is always something more we could buy, something nicer, bigger, just beyond reach. Contentment is an elusive goal. Advertisers do their best to make sure you never achieve it. In a country where people have a relatively high income and a lot of stuff, money easily becomes an obsession.

Greed, the excessive desire for money and possessions, the sin that essentially replaces God with things, is a hard sin to identify in ourselves because it involves an attitude more than an activity. It is not the same thing as being wealthy. Some rich people are very generous. They think about their wealth very little. Some poor people are consumed with envy for the lifestyle of the wealthy. They would never share no matter how much they had. They feel driven to accumulate all they can.

Perhaps a simple test for greed is this: Does some non-necessity ever affect your happiness negatively–either because you can’t afford it or you are afraid of losing it? Then it is safe to say we have been touched by greed.

Paul doesn’t use the word greed, but that is the sin he has in mind when he warns Timothy about the dangers of loving money. It perverts religion. It makes some people think that “godliness is a means to financial gain” (1 Timothy 6:5). You hear them preaching on TV.

It leads some to leave their faith behind and fills their lives with all kinds of grief. But there is an alternative way to live. “Godliness with contentment is great gain” (1 Timothy 6:6). Those who have godliness and contentment are the real rich people. They know the grace of God that takes care of every need of body and soul. They don’t live their lives with a constant sense that something is missing, that there is a hole in their lives that needs to be filled.

The love of money may be a root of all kinds of evil. But God’s love for us in Christ is a treasure trove that never fails to satisfy. It fills our hearts with his grace. It fills our faith with the joy of forgiveness and life that have no end.

Matthew 13:30 “Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First gather the weeds and tie them together in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.”

The harvest, Jesus tells us, is the “end of the age.” It is the end of this last era of human history in which we now live. At that time Jesus comes with his angels for judgment.

Those angels, Jesus says, “will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Our Lord doesn’t warn us about the fires of hell out of cruelty, but concern. There has to be some place for those who will not trust him and do not like him. You might think that when he returns people will change their minds. They won’t any longer deny that he exists, because they will see him face to face. They will no longer be able to deny that the things he did and taught are true.

But this is not the same thing as conversion. This is not the same thing as coming to trust and love him. Let’s say that two men who don’t like each other and disagree about something decide to settle it with a fight. One man wins the fight. The other man is forced to give in. That does not mean he all of a sudden feels all warm and fuzzy about the winner. He might even hate him more.

At the end, Jesus will win the battle with those who have opposed him. They will be forced to admit the reality that Jesus was right about everything all along. But they won’t like it. They may hate him more in eternity than they did in their earthly life.

It is not a lack of compassion that leads us to conclude heaven is not the place for such people. As Jesus’ everlasting opponents they would ruin it. There is only one place left for them, banished and exiled from the Lord and Savior they don’t like and don’t want anyway. C.S. Lewis once observed that the gates of hell are locked from the inside.

But believing, trusting souls who followed Jesus through the dangers of earthly life are gathered home. “Gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.” “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (vs. 43). Much of what waits for us in heaven is beyond our comprehension now, but Jesus’ words suggest two things. First, there is glory. We will shine like the sun. We will be transformed into higher, better, perfected versions of ourselves.

Second, this all happens “in the kingdom of their Father.” Not just “the” Father. Not Just “Jesus’’” Father. “Their” Father. “Our Father.” In heaven we find love in the home of the Father who made us, and then made us his own by faith. We will be loved, treasured, and protected in the kingdom that has no end. Unbelievers may be judged, but believers are gathered home in Jesus’ picture of our heavenly future.

Matthew 13:24-25 “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away.”

This is one of the few parables Jesus told for which he later gave the interpretation. A little later he told the disciples, “The field is the world” (vs. 38). Even though the parable is about how things work “in the kingdom of heaven,” Jesus is not talking about heaven above, or even the church on earth. The field in this case includes the whole planet on which we live.

“The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man (that’s Jesus). The field is the world, and the good seed stand for the sons of the kingdom” (vs. 37-38). If you are a believer, you are a “son of the kingdom.” You have been planted here by Jesus himself. He prepared for this planting by fulfilling God’s law for us, taking our sins on his shoulders, and dying on the cross in our place. When he planted that good news in our hearts, at our baptisms and in the preaching of his word, he made us his sons and daughters by faith. Then we became his good seed, planted in this world.

And he left us here for good reason. You plant wheat because you want to harvest a crop. That crop is more wheat. With Christians, Jesus wants more believers just like the ones he planted. We are here to reproduce ourselves, so to speak.

That’s why the weeds are a problem. “But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared” (vs. 25-26). The enemy, Jesus later tells us, is the devil. The weeds are the “sons of the evil one.” They are the unbelieving. The picture Jesus chooses is an interesting one. It appears that the kind of weed to which he is referring is darnel. It is a plant that looks very much like wheat. It even produces a seed head when mature. But darnel kernels are mildly poisonous. Eating them will make you sick. Just a few mixed with your wheat can ruin a harvest.

So we come to the tension. “The owner’s servants came to him and said, “Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?” “An enemy did this,” he replied. The servants asked him, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?” “No,” he answered, “because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest” (vs. 27-30). Any time you leave weeds in a garden or a field, you endanger the good plants. The weeds compete for water and sunshine and space and nutrients. The plants you want may become weak and even die.

That’s the way it is for us Christians in this world. Our faith and life is endangered by the “weeds.” World-wide, no one dies for their faith more often than Christians do, whether at the hands of those who follow other religions or hostile governments.

Then there is spiritual sickness and death by temptation. Christians are surrounded by people inviting them to throw off their faith. Give up your marriage if you don’t find it fulfilling anymore. Give in to the lure of pornography, drugs or same sex attraction. Make money, or career, or sports, or travel the center of your life. We are surrounded by vast crowds cheering us on as we move farther and farther from the faith. It’s not hard to understand why the owner’s servants ask about the weeds, “Do you want us to go and pull them up?”

But the Lord’s answer is, “No.” At the present time they must be tolerated, “because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them.” Wheat and darnel look very much alike for much of their growing life. So do many believers and unbelievers. Even though someone may leave us no doubt that he is not a Christian today, do we know what God’s plan is for him in the future?

Nabeel Qureshi came to the United States from Pakistan to go to college and to spread Islam. Once here, he became a Christian evangelist and author leading many more Muslims to Christ. Rosaria Champagne-Butterfield was an atheist, lesbian activist who despised Jesus and those who follow him. Today she is the wife of a man who pastors a Christian congregation and has raised a family with him.

Wheat or weeds: how would you have guessed? We Christians may long for the security of living in a world where we will not be attacked for our faith. Our Lord has different priorities. Now he tolerates the unbelieving in his world. It is their time of grace, their time to repent and believe the good news. Now his people live with danger to their souls. Weeding God’s field, removing the unbeliever by force, is not our job.

Matthew 9:37-38 “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send workers into his harvest field.’”

My church spends almost 20 percent of its annual budget on “evangelism” each year. We will send postcards and brochures, rent space at various events, perhaps take out some ads online or in local publications, give away school supplies and Easter baskets, host a sports camp, and do other things to meet our community. All of it will include giving away information about our faith and our worship times. We will do this even though we know that a very small percentage of the people who receive our information will ever come and visit us, much less choose to make this their church home.

According to surveys done by Lifeway Research, eighty percent of unchurched people would accept an invitation from their churched friends to attend church. More than ninety percent of people who do visit a church for the first time come because someone personally invited them. Obviously a human touch is very important. Direct contact with another person, an invitation to “come and see,” is far more effective at getting people to visit than anything else.

It should not surprise us, then, that Jesus does not say, “the harvest is plentiful but the money are few,” or “the harvest is plentiful but the advertising are few,” or even “the harvest is plentiful but the buildings are few.” These things are all useful, even necessary, but they are not the main thing for getting the work done.

No, Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” What Christian mission and ministry needs is people, people who are willing to share the gospel, or at least an invitation to hear it, with someone else. This means pastors and missionaries, of course. But it also includes laymen and women who will get involved, and talk to the people they know, even if all they do is say to a friend, “Why don’t you come to church with me this week?

So if we understand what Christian ministry is, and how it works, we pray, “Send workers, Lord.” Better yet, we pray like Isaiah once did, “Here I am. Send me! Send me!”