“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Gal. 5:19-21
Have you ever taken the time to read and understand each individual word of a verse or series of verses? I never did, that is until I was challenged to by my dad. I often had read these verses, but it was just conscious reading, just “putting in the time” of reading the Bible. Yet there was something different about the last time I read them, something just happened to catch my attention, and it started me searching for the answer to a question that I had never thought to ask before.
If someone ask you to name off a series of sins, not any that you had committed, just a list of the things that God declared were wrong and against Him, which would you name? Murder? Adultery? Perhaps pagan worship? If you named any of these things you would be correct in that any one of them are sins, but what if someone were to ask you, “If a Christian is guilty of variance, is this a sin?” What would your answer be? Yes or No?
Before we make any quick decisions, let us fist understand the word “variance.” According to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, the word variance means: “Any alteration or change of condition.” So to vary is to change, i.e., go from hot to cold, and from cold to hot. In the life of a Christian to live in variance is to live a life of confusion. Serving God with all our hearts one day and then follow the world the next. So many times I have heard Christian teens say, “I am really on fire for God; I want my life to be exactly in the will of God!” Then in the same breath say that their favorite musician is some rock-n-roll singer. This is a paradox: a statement that contradicts itself.
For a Christian there is possibly no other sin that can be more shaming to our great God and only Savior then to live in variance. The world sees us at church every Sunday and at the night club every Monday, they look and mock, and poke fun at the God that came to save them. Why? Because you and I have put Him to an open shame. We have defiled the temple of God and God will not live in an unclean temple, for He is holy and righteous who’s desires are pure. We must live every day with that “new born” will. “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isa. 58:1). For indeed “it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame” (Heb. 6:6). |
