Giving Birth to Sin

The key discipline of the Faith to teach us how to avoid stumbling has everything to do with taming our passions.

“You reap what you sow!” That old saying comes from the wisdom of the Scriptures, and it is just as true today as it has ever been.

But that’s the challenge, isn’t it? Why don’t we learn this lesson? Why do we think we can indulge our untamed desires and not have that end up causing us all kinds of troubles? I mean, it happens so often that it seems like we’d get the picture by now. If we let our desires run wild, even if we excuse it by calling it “sowing our wild oats,” we never escape the natural consequences of having to accept the consequences of our choices.

Hey, I get it. I struggle with this, too. Falling for the temptation that “Well, I’ll just sin a little bit” as if we forget that even a little rebellion ends up growing in our hearts like a virus! So, what do we do? Well, we start by being honest, and then we learn discipline!

Look at our lesson today in James 1:1-18

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion: Greeting. Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways, will receive anything from the Lord. Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like the flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God"; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full-grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

“lured and enticed by his own desires…” St. James begins his General Epistle to the Christians of his day with an invitation to “Count it all joy” when our lives are challenged by troubles. Then later, he reveals the root of the self-inflicted suffering we bring to our lives when we ignore the wisdom of the Faith to tame our passions and insist our desires “grow up.”

He tells us that if we desire wisdom, we should ask because God wants to give us wisdom. But the wisdom He wants to give us has everything to do with knowing ourselves and knowing where we are still slaves to our desires. The wisdom God wants us to have isn’t external “wisdom” about how to navigate our finances, or to become successful business people. However, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that.

No, the wisdom God offers us is a wisdom that will give us insight into our own souls so that we can learn how to see temptation coming a mile away and how to understand our desires so well that we can tell when our desires are leading us into trouble!

That’s real wisdom. When a man learns to master his own desires, he is free from every temptation to become a slave to any of them!

And it all starts with untamed desires. Look at each place in your life that has ended badly, and behind almost all of it will be desires that were not wise or indulged in such a way that they became masters. Desire germinates sin, and unless it is tamed, matured, and disciplined, that desire will lead to missing the mark of being like Christ, and that pattern of life of desires birthing sin always leads to death!

There is a saint we recall today named Luke the Righteous of Greece. His story is both incredible and illustrative of what our passage reveals to us today. St. Luke, from a young age, desired spiritual wisdom more than feeding his desires. He was so committed to the disciplines of the Faith that he would often even give his clothes to the poor, for which his father punished him. As Luke grew, people began to notice that miraculous things happened around this righteous man, so much so that it came to become commonplace for miracles to happen through his prayers. All of this communion with the eternal realm flowed from Luke’s singular focus on disciplining his desires to teach his soul to desire God more than anything else. St. Luke died an old man towards the middle of the 10th Century AD.

So, today, are your desires under control? Do you know how to tame your passions so that they are your servants instead of your masters? The Orthodox Way is all about being taught this wisdom of true Normal living in the freedom of a life disciplined to be “like Christ.”

P.S. God, Who by judgments known to Him chose you when you were formed that you, O Luke, might be right well-pleasing unto Him, from the womb made you His own and He sanctified you; as His own true faithful servant has He shown you forth and has set aright your footsteps, ever guiding you as the Friend of man; you rejoice before Him now.