A lot of people are just happy to have their sins forgiven, and that’s it. Such people do not know Jesus as their Savior; they know Him as their Forgiver.
We should carefully consider the sins of anger and sexually lustful thinking, so that we don't just see their seriousness, but so that we also understand how we can overcome them. Their seriousness is seen by the fact that these are the only two sins in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus connected with the possibility of a man going to hell. My observation is that 99% of Christians do not feel that anger is a very serious sin. They certainly do not feel that anger can take them to hell. Thus they don't really believe what Jesus said in Matthew 5:22. What type of Christians are they if they, don't believe what Jesus Christ said? Do you believe what He said about anger? Or do you believe the psychologists? Psychologists can’t lead you to heaven. In the same way, 99% of Christians don’t really believe that lusting after a women with your eyes is serious enough to take you to hell. Most people don’t take that seriously at all, which is proof that the devil has made sin such a light, unimportant thing.
Think of a deadly disease, like AIDS or cancer: how many people would take contracting AIDS or getting cancer lightly? Only people who are completely ignorant of what such diseases can do. If you were to tell an illiterate, poor woman in a remote village that she's got cancer, she wouldn’t be disturbed, because she doesn't know what cancer is. An educated person, on the other hand, would be very disturbed if the doctor tells him that cancer has spread all over inside his body. Why is he disturbed? Because he sees the danger of cancer.
In the same way, when you're spiritually illiterate, you don't consider anger to be a serious sin. When you're spiritually illiterate, you don't consider lusting after women to be a serious sin. That is a mark of your spiritual illiteracy, just like that illiterate woman doesn't know how serious cancer is. In the same way, one who is spiritually literate will take these sins very seriously. He doesn't even need the words of God to tell him to, because he knows instinctively that these are serious sins, because one hurts other people, and the other hurts himself. So that's why we should look at these sins more carefully and ask how we can overcome them.
When the angel came to Joseph in Matthew 1, he gave the very first promise of the New Testament. It says in Matthew 1:21, “Jesus will save His people from their sins.” That is the meaning of the Name of Jesus. A lot of people who name the Name of Jesus don't even know what His Name means. Matthew 1:21 tells us that the name, “Jesus,” means “the One Who will save His people from their sins.”
What's the difference between being saved from our sins, and being forgiven of our sins, as it pertains to anger and sexually lustful patterns of thinking?
If you get angry in a sinful way, and then repent of it and ask the Lord to forgive you, He will forgive you. And tomorrow, if you will get angry again in a sinful way and ask the Lord to forgive you, He will forgive you. And next week, if you do the same thing, and you ask Him to forgive you, He will forgive you. In the same way, if you lust after a woman with your eyes and you realize it's a sin, and you ask the Lord to forgive you, He will forgive you. And if you do it again tomorrow, and you ask Him to forgive you, He will forgive you. You turn to the internet and watch pornography, and you ask the Lord to forgive you, and He forgives you.
But have you been saved from these sins? No. Have you been forgiven? Yes. The pattern of your life is one of sinning, asking the Lord to forgive you, sinning again, and asking the Lord to forgive you again. It’s an endless circle. Have you been forgiven? Yes! You may have sinned a thousand times, and all your sins are forgiven, but have you been saved from your sin? No, because you keep on doing it! It’s like coming out of a pit, and falling into the pit again; you ask somebody to pull you out, he pulls you out, and then tomorrow you fall into the pit again. Every time you ask someone to pull you out, you fall into the pit again. When is it going to end?
What has Jesus done for you up to this point? Jesus has forgiven you. Then be honest and say, “I know Jesus as my Forgiver, but I do not know Him as my Savior. I know Him as One who forgives my sins, but not as One Who saves me from my sins.” We have to be honest. If we are dishonest with ourselves, we will never come into the fullness of what the Bible promises us. God loves honest people. I encourage you to be honest before God, and say to Him honestly, from your heart, “Lord Jesus, I only know You as my Forgiver. I do not know You as my Savior."
A branch cannot bear fruit if it's not in the tree, and every branch can say to its tree after being in that tree for 50 years, “Without you, I can produce no fruit; but if I am in you, it’s almost effortless to produce fruit.” Do you think a branch is struggling? Look at a mango tree: is that branch struggling to produce mangoes? No. But if you cut that branch off of that tree, even if it's been producing mangoes for 50 years, it stops producing immediately, because it withers. As long as it's in the tree, though, the sap of the tree flows in, and that’s how the mangoes are produced. That’s the principle of overcoming sin and that's what we need to teach every single person who is a disciple in every nation.
Dear friends, you have to understand that without Christ, you cannot overcome any sin. You can overcome external sins, sure. But what does that prove? There are multitudes of atheists in the world who don't murder anybody, and who won’t even commit adultery physically. To keep the outside of the cup clean, you don't need Jesus Christ; you just need to be a good Pharisee. There are non-Christians, even atheists, who never cheat, who are honest, and whose external life is very upright; but when it comes to the inner life, they are corrupt within. Inner uprightness is more than self-control. You can keep from expressing anger outwardly with the powers of yoga, but that's not deliverance. That's just closing the bottle tight so that the poison remains inside; it still destroys you. That's not the deliverance that Christ offers.
Christ offers deliverance from the anger within. I can open the bottle, and there's no poison there. If you look inside my heart, there’s no anger there; it is not by great effort that I am trying to keep my mouth shut and don't lose my temper - that‘s yoga, but that's not deliverance from anger. Deliverance from anger is where Christ delivers us from the anger within our hearts. It’s completely gone, and if you look inside of one such heart, there is no anger. If you look inside that heart, there is no lusting after women. Only Jesus can do that.
