by Jacob Ninan
When Satan tempted Eve, she thought that by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, she could become like God, with her own independent knowledge and ability to make her own decisions. But Adam and Eve lost out completely when they did not pay attention to God. They became disconnected and distant from God, and lost everything they had enjoyed earlier with God. Now they had to manage for themselves. But when God confronted them and asked them what had happened, it was an opportunity for them to become right with God again and get back to the place they had lost. They could have said, "I am sorry, Lord. I sinned!" But instead, they put the blame on others, and neglected to take responsibility for what they had done (Gen.3:12,13).
In effect, they were saying, "It is not my fault. Somebody else made this happen to me. It's their fault." Someone can argue that they were partially right in that someone else was involved in what happened. But the point is that they absolved themselves of their own responsibility for what they did, how they responded to what happened. Now all of us human beings have this nature. People say, "I became angry and said something, but it was that person who made me angry." "I picked up that phone and put in my pocket. But the owner shouldn't have left it there." "I raped that girl, but she shouldn't have dressed like that." In other words, they are saying that the temptation is responsible for their behaviour; if it had not come, they would not have done what they did! So, they think that the responsibility for their sins actually belonged to someone else. Have you heard a girl say after a relationship was broken up, "Why did God let that man come into my life and ruin my life?" Now it is even God's fault!
There are three ploys we use to get rid of our guilt. The first is to try and see if we can convince others that we did not do anything wrong. That is denial. The second trick, if the first does not work, is to find some excuse to justify what we have done. The final attempt is to pass the blame to someone else or the situation.
But every time we refuse to acknowledge our sin, we harden our heart. Our conscience becomes less sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit. The distance between us and God increases, and we wonder why God is not to be seen when we need Him. But we must not forget that it is not God's fault that we cannot see Him, but that our sins have come between us and Him (Isa.59:1,2). If we are like this, then what we claim to be the desire of our heart, to become like Jesus, is not going to happen.
It is a wrong teaching that gives the impression that no matter how we live, God's grace will transform us into the character of Jesus. Why then did Jesus tell us that if we wanted to be His disciples, we ought to take up our cross daily, deny ourselves and follow Him (Lk.9:23)? What would be the relevance of all the exhortations and warnings the New Testament has for believers? Those who do not pay attention to these warnings can even fall away from their faith in God (Heb.3:12).
Jesus made it very clear that the way to life was narrow and few would find it (Matt.7:13,14). It is narrow because as disciples we will have to deny ourselves many things that appeal to us in an earthly sense. Many things are out of bounds for us, and many of our friends and relatives may leave us when they find that our direction is different. But this is the way that leads us to God's life. Many preachers omit preaching about this because they will not have many people to be with them!
Many people have only heard of salvation as receiving forgiveness for their sins and going to heaven when they die. They have not heard that God wants to set them free from the power of sin in their lives and to transform them into the character of Jesus. So, as a result, they assume that how they live does not really matter because there would be forgiveness whenever they did wrong. But if we want full salvation, we will have to learn to take seriously the way we live now. If we do not recognise whenever we go wrong in anything, we would not even be asking for forgiveness, let alone for help to overcome next time. We cannot work out our salvation if we do not even recognise where we need to be saved. We may be Bible scholars or ministry leaders, but if we are not walking on the way of the cross following the example of Jesus, we are not going to partake of the divine nature.
Moses was the greatest leader of the Jews, and we can learn something from his example. He wrote five books in the Bible, and taught the people about the laws of God, but when he sinned, he could not recognise it. There was an occasion when there was no water to drink in the desert that God asked Moses to strike a rock with his rod, and then water came out. On another similar occasion, God asked Moses to just speak to the rock. But he was so angry with the people that he again struck the rock with his rod. God was angry with Moses and told him that neither would he be able to enter the Promised Land or be the one to take the people there. Much later, when Moses was writing about this event to the people of Israel, his point was that if was due to the people that he could not enter the Promised Land (Deut.1:37). He could not see even after a long time, that it was his sin that caused this punishment. Doesn't this point to our human tendency to be blind to our own faults, and to try to put the blame on others?
May God give us revelation to understand this! Different kinds of situations may arise before us. But we cannot blame them if we respond to them in a wrong way. What we do is our responsibility, and that is what we need to look at. We ourselves may have, in the past, spent our time brooding over the things that happened to us, and justifying whatever action we took, not focussing on whether our action was pleasing to God or not. What others do is something they have to give an account to God for, and not for us to use as an excuse. If we take revenge, spread stories about them, teach them a lesson, let them know who we are, or hold a perpetual grude against them, we only add to our guilt and neglect the opportunities we had to partake of the nature of Jesus. For example, we could have learnt to love our enemies, pray for those who hurt us, bless those who cursed us, return good who did evil to us, etc.!
"For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unrighteously. For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this finds favor with God. For to this you have been called, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His steps, who did no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; who being reviled, was not reviling in return; while suffering, He was uttering no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously" (1Pet.2:19-23 ). The example of Jesus here is not reviling back, making no threats while He was suffering, and giving Himself into the Father's hands all the time. Don't we want to become like Jesus in these ways?
We can learn not to return evil for evil, and also not to hold other people as responsible for our response. Whether we choose to return good or evil is a choice we make, which then decides if we are going to grow spiritually or not. Let us look at ourselves and see what our real goal is, whether to show others how strong and powerful we are, or to become more like Jesus. If we want to become like Jesus, let us ask the Holy Spirit to teach us to judge ourselves even at the level of our thoughts, attitudes and intentions, and then let us keep purifying ourselves to become like Jesus.