DWM-18 & WFF-25 & WFP-20
Short Clip
SIX DEADLY SINS
Here is what we should be praying that we MUST FLEE and that those we love and pray for that they want to please the Lord—AVOID in their lives.
1. Bitterness is like a smoldering fire. The Greeks defined this word as long-standing resentment, and as the person who refuses to be reconciled. So many of us have a way of nursing our wrath to keep it warm, of brooding over the insults and the injuries we have received. This brooding grudge–filled attitude of Simon the Sorcerer in Acts 8:23 and Esau in Heb. 12:15 is characteristic of pagans and not Christ’s children. It is the spirit of irritability that keeps a person in continual acrimony, making him tart and poisonous, Every Christian might well pray that God would teach him how to forget like God taught Joseph in Genesis 41.51-52.
2. Wrath are the outbreaks of passion and have to do with wild rage, the passion of the moment. The Greeks defined wrath as the kind of anger like the flame which comes from straw; it quickly blazes up and just as quickly subsides.
3. Anger is long-lived anger, a more internal smoldering, a subtle and deep feeling. Unlike other words for anger, they described this word Paul uses as anger which has become habitual. To the Christian, the burst of temper and the long-lived anger are both alike forbidden.
4. Clamor is the shout or outcry of strife and reflects the public outburst that reveals loss of control.
5. Slander, is the Greek word from which we get blasphemy and is the ongoing defamation of someone that rises from a bitter heart.
6. Malice is the general term for the evil that is the root of all vices. All of these, he says, must be
What was the solution? Paul gets very practical, he says put away from you. The word the Spirit guides him to pen is from a word that is used for taking off clothes (cf. Acts 7:58; 1 Pet. 2:1). Just as after a long day of hard labor the workman takes off his dirty work clothes, so we as believers must discard the filthy, tattered rags of their old life. Paul may be reflecting on one of the applications of baptism in the early church. Those being baptized would lay aside their old outer clothes before their baptism and be given a new white robe afterward.
So God is saying bitterness and its buddies are part of the old life, so put aside these rags of our old life. When there is an accident the rescue people come and quickly clean up the stained pavement. When there is the contamination of an area the crews quickly isolate and rid the area of the dangerous materials. So bitterness and its buddies must be avoided or its poison will spread.