Hi First Presbyterian Church,
It’s time for our Mid-Week Meet-Up! Christmas Eve is only one week away! Just to remind you about our worship opportunities on Christmas Eve: a family service will be at 4:30 pm; a lessons and carols service will be at 8:00 pm, and a traditional service will be at 10:30 pm. Both the family service and lessons and carols service will be live-streamed, too. Don't forget that the Sunday after Christmas (December 28) will only have one service at 10:00 am.
We’re in the middle of the third week of Advent and still reading our way through A Surprising God by Thomas Long and Donyelle McCray. In the reading for today, the authors reflect on Luke 7:35 and what “spiritual maturity” looks like. How is one able to grow in spiritual maturity with Christ? They reference the “ladder of divine ascent” introduced by John Climacus in the seventh century as well as the examen prayer introduced by Ignatius of Loyola in the sixteenth century. Each of these tools for spiritual growth was intended as a way for people to gain greater self-awareness in order to seek God’s help in overcoming sin and temptation.
Their reflections today reminded me of how the “seven deadly sins” have historically been used by the church in a similar way. Are the seven deadly sins mentioned anywhere in the Bible? No, they aren’t. But they have been used by the church for centuries as a way of “diagnosing” what a person struggles with most in their life. Then, based on which area of sin is a person’s greatest pitfall, that person can practice spiritual disciplines that (with God’s strength) might help them to resist and overcome that area of sin.
Did you know, however, that the seven deadly sins used to be nine? For some reason, in the seventh century, Pope Gregory I reduced the nine deadly sins down to seven, and that’s how we’ve been referring to them ever since. Here’s a list of the deadly sin: gluttony, lust, greed, sloth, anger, envy, pride, fear, and vanity. The last two in the list were the ones dropped 1,400 years ago.
Last year, I realized that the Bible tells us there are also nine fruits of the Spirit (which are nine characteristics that demonstrate the Holy Spirit is at work in our lives). The nine fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That got me thinking. Is there any relationship between the nine deadly sins and the nine fruits of the Spirit? With the help of my Wednesday Night Bible Study, I think I found a correlation between the two lists, in which one of the fruits of the Spirit can be thought of as the antidote to one of the deadly sins. Here are the pairs:
Gluttony - Self-Control
Lust - Love
Greed - Generosity
Sloth - Peace
Anger - Patience
Envy - Joy
Pride - Gentleness
Fear - Faith
Vanity - Kindness
Here’s how this correlation works. When you examine your life, what is your biggest struggle? If it’s fear (which entails worrying about unknowns), then perhaps you need to introduce spiritual disciplines into your life that will help you to practice faith (which means trusting God despite unknowns). If it’s anger (which entails losing patience), then perhaps you need to introduce spiritual disciplines into your life that will help you to practice patience. If it’s envy (which means hating your own life because of the good in other’s lives), then perhaps you need to introduce spiritual disciplines into your life that will help you to practice joy (which is delighting in the good in other’s lives). The correlation continues similarly for the rest of the pairs.
I encourage you to consider how you might use an idea from our devotional reading or today’s Mid-Week Meet-Up to resolve to grow spiritually in the new year.
Peace,
Aaron