There are reasons and there are reasons. And, usually, it\u2019s the reasons behind actions that make the difference. When Paul wrote \u201cthose who are in the flesh cannot please God\u201d (Romans 8:8) he was getting at the heart of the matter. Those who are \u201cin the flesh\u201d are those who have only the unchanged human nature with which they were born. Such people (the unsaved) CAN DO nothing—absolutely nothing—of which God approves. He says in Proverbs that \u201ceven their plowing (i.e., their everyday work) is sin.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat if they do good things to help others—feed the poor, help old ladies across busy streets?\u2019<\/p>\n
Nope.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t understand that!\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s simple. The reason behind the action is vital. If God is not in the picture\u2014if pleasing Him and obeying Him is not one\u2019s ultimate motive (reason)\u2014then a work, no matter how good its social effects may be, does not please God.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yes. You see, people who live merely on the horizontal plane, as if God didn\u2019t exist, forgetting the vertical dimension, live only for themselves\u2014or, at best, for others. But not for God.<\/p>\n
Human works, done in that manner don\u2019t reflect God\u2019s honor\u2014they glorify people. When Jesus spoke of giving<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are reasons and there are reasons. And, usually, it\u2019s the reasons behind actions that make the difference. When Paul wrote \u201cthose who are in the flesh cannot please God\u201d (Romans 8:8) he was getting at the heart of the matter. Those who are \u201cin the flesh\u201d are those who have only the unchanged human …
\nThe post The Reason Behind appeared first on Institute for Nouthetic Studies | Biblical Counseling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":48708,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[285],"tags":[447,4428,145,1272,32,884,1830,4893,1850,1895,3261,4894],"class_list":["post-48706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-institute-for-nouthetic-studies-jay-adams","tag-bible","tag-biblical","tag-biblical-counseling","tag-christian-life","tag-counseling","tag-counseling-training","tag-motivation","tag-motive","tag-motives","tag-nouthetic","tag-nouthetic-counseling","tag-reason","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/cropped-Favicon-32x32-1.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48706"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48709,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48706\/revisions\/48709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}