The Seven: From Vice To Virtue

Dear St Andrew’s,

This Sunday we begin a new nine-week sermon series called The Seven: From Vice to Virtue. It has nothing to do with the Seven Wonders of the World, The Magnificent Seven, or even the rather less magnificent seven dwarfs. Instead, we will be exploring seven patterns of thought, desire and behaviour that Christian tradition has identified as particularly destructive: pride, envy, sloth, wrath, greed, gluttony and lust.

In case you are already thinking, “This sounds like the perfect time to try another church for a couple of months,” let me try to dissuade you!

The purpose of this series is not to provide us with seven new reasons to feel guilty. Nor is it to give us a convenient vocabulary for diagnosing what is wrong with our spouses, children, colleagues or fellow church members. The series is about each of us allowing God, through his Word and Spirit, to search our own hearts.

That is necessary because our hearts are notoriously difficult to understand – especially when they are our own. “The heart is deceitful above all things,” says Jeremiah. “Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). We can easily settle into well-worn ruts of thought and behaviour without noticing where they are taking us.

Rebecca DeYoung compares our repeated choices to a sled travelling down a snowy hill. Each journey deepens the track until, eventually, the sled seems to follow it automatically. In a similar way, our repeated responses gradually form our character. Pride, envy and the rest are not simply isolated mistakes. They can become settled habits that bend us away from loving God and our neighbour.

Naming those ruts can be uncomfortable, but it can also be wonderfully liberating. By God’s grace, a different path is possible.

That is why our series is called From Vice to Virtue. We will give careful attention not only to the vices but also to the Christlike virtues God wants to cultivate in us: humility, kindness, diligence, patience, mercy, temperance and chastity. A virtue is more than the absence of bad behaviour. It is a Spirit-formed habit that enables us to love God and others well.

So humility is not merely thinking of ourselves less; it is receiving our identity from God and gladly recognising the gifts of others. Kindness does more than suppress envy; it learns to rejoice in and actively promote another person’s good. Patience is not passive resignation; it seeks truth, justice and reconciliation without retaliation. Mercy loosens greed’s grip by trusting God and opening our hands to others. And so on.

This is part of what the Bible calls sanctification: God’s gracious, lifelong work of making those who belong to Christ increasingly like Christ. It is God’s work, but it is work in which we actively participate. As Paul writes, “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you” (Philippians 2:12–13).

We do not work to earn God’s acceptance, but because in Christ we have already been accepted. We do not change ourselves by sheer willpower, but neither do we remain passive. By the Spirit, we put off the old self and put on the new. We practise new patterns of love until, increasingly, they become part of who we are.

Our opening and concluding weeks will frame that journey, with seven weeks between them examining each vice and its corresponding virtue. The sermons, small-group studies and daily Bible readings will all help us travel together.

My prayer is that this will be an honest, hopeful and deeply practical series: not a guilt trip, nor a recipe for despair, but an invitation into the abundant life Jesus gives. May God expose the false promises that enslave us, fix our eyes on the better gift of Christ, and form in us the beautiful character of his Son.

Blessings,

James