Though spoken by God to Israel, this admonition is a
primary one for our walk in righteousness within the confines of the Salvation
Process.
Cast away from you all
your transgressions:
With a holy violence, dash away every transgression and incentive to it. – Adam
Clark Commentary.
We are to be working a process whereby we overcome and conquer all sins in our
lives. This means dashing even the incentives to such transgression. This
speaks to our
stopping the process of sin at its earliest states. Notice now
the same phrase from the JFB commentary:
Cast away from you all your transgressions-for the
cause of your evil rests with yourselves; your sole way of escape is to be
reconciled to God (Eph 4:22-23).
That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt
according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. --
Eph 4:22-23 (from Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary)
Matthew Henry’s Commentary puts it this way: “we must abandon and forsake them with a resolution never to return to them again, give sin a bill of divorce, break all the leagues we have made with it, throw it overboard, as the mariners did Jonah (for it has raised the storm), cast it out of the soul, and crucify it as a malefactor.”
Make you a new heart and a new
spirit:
Clearly this is speaking of repentance and the work of Christ in us by the power
of the Holy Spirit. Notice the meanings from the commentaries.
[Make you a new heart] Call upon God for it, and he will
give it:
(from Adam Clarke's Commentary)
"Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit:" a man
cannot, indeed, create either of these by his own power; God alone can give them
(Ezek 11:19). But a man both can and should come to God to receive them: in
other words, he can turn to God, and let both heart and spirit be renewed by the
Spirit of God. And this God is willing to do; for He has no pleasure hameet
(OT:4191) bŞmowt (OT:4194), in the death of the dying one.
(from Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament: New Updated Edition)
This shows, not what man can do, but what he ought to do:
what God requires of us. God alone can make us a new heart (Ezek 11:19;
36:26-27). The command to do what men cannot themselves do is designed to drive
them (instead of laying the blame, as the Jews did, elsewhere, rather than on
themselves) to feel their own helplessness, and to seek God's Holy Spirit (Ps
51:10,12).
(from Jamieson,
Fausset, and Brown Commentary)
Lesson 7:
Instructions –
Overcome sin. Repent
1) Overcome sin.
Stop the sin process as it begins.
2) Repent. Be a repentant person.
3) Invoke the power of the Holy Spirit both in stopping sin and repenting.
4) Never blame anyone for your sins. Accept responsibility.
5) Seek God's Holy Spirit by asking for it.