Skip to main content

Proud Illusions

One of the preachers at our local church shared this weekend on the sixth commandment from Exodus 20:13, “You shall not murder”. He went on to rightly observe that the narrow application of this commandment is “capital murder”. But the broader application includes hatred and other vices. And though he did not make the point, I would add that in between actually is a more broader interpretation of violence offered by Prophet Obadiah.

What really struck me was this important observation he made. He said that deep down our hearts we are no different from those who commit the worst atrocities. It is only by the grace of God that we ourselves have not done the crimes that fill us with disgust when we read about them on television or watch them on Crime and Investigation television channel. For after all it was our sins that nailed Jesus Christ to the cross. But even more than that without other restraints we too are just as capable. 

That observation reminded me of three important quotes that I have come across recently that make same point. Jim Andrews in Polishing God’s Monuments pointedly notes our evil capacity from birth:
The breast of every child harbors a potential beast. Those who were once precious infants have perpetuated all the inhumanities of man on other men. The awful reality is that all human beings are bankrupt from birth; it’s just that in babies that spiritual condition is temporarily latent rather than active.
Jerry Bridges in Trusting God observes that often we do not know our weakeness until we are tested by circumstances:
We may think we have true Christian love until someone offends us or treats us unjustly. Then we begin to see anger and resentment well up within us. We may conclude we have learned about genuine Christian joy until our lives are shattered by an unexpected calamity or grievous disappointment.
Randy Alcorn’s in The Goodness of God really brings it all together with a personal illustration :
[The] sin nature we’ve inherited means that apart from Christ, we differ only in degree—not in kind—from the most notorious murderer or most ruthless dictator.

Just fifteen miles from our home, Westley Allan Dodd tortured, molested, and murdered three boys in the late 1980s. Dodd was arrested, tried, and convicted for the crimes. Shortly after midnight on January 5, 1993, he was hanged. Thirty minutes after he died, the twelve media eyewitnesses recounted the experience. I felt stunned as one of them read Dodd’s last words: “I had thought there was no hope and no peace. I was wrong. I have found hope and peace in the Lord Jesus Christ.” Gasps and groans erupted from the gallery, fueled by palpable anger.

The idea of God offering grace to Dodd utterly offended the crowd that had come to see justice done. That’s when it hit me in a deep and personal way—I am part of the same human race. I’d imagined the distance between Dodd and me as the difference between the South and North Poles. But from God’s viewpoint, the distance is negligible. Apart from Christ, I am Dodd. I am Osama bin Laden. I am Hitler, Stalin, Mao. Only by the virtue of Christ can I stand forgiven before a holy God.

This isn’t hyperbole; it’s biblical truth. We’ll never appreciate Christ’s grace so long as we hold on to the proud illusion that we’re better than we are. We flatter ourselves when we look at evil acts and say, “I would never do that.” Given our evil natures and similar backgrounds, resources, and opportunities, we likely would.
How I pray that God enables me to remember these truths every time! I wish that when I see evil around me it drives me to my knees to pray for the perpetrators before I condemn. I wish it moves me to look at my own wickedness and thank God for the Cross of Jesus Christ! Too often, I am tempted to think less of my own sins and in the process take for granted for the blood of Jesus Christ. May God help me not only to look to Golgotha but to remain there daily!

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pornography as Occultism

There is a kind of helplessness that a man engaged in pornography exhibits. He often speaks of it in terms of a “struggle” or an “addiction.” Now both of those terms are accurate, I believe, but they distance a person from his sin in a soul-decaying manner. Pornography is not just an addiction; it is occultism. The man who sits upstairs viewing pornography while his wife chauffeurs the kids to soccer practice is not some unusual “pervert”; he is (like his forefather Adam) seeking the mystery of the universe apart from Christ. That’s the reason the one picture, stored in his memory, of that naked woman will never be enough for him. He will never be able to be satisfied because he will never be able to get an image naked enough. I say pornography is occultism because I believe the draw toward it is more than biological (though that is strong). The satanic powers understand that “the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor. 6:18). They understand that the pornographic ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

The Wound of Sin

Bless the Lord, O my soul, that when you were playing with the bait, unaware of the hook like so many others, He opened your eyes—allowing you to see your folly and danger so that you might flee from it. And now, be careful that you do not grasp at any of the devil's temptations, lest he ensnare you with his hook. For though you may be restored by grace, it will not be without a wound—just as a fish sometimes escapes the hook but swims away injured. That wound may bring sorrow and take long to heal. And you have already known this to be true. THOMAS BOSTON  ( Source : The Art of Man-Fishing) A sobering truth from Thomas Boston. Sin always damages. God always restores His children when we fall but it is never without the wounds. We often carry the scars of our sins. This is another m reason for us to avoid sin altogether. Sometimes in our presumption of His grace, we tend to be antinomian. Boston is warning that such an attitude is foolish since sin always damages. It always leaves ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Pussy Riot as the Messenger

I have always thought there was something uneasy, or something not quite right about Pussy Riot and the western media reaction to it. It was not just the desecration of the Orthodox Church Cathedral. I could not placed my finger on it until I read this assessment by Vadim Nikitin : How many fans of Pussy Riot’s zany “punk prayer” in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s erudite and moving closing statement were equally thrilled by her participation, naked and heavily pregnant, in a public orgy at a Moscow museum in 2008? That performance, by the radical art group Voina (Russian for “war”), was meant to illustrate how Russians were abused by their government. Voina had previously set fire to a police car and drew obscene images on a St. Petersburg drawbridge. Stunts like that would get you arrested just about anywhere, not just in authoritarian Russia. But Pussy Riot and its comrades at Voina come as a full package: You can’t have the fun, pro-democrac...
2 comments
KEEP READING →