Tag Sin

Separating Good and Evil

Todd R 1 Comment

I like to collect quotes, and I have many favorites, but (outside of the Bible) the most influential quote to me is this one from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“The line separating good and evil passes, not through states, not between political parties either, but right through all human hearts.”

Much of the conflict in history, and in modern times, comes from a human tendency to group people into separate groups, where one is “evil”, and the other is “good.”  There are probably thousands of examples throughout history, but some that come to mind are religious categories like Catholic versus Protestant, political categories like Republican versus Democrat, or Marxist categories like “oppressed” versus “oppressor.”  Humanity follows a pattern over and over again, where we lump people into categories, then attack our enemies accordingly.  If someone belongs to the “other” group, they are evil, and if someone belongs to our own group, they are good.

In opposition to this, the Solzhenitsyn quote calls to attention Romans 3:23, which declares: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  This verse, and the quote, tear down the idea that people can be easily separated into “good” and “evil.”  That nations can be divided into good and evil.  That political parties can be categorized as good and evil.  Because every single person included in every single one of these categories is themselves a mix of good and evil, each of the groups themselves is a mix of good and evil.

Therefore, the quote calls us to treat people as individuals, dealing with them according to their specific situation and needs.  Without accepting that each person is imperfect (at best), societies may pretend to treat people as individuals, but they’re really stereotyping people according to their groups and pitting them in battle against each other.

For the Christian church, the quote doesn’t demand that we withdraw from politics altogether, but it does demand that we act with more compassion toward those we disagree with.  All too often, and especially on social media, we see category-based name calling and condemnation coming from Christians who categorize people and work hard to defeat those enemies that belong to other groups.

However, Jesus said in Matthew 5:43:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Imagine if we followed Jesus’ words.  Imagine if everyone could be humble based on the evil that lives within them, and therefore treat the people who we view as evil as equals before God, and just as in need of grace as we are.  The church, and the world, would be much better off if Christians were as good at loving their enemies as they are at identifying them.

“The line separating good and evil passes, not through states, not between political parties either, but right through all human hearts.”

The Narrow Door

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Many people think the God of the Old Testament is a God of judgement, and the God of the New Testament is a God of love, but I’m not sure these people are paying attention.  The whole Bible speaks to us of the same God.  The Old Testament is full of stories about God pursuing His people, calling them to come back to Him because He loves them.  Likewise, the New Testament has many passages like Luke 13:24-27, in which Jesus says:

“Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able.  When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us,’ then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’  Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’  But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’”

Not only does Jesus here pass judgement on “workers of evil,” but many other places point forward to a time where Jesus will come again to judge the earth in righteousness and justice.  But that may not be the scariest part of the verses above from Luke.  In these verses, Jesus isn’t talking about just any “workers of evil,” but He’s talking specifically about people who think they’re following Jesus.

Photo by Greg Rosenke on Unsplash

These verses are a response to someone asking Jesus: “Lord, will those who are saved be few?”[1]  His response to the question isn’t “yes, they will be few” but more like “yes, because many are trying to get there the wrong way.”  These people say, “We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets”?  In my reading, this phrase is like saying “we go to church.”  In church we “ate and drank” with Jesus in communion.  When we listen to sermons, it was like “you taught in our streets.”  They were around Jesus all the time and doing what other Christians do, but as 20th century evangelist Billy Sunday said, “Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.”

We can’t get salvation by our own efforts, even if we do all the “right things” but only through what Christ has already done.  Christ’s work is the “narrow door” and anything else will be a closed door when Jesus returns in judgement.  Part of what we call the visible church is going to be shut out. Jesus says many in the church “will seek to enter and will not be able.”  These are people seeking salvation, who “knock at the door” but don’t get in.

Does this mean we should spend a lot of effort on figuring out who is and who isn’t a true Christian?  It doesn’t, but it does mean we all should examine ourselves, which is what I think Jesus expected from His audience when He said these things.  As James asked “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?”[2] I ask myself, since I call Jesus my Lord, what things do I do only because He wants me to?  Do I do more than hang around Jesus and His people?  Do I do things that earn me nothing in return, but which please God?  This is what I think is meant by Paul when he wrote in Philippians 2:12 “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”  Although our salvation is free, and can only be earned by Jesus Himself, if we believe in Him then He is our Lord.  We should fear Him and do works that please Him.

Therefore, “strive to enter through the narrow door” of Jesus’ righteousness that was opened for us on the cross, but know that we won’t be the same on the other side.  We will be forever changed.

[1] Luke 13:23
[2] James 2:14

All Fall Short

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I’m writing a series about the verses I’ve quoted the most on this blog, and I see some of these verses as foundational to Christianity.  For example, another post in the series was about John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”)  Today’s post (#5 of the series) covers Romans 3:23, another verse that states a basic truth central to Christianity:

“for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”

This is so important because without knowing we are sinners, we have no reason to accept Jesus.  It makes John 3:16 and other verses matter more to the hearer.  This is why Romans 3:23 is the first verse in the “Romans Road.”  For those not familiar, the Romans Road[1] is an easy to memorize summary of the Christian gospel using verses from the book of Romans.  It gives a quick outline describing the need for salvation and the way to salvation using these verses:

Romans 3:23 – “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
Romans 6:23(a) – “The wages of sin is death”
Romans 6:23(b) – “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”
Romans 10:9 – “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved”

In the times I’ve quoted Romans 3:23, it has often reinforced the logic of the Romans Road, particularly its first step.  What does it mean that “all have sinned”?

Missing the Mark
In the New Testament, the word “sin” is often a translation of the Greek “hamartia,” which means “to miss the mark.”[2]  I’ve written that Paul in Romans 3:23 “is not saying everybody failed to follow a list of dos and don’ts, but that we have not fully lived the life God intended us to live.”  Sometimes we make a list of what we think are sins and think if we’ve followed the list, we haven’t sinned.  However, a better definition of sin tells us that “all have sinned.”  If the goal is for each person to attain “the glory of God,” none of us have achieved the goal.  We all need Jesus.

“There is Only One Who is Good”[3]
When someone came to Jesus (Matthew 19:16) and said ““Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?” part of Jesus’ response was “There is only one who is good.”  He says this because “all have sinned,” except Jesus, who is sinless.  Regardless, often people are obsessed with grouping people into “good” and “bad.”  I’ve written about “religious categories like Catholic versus Protestant, political categories like Republican versus Democrat, or Marxist categories like “oppressed” versus “oppressor.””  We assign people to these groups, then we like our side and hate the other.  Therefore, one of my favorite quotes is by Solzhenitsyn, who said:

“The line separating good and evil passes, not through states, not between political parties either, but right through all human hearts.”

In each person there is good and evil.  There is no way to separate groups of people into a group of good people and a group of bad people, because every person in every group is both.  If we only put more stock in Romans 3:23, which declares: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” we could avoid an awful lot of unnecessary hate and conflict.

God Loves Us Anyway
Now here comes the good news: “Most of the Bible is the story of the failures of people who can’t follow the will of God, but that God loves and accepts them anyway.”  Studying the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, it becomes obvious that God’s people aren’t “good’ people, but it also becomes obvious that God loves them anyway.  Therefore, Romans 3:23 cultivates in us a spirit of humility and gratefulness.  We know because of Romans 3:23 that any blessing from God is an act of grace because only Jesus lived a life of full obedience.  In Deuteronomy when Moses reviewed the blessings and curses that Israel would experience based on their ability to obey God, God knew that every single Israelite would fall short of deserving blessing.  Every single Israelite would sin.  However, because of God’s mercy and grace, we don’t get the judgement we deserve, but we do get the blessing we don’t deserve.  Therefore, we must be thankful for God’s grace, but also we must be aware that it is not at all earned by what we’ve done.

So, while Romans 3:23, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” is an important verse, Romans 3:24, right after it says, “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” and that’s just as important.

[1] This site has some more helpful detail on the Romans Road: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/salvation/what-is-the-romans-road-to-salvation.html
[2] Greek Strong’s Dictionary
[3] Matthew 19:17

The Sins That Matter Most: A Quint of Quotes

Todd R 1 Comment

Dear fellow travelers,

Here is another “Quint of Quotes” from my collection on the theme of sin, which is all around us, but also within us:

“God had one Son without sin; but He has no son without temptation.” – Charles Spurgeon, on Luke 11:4

“Oh, this was the great ploy of Satan in that kingdom of his: to display such blatant evil that one could almost believe one’s own secret sins didn’t matter” – Corrie ten Boom, speaking of the Holocaust

“What good was the Promised Land if the Israelites were just as wicked as the nations already living there?” – Life Application Study Bible, on Deuteronomy 1:1-2

“I have more trouble with D. L. Moody than with any man I know.” – D.L. Moody

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – 1 John 1:8-9

Godly Offspring Aren’t an Accident

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“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” – Genesis 1:28
“Did he not make them one, with a portion of the Spirit in their union? And what was the one God seeking?  Godly offspring. So guard yourselves in your spirit, and let none of you be faithless to the wife of your youth.” – Malachi 2:15

The first recorded words that God spoke to man and woman were “be fruitful and multiply”.  So, as close to man’s beginning as you can get, God created the family.  If God’s intention from the start was to build His kingdom, it needed people in it for Him to love.  Malachi confirms: “what was the one God seeking?  Godly offspring”.  He wanted a family for Himself, and for each other.

After this early command, one might expect the Old Testament between Genesis (the first book) and Malachi (the last) to be an instruction manual on having a Godly family, and many are only familiar with the “hero” stories learned in Sunday School.  In total though, it’s difficult to find examples of good parents in the Bible.  There are plenty of examples of bad parents, but the most striking story is perhaps that of Judah in Genesis 38.  (And here I feel I should provide a warning that this story has a lot of sexual content.  The full Bible is not a PG movie)

The story[1] starts with Judah taking a foreign (Adullamite) wife, named Shua, against God’s guidance to only marry Israelites so as not to be tempted by foreign gods and religious practices[2].  Judah fathers three sons by Shua, named Er, Onan, and Shelah.  Judah takes Tamar to be Er’s wife, but Er died before having children.  Preserving the family line through descendants was extremely important in ancient Israel, and a brother would marry his fallen brother’s widow to bear children in his place[3].  Therefore, Judah told his second-born, Onan, to take Tamar, but Onan would “waste the semen on the ground” because he selfishly didn’t want the children to belong to his older brother.  Onan also died before having children.  Having lost two sons, Judah sent Tamar to live with her father instead of giving the last son, Shelah, to her.  Judah claims that the reason was that Shelah was not old enough, but it’s implied in the story that Judah thinks Tamar is somehow responsible for the two son’s deaths.  Judah had created his own narrative to explain his misfortune as Tamar’s fault, when it was really God’s judgment for the sins of Judah and his sons.  Genesis makes it clear that God was displeased with Judah marrying a foreigner, that Er died for his own wickedness (verse 7), and that Onan died for avoiding his responsibility as a brother (verse 10).

When Judah’s wife died, he waited a while, but then decided to seek a prostitute.  Tamar, having never been wed to Shelah even though he was now old enough, sought offspring by disguising herself as a prostitute and soliciting Judah.  He did not recognize Tamar, and she conceived a son by him.  Prostitution was common in the land then and was often associated with cult fertility rituals for local gods.  Not only did Judah commit a sexual sin, but he was probably also worshiping other gods.  Later, when Tamar is clearly pregnant, Judah accused her of immorality, but she was able to prove that Judah was the father by producing items he left with her when she was disguised.  Ashamed of being discovered, he “did not know her again”.

In just one chapter, we have the command to produce Godly offspring violated by: foreign marriage, wickedness, refusal to conceive, refusal to offer the third brother, and prostitution.  God must be frustrated with His struggling family, but He does not give up.

In the last chapter of Malachi, shortly after the “Godly offspring” reference and before going silent for 400 years, God ends the Old Testament with:

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the LORD comes.  And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.” – Malachi 4:5-6

A restoration of proper family relations is the promise that ends the Old Testament.  “Elijah the prophet” is later revealed as a reference to John the Baptist, also spoken of in Isaiah 40:3 as the one who would prepare the way for the Lord Jesus.  The same Jesus who is announced in the genealogy that opens the New Testament in the gospel of Matthew:

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.…and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram” – Matthew 1:1, 3

Here is the miracle of the grace of God: the children born of Judah and Tamar were twins named Perez and Zerah[4].  Matthew could have chosen only those “heroes” of the Bible taught in Sunday School to show Jesus’ superior lineage, but instead chooses to highlight the story of Genesis 38.  Why include these people?  Because there is no other kind.

God’s purpose in creating His kingdom, populated by His family, will not be thwarted by sin because sinners are the only people available to join His family and to raise His family on earth.  Isaiah 53:6 declares:

“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way;
             and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Through the death of His only begotten Son on the cross, God became Father of His people through adoption into His eternal family.

But if God’s purpose is inevitable, then why should we bother to be good parents and people?

In the movie Tenet, released in 2020 during the pandemic, there is a scene where one character sacrifices himself for another.  The movie revolves around a technology called “inversion” which allows objects and people to be reversed in time.  Near the end of the story, two characters have a conversation “before” one character travels backward to sacrifice himself to save another character, but “after” the other character has been saved.  They both realize the sacrifice was essential to victory, but also that in the “before” character’s timeline, it hasn’t happened yet.  Can the sacrifice be avoided?  Then comes one of the best quotes of the movie: “What’s happened, happened. Which is an expression of faith in the mechanics of the world. It’s not an excuse to do nothing.”

In God’s view from eternity, “what’s happened, happened”, but He has taken into account all the sins and successes of mankind.  The choices we all make, including the mistakes, are part of the “mechanics of the world”.  All the mistakes will be borne in judgment either by the sinner, or on the cross with Christ.  But we also know “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10).  Doing God’s work is His will, is our purpose, and will be rewarded in heaven.  Doing nothing is not an option.

[1] The following two paragraphs summarize Genesis 38
[2] Deuteronomy 7:3-4
[3] Deuteronomy 25:5-10
[4] Genesis 38:27-30