One Simple Truth - Day 7: The fruit from lemon seeds, packaged as orange seeds, will still make your mouth pucker.

“Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.”

‭‭Galatians‬ ‭6‬:‭7‬-‭8‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Shakespeare’s Juliet famously said that, “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” The context was that the one who she loved (Romeo), had a family name (Montague), at war with those of her family name (Capulet). We could extend Juliet’s adage and say, “You can call a rotten fish a daisy but it will still stink.”

A particular name may become associated with certain traits; but renaming something, does not change traits.

Rationalizing our sinful behavior is a way of putting a better name onto something we are doing that is not good. And, in doing so, people may actually become self-deceived, somehow believing that what they are calling, what they are doing, will change the outcome for which they are actually working.

In our opening scripture we see Paul reminding the Christians at Galatia that mocking, taking lightly, the judgment of God, will not change the certainty of the same.

Indeed, he reminds them that living a life aimed at satisfying sinful lusts will reap the wages of sin: death. On the other hand, those who live their lives aimed at pleasing God will reap everlasting life.

Another dimension of the law of sowing and reaping not taken into account by those who would mock it, is the fact that whatever is sown will be multiplied: We will not just reap a crop of exactly what we planted. That is to say, planting three apple seeds will not produce three apples. Far to the contrary, planting three apple seeds, can result in three apple trees, on which there will eventually be multiplied hundreds of apples.

That calculus may render a wonderful result if we were only talking about apples. But make no mistake, the multiplication, the certainty of multiplication, is not negated by what we called what we were sowing.

Again, not only will we reap what we have sown, we will get it back in abundance.

“They have planted the wind and will harvest the whirlwind. The stalks of grain wither and produce nothing to eat. And even if there is any grain, foreigners will eat it.”

‭‭Hosea‬ ‭8‬:‭7‬a ‭NLT

In the above scripture, the Lord, speaking prophetically through Hosea, said that the evil being done by the children of Israel was going to be returned to them as destruction.

Child of God, let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us to be honest about what we are doing. Let us not deceive ourselves into thinking we can “repackage” sin such that it will not produce what God said it would produce.

I’ll leave you with the instruction that comes right after our opening scripture:

“So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.”

‭‭Galatians‬ ‭6‬:‭9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Peace to you.

Jesus is coming! Get ready for Him!

#resolveforhim

#onesimpletruth