Ecclesiastes 10:1
1 Dead flies make a perfumer's oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor.
1 Dead flies make a perfumer's oil stink, so a little foolishness is weightier than wisdom and honor.
It's been observed that, if two parallel lines aren't perfectly parallel, over sufficient distance they will diverge enormously. At first, the lines may look the same, the difference between them being very small; only after the lines are followed for a long enough time does the effect of that very small difference become apparent. And the longer one follows one line or the other, the vaster the difference between them grows.
This holds true, I believe, in regards to how the Christian thinks about their faith. Just a few "dead flies" in the "ointment" of their understanding about how to walk with God leads to a spiritual "stink." What should be an odor of Christ in the life of a child of God, because of seeming insignificant contortions of the truth, because of "dead flies" of error, becomes a foul smell of Self and false doctrine. Of course, if all the believers in one's sphere of living are giving off a similar stink, it ceases to be noticed, or is thought to be normal. Ironically, the believer who is careful not to twist God's truth to their own understanding, keeping Self in its crucified, impotent place, allowing God's truth to qualify and clarify itself, ends up smelling odd to those who have grown accustomed to the smell of "dead flies" in the ointment of their spiritual thinking and living.
I'm thinking in particular of how often, when believers read the many proclamations in God's word that He takes the responsibility to change them, that they unconsciously rework these proclamations so that they become demands by God for believers to change themselves for Him. In this area, the divergence between God's way and Self's counterfeit way is very small, fly-like, only a single word:
God changes me by His power.
God changes me by our power.
One can read all throughout the New Testament directives to the Christian to do things, to live in a particular way. The Christian life is active, a "working out of one's salvation," a moving ever more fully into a sanctified, Christ-centered life. And so, it is easy for the superficial reader of the Bible, for one used to self-effort in every other area of life, to assume that the child of God must act to change themselves for God, in their own power to obey Him, pushing down their strong, natural desires, fighting tooth-and-nail against what they really want to do, sacrificing and laboring to show God that they really love Him.
But Scripture could not be more clear about the means of our spiritual transformation, about who does the changing of us:
Philippians 1:6
6 For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 2:13
13 for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
2 Corinthians 3:18
18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Romans 8:2
2 For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:13
13 For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
Ephesians 3:16
16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,
Galatians 5:22-25
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5:23-24
23 Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
24 He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
1 Peter 5:10
10 And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.
Jude 1:24-25
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy,
25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.
I could hold forth on why, in the face of all of these verses (and more besides), Christians still adopt an "I will do for God" attitude to spiritual living, but suffice it to say, when they do take up this sort of thinking, they have diverged from the line of God's truth, they have allowed "dead flies" into the ointment of their walk with God.
Until the "dead flies" of a juvenile spiritual understanding and its resulting self-effort are removed from one's walk with God, replaced by the truth of the verses above, there can only be the "stink" of Christian living filled with moral and spiritual failure, frustration, and stagnation.
We only work out what God has first worked in. He changes us by His power, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the changes He makes we simply, naturally, easily reflect in our living. No torturous straining, no excruciating self-denial, no endless stuffing down of sinful desire; just the natural, inevitable, fruitful growth of a branch in the Vine. A laborious, struggle-filled experience as a Christian is a sure sign that Self is at work for God, rather than the Spirit at work in us.
Really, the battle is over who will rule, not over whether or not to yield to a particular sin. If there is any struggle for the believer, it is in trusting that, having submitted to God, He is responding, altering the believer in such a profound way the believer can't see in the moment that He is. The fight is one of faith, of believing God, not of resisting temptation.
Anyway, I hope and pray you'll guard the "ointment" of your walk with God from the "dead flies" of which I've written. When you do, the result will be a beautiful, spiritually "fragrant" life in Christ.
2 Corinthians 2:14-15
14 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place.
15 For we are a fragrance of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing...
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