Romans 7:15-24 (NIV)
15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[a] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
Whenever God gets on a subject with me, He always seems to go full circle. Just when I think I am starting to see something more clearly, He flips it into reverse. How many times has God screamed in my ear? How many times has He spoke to me through my heart, "Don't do it. Somebody is going to end up getting hurt and in the end, it will probably be you." Looking back over my life there are many times I have said, "What was I thinking? All the warning signs were there." I read a book "Night" by Elie Wiesel, about his experience in Auschwitz. Before they were even taken to the prison camp, a man in their town was taken with several others to the forest, forced to dig a huge hole and one by one each of them was shot. This man survived miraculously and returned to the town to warn the other Jews what was happening. They thought he was crazy. Hind sight is 20/20. The Holy Spirit is our guide.
How can I judge any person for not listening to that small voice warning them not to, if I don't choose to hear it? We are all responsible for our actions. Yes, we are persuaded by evil and good, but we make the choice. Why does God allow it to happen? Why does He allow us to hurt each other. Why doesn't He stop it?
God made a choice to give us free will. Imagine our life without it. You find a person you want to be married to, but they don't want you. You force them to love you. How does that feel? Does that satisfy your need to be loved if it is forced? I'm sure God could force us to love Him, but then is it even really love?
With little children, we often force them to apologize. As adults, it would feel pretty silly if your boss forced your co-worker to apologize to you. The apology would mean nothing. Many times we try to force people to be who we want them to be, but if everybody did what we wanted all the time, if everything went our way, how bored would we be? There has to be free will or life and love would, mean nothing. I know what forced feels like and I don't want to be forced to do anything. I want to choose to love, I want to choose to apologize and forgive so that it means something.
To enjoy the freedom to love, we have to have the freedom to hate. To have the choice to forgive, we have to have the choice not to forgive. We all get free will and I don't know any human being who makes the right choice every time. I know several who make a lot of bad choices including me. We choose to struggle instead of surrender, trust and obey.
I heard it said recently that one of the differences between me and God is God never thinks He is me.
We tend to place sin on a scale. This sin is worse than that sin, but who are we to decide? Unless we have experienced it, we don't know. This may not make sense to a lot of people, but I would rather be physically beat than verbally abused. Physical bruises heal so much faster than the bruises to the heart. I can say this, because I know. Maybe if it was a stranger abusing me, the emotional would be easier, because if they don't know me, that can't touch my heart like someone who does.
I remember a conversation I had years ago with a friend about David and Bathsheba. My friend pointed out that Uriah, Bathsheba's husband was the winner in the whole story. My friend said if he had to choose to be one of the characters in the story, he would be Uriah. I thought he was nuts. Uriah was cheated on and killed. My friend pointed out that while David and Bathsheba were suffering the consequences of their cheating, Uriah was with the Lord in heaven. I had not looked at it that way.
Isn't all sin tied together. If you look at the commandments, you can hardly break one without breaking a couple others. No matter which commandment you break, you are breaking the first one which basically says to put God first. Isn't any bad behavior dishonoring your parents? If I go back and look at my sin, I can't think of a time, I broke only one of the commandments. In the book "Night" Elie Wiesel talks about a time when the Nazi's made all the men strip down completely naked and line up. As a fifteen year old boy, the thing he noticed was that they were all equal. There was no rich and poor, no good and bad, all equal and he wondered if this is what it will be like when we all stand before God. Our successes don't really matter, nor our failures. As we stand there naked before God, we will only have our hearts and that's what He will be looking at. Maybe some will be healthier than others and some more broken or bruised.
Sin affects more than the sinner alone. Different sins feel different to each of us. Lying to me, may not be as horrible as it is to you. Gossip to you may not hurt like it hurts me. We are all sinners and we are equally given forgiveness, grace, love if we accept it.
“I want to protect innocent people from sin by locking them in cages, where the evil can't get to them.”
― Jarod Kintz
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