It’s interesting how we often feel justified in the things we do. We don’t like to acknowledge when we’ve done something wrong. It seems to be a universal human trait. And if we can’t outright justify it, we come up with a justification through an ancillary excuse.
Have you ever been wrong and you couldn’t see it at first because you so badly wanted to be right that you made justifications for it? Well I’ve seen myself do this to some degree. It’s easy to think, “I know I shouldn’t have said what I said, but what they did to me was worse”, or “I know I should have helped them out but they’ve never helped me with anything.” These things are usually relatively minor. What about more severe offences, though?
We often don’t think about people who commit offences on the level of being criminal. Many people who have committed some of the worst crimes in history were people who came up with justifications for they’re actions. Certainly our prisons are filled with many people who think their problems are someone else’s fault. They stole from a bank because…..well, banks are insured anyway. Or, they might have just been mad at the insurance companies. The employee embezzles from their company because they think their boss had it coming. They think they should be paying them more anyway.
We can wonder sometimes how people can do some of the things they do. Well, it can sometimes be because they’ve justified it somehow to themselves. People often justify what they don’t want to take responsibility for. We want to find a good reason for doing what we know is wrong. And we don’t like feeling like things are our fault. However, if we were to truly be objective we would realize that we’re not standing on very solid ground. I guess this is why, when we go to court, we don’t get to decide our own fate. Our guilt or innocence and our punishment is decided by an objective third party. If we got to decide on our own punishment, our prisons would be nearly empty. I guess that would be one way to cut our crime rate. We could just say, “Here, you decide your own punishment.” Everything would essentially be legal then. Our laws would become meaningless. I guess that’s why our parents never let us decide our punishment when we were kids. We might have had a tendency to institute too light a punishments on ourselves.
We can easily see the futility of an immature child deciding for themselves when they’ve done wrong and the repercussions for that action. But what if we did, though, as adults? What if, with the maturity that comes with age and wisdom, we decided on our own when we were not just doing wrong, but just not quite measuring up? What would be different about us? What would be different about our society? One wonders of the possibilities.
I was thinking about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Where Eve was deceived by the serpent to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which God had commanded them not to eat. Here’s the scenario where God finds them in the Garden. Genesis 3:11 says, “And he said, Who told thee that thou [wast] naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What [is] this [that] thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.” It’s interesting what they both said when God confronted them. God first confronted Adam and he passed blame off on to Eve. Then God confronted Eve and she passed blame off on to the serpent. See, not much has changed today, has it? This is the first case in human history of this happening. And it’s been happening ever since.
There’s a most dangerous state we can remain in. It’s the most dangerous thing we can do. We can be like Adam and Eve were here and be in a state of denial about our sin. The reason it’s dangerous is because we never acknowledge the truth about the state we’re in. And if we never acknowledge the state we’re in, we can never come to repentance. 1 Corinthians 11:31 says, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.” This is key for us. God doesn’t want us to suffer the judgment of transgressing His laws. He would rather we acknowledge our wrongdoing and seek forgiveness so that we can be brought back in to right relation with Him.
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1 John 2:1 says, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:” This is the good news we all have. God’s will is for us to be righteous. If we are in a state of sin, though, we have an advocate, Jesus Christ. He is our trial lawyer. If we come to God and confess our sin, accepting the price Jesus paid on our behalf, we can be free from the judgment of our sin.
Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:” The result is we are finally justified by our faith that we are forgiven. So, we can never justify ourselves. We are only justified through our faith in Him.
Genesis 3:11 says, “And he said, Who told thee that thou [wast] naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest [to be] with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman, What [is] this [that] thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”
1 Corinthians 11:31 says, “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged.”
1 John 2:1 says, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:”
Romans 5:1 says, “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:”