ALL of us have gone astray. (Isaiah 53:6).

How can we stop going astray? Follow Jesus to the Cross. Be crucified with Christ. Put your faith in Jesus Christ!

Paul told the churches at Galatia: Crucify the passions and desires of the flesh: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. (my paraphrase of Galatians 5:19-21).

In a similar vein, Paul wrote to the churches at Rome: Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires. The mind governed by flesh is hostile to God. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. (my paraphrase of Romans 8:5,7-8).

How then can we be saved? How then can we stop going astray?

The answer today is the same as it was in the days of Noah: “call on the name of the LORD” (Genesis 4:26; 6:1-6).

The answer today is the same as it was on the day when the jailer at Philippi asked Paul and Silas, “‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ They replied ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your whole household.’ Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house.” (Acts 16:30-32).

As my Economics professor in college stressed in his lectures “All great ideas are essentially simple ideas”.

And so, although it is incredibly hard to crucify your passions and desires, it is an essentially simple idea.

Indeed, as we were reminded each Sunday in the church bulletin at a church I attended for many years, accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior is as simple as A, B, C:

—Admit that you have a need for God. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God . . .” (Romans 3:23 NIV).

—Believe that Jesus can save you. “Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God (John 1:12)

—Confess Jesus . . . and receive him as Lord and Savior. “Confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord . . .’” (Romans 10:9-10).

Why does believing in the Lord Jesus keep us from going astray? Because Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit as our Advocate—the Spirit of Truth that goes out from the Father. (John 15:26).

The Holy Spirit that Jesus gives us crucifies our lust for the passions and desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21) and replaces such lust with love for the fruit of the Spirit of Jesus: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Galatians 5:23-24).

And so, the Apostle Paul assured us:

This Spirit of Truth that Jesus gives us will guide us into all the Truth, acting as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until [our] redemption” (Ephesians 1:13 (emphasis added)).

This Spirit of Truth guarantees that we will stop going astray!

THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

How do you go astray? Why?

How do you stop going astray? Why?

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For related ideas, please read my blogs “Places of Worship—Praying and Singing Hymns in ‘Prisons’”; “Grace and Peace—Philippians’”; and “Forgetting So We Can Press On”.