Jesus did not heal every single person when He was here. Case and point - that lame man we read about in Acts 3 was a ‘regular’ there at the temple in Jerusalem and Jesus would have had to passed by him on multiple occasions. And yet we read in Acts 10:38 how Jesus went about doing good...’healing all who were oppressed by the devil’. So did Jesus ‘sin’ because He did not heal that beggar? Of course not; He knew that at some future point in time, Peter and John would be used by God to heal him which would open up an opportunity for the gospel to be proclaimed.

God really does know what He is doing. And Jesus knew that as well, which is why He was committed to doing only...what the Father told Him to do. (John 14:31) And those who are abiding in Christ ‘ought themselves to be walking just as He walked’. (1 John 2:6)

We were talking yesterday about those ‘sins of omission’ that many are convinced we ‘commit’ all the time when we fail to do something 'good'.(James 4:17) Today, let’s look at this misconception that a person sins every time they have ‘bad thoughts’. Please hear me now when I state:

Having bad thoughts does not mean you have ‘sinned’. Again...just because bad, wicked, evil or immoral thoughts run through your brain does not mean you have ‘sinned’. But... what you do with those thoughts... can certainly lead... to sin, which in turn leads to death. (James 1:13-16; Rom. 6:23; 8:13; Matt. 12:43-45).

And here’s a shocker that might surprise you – Jesus Himself had ‘bad thoughts’. How do I know that? Well, Heb. 4:15 informs us that He was ‘tempted in every area that you and I are tempted...yet did not sin’. Where or how do you think ‘temptation’ begins? It starts with a ‘thought’; and usually it has some appeal to our ‘flesh nature’ if...we have yet to put that to death. (Gal. 5:24)

Paul spent a lot of time addressing this as well, explaining this ‘spiritual war’ we are in, dealing with spiritual forces of darkness (Eph. 6:12) and how we have different weapons at our disposal, along with the ability to ‘bring every thought into obedience’. (2 Cor. 10:3-5) He writes about the need to ‘set our minds on things above’. (Col. 3:2; Phil. 4:8-9).

And here’s a ‘reality check’ for you: If the idea of submitting your ‘thought life’ to Christ has little appeal to you, then that might be an indicator that your heart is elsewhere, despite what you might ‘profess with your lips’, for as a man ‘thinketh in his heart, so is he’. (Matt. 15:7-8; Prov. 23:7). And therein lies the deeper issue.

You’ve probably heard that old saying about how one cannot ‘keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can keep them from building a nest there’. There is much truth in that and one thing I have learned these past few years...that unless you are truly abiding in Jesus, you will never have lasting success in this area. Trust me.

Tomorrow...we will address what the real ‘sins of commission’ are that we are told to ‘do no more...lest something worse happen to us’. (John 5:14). I hope you will be back.