Aversion Preaching

Preachers often ham-it-up with the “fire and brimstone” message in a desperate bid to keep people from sinning. But what they fail to understand is that not everyone is like them. Different people have different callings, upbringings as well as differing levels of grace and mercy afforded to them. Sure, we as believers in Christ have all been made to drink into the same Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13). But we are all on different levels in our love walk.

Some people are not as “holy” as others because of what they have become. If we made an effort to understand this more, we would be more compassionate and sympathetic towards those who do fall into the trap of habitual sin.

I think that what causes believers to burn with self-righteousness indignation is that they hate the thought of some believers who want to “have their cake and eat it”. This attitude of zero-tolerance towards the sin of others seems to be noble, but it is not love: love is kind and compassionate and is longsuffering towards others.

If you are a partaker of the Divine Nature, your nature is completely changed to be in accord with God. Therefore, if you assimilate the nature of God into your own nature, you change completely. When I say that you change, I mean that there is a change to your beliefs, attitudes, desires and motives. There is a change to all factors which govern behaviour.

In summary, get the Divine Nature in your by faith – and you will not sin. At the least, you will sin at lot less. But on the whole, you will not knowingly commit yourself to a sinful act. Why? Because it is no longer in your nature to sin.

⁹ Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.

1 John 3:9

If preachers spent more time on what believers really needed to know, instead of condemning them all the time, then believers would grow strong in the Divine Nature and would be able to turn aside from sin.

I personally believe that Christians miss out on many opportunities to get close to and to relate to unbelievers. We can get put off getting close to certain people, because we are scared-off by their indulgent practices. We can fear that if we are not careful, we may become influenced by their behaviour and activities.

This is especially the case when believers themselves have come out of such a background, examples of this are: New Age, drugs, alcohol, crime, fornication, etc. It might not be a specific indulgence such as drugs; it could be just a person’s negative personality that includes a whole range of things that the Bible forbids.

For instance, you might have known someone who seemed to be friendly on the surface, but when you get to know them, they are always criticizing people. This has happened to me and I know how hard it can be when you are struggling not to go along with what they say because of your Christian teaching; but at the same time, something inside of you gets stirred-up and you eventually let yourself go and agree with them and join in with their criticism. I have found that God will pressure believers into identifying with the sin that still exists within them and to get them to let go of it, instead of them holding on to it.

Preaching that seeks to encourage Christians to avoid wrong behaviour has the effect of causing Christians to create aversions to certain practices. The primary means of creating such an aversion is by determining to avoid those people, places and things that might encourage those previous modes of conduct that we are told are unacceptable to God. The idea is that as Christians who have just been delivered out of the darkness, we are to seek and maintain holiness through the avoidance of even the very hint of sin.

But this approach does not tackle the very reasons why some Christians resorted to those modes of behaviour in the first place. This means that they do not address the underlying emotions and drives that led to the wrong behaviour patterns, such as hurt, sadness, fear, insecurity, emptiness and sense of isolation. Then, as a believer cuts his ties with previous associations that indulged in those things that were considered wrong, he then finds himself doing what is wrong with other Christians who have a similar history to him, people who seem to understand him; or, his sinful practices will be driven “underground” so that he indulges in them in isolation, such as internet pornography or alcoholism.

This strategy of holiness by avoidance is not very effective, but it also robs us of potential testimonies. The ideal would be for a person with a certain background to get saved, get themselves free of past behaviours and addictions, and then meet with those people they knew from the past and let them see that there is something different about them. But instead, Christians can be terrified of meeting those people again because they fear being tempted to fall back into previous patterns of behaviour.

The Bible’s answer to this is simple:

¹⁶ I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. ¹⁷ For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.

Galatians 5:16-17

The Bible’s answer to the sin issue is not of aversion or avoidance, but of being Spirit-filled and Spirit-led. If the Holy Spirit is living in you then you will not desire to do those things that are wrong - even if those things were so appealing to you in your past.