C. S Lewis once said, “No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness — they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means — the only complete realist.”

 When you read this it makes so much sense. As a pastor I have been asked many times that if Jesus never sinned, how could he be truly human. My response is that because Jesus never sinned, He is the only One who has truly been human. The rest of us fall short of our created intentions because our sins rob us of our created purpose.

We as believers must learn to push back against the temptations that befall us. We must truly learn the discipline of being or becoming a disciple of Christ. We must let love for Jesus be the motivation to not yield to temptation and not simply a religious moralistic framework of what we’re supposed to do so we can look like the “Good Christian.” If religion alone is our motivation to do right then we will live as failures of the cross of grace.