Topical Studies
What the Bible says about
Blaming Others
(From Forerunner Commentary)
|
Genesis 3:11-13
God asks the questions to impress them on their minds, allowing Adam and Eve to convict themselves with thoughtful and honest answers. Honest, yes, and very revealing. Both cast a measure of blame away from themselves. They plainly believe that they are not to blame and should not bear full responsibility for their transgressions. Thus began mankind's practice of self-justification in defense of sin. But neither Satan nor anyone else made them sin. Nobody twisted their arms. Notice how the sin of self-justification intensifies the original sin. By attempting to dodge responsibility, claiming that circumstances made them sin, they compounded their sin by lying. Adam's sin is particularly egregious, blaming God's gift to him, Eve, whom he had held in such high regard just moments before. In a somewhat roundabout manner, he is blaming God, essentially saying, “God, if you hadn't given me this woman, I wouldn't have sinned!” Similarly, Eve says, “If You hadn't allowed that Serpent into the Garden, I wouldn't have sinned.” Today, we might say that it is in our genes to sin; that we grew up in a bad neighborhood; that our parents failed to teach us; or that our father or mother was a drug addict or alcoholic. Some of those circumstances may be true, but they do not make us sin. God is teaching us that, regarding sin, circumstances offer us little assistance when under God's judgment. Should a situation that invites sin arise, it is our responsibility to exercise faith and control ourselves, remaining in alignment with God's righteousness. When he told his audience that he had done something wrong, comedian Flip Wilson claimed, “The Devil made me do it!” and everybody laughed. But that, too, is simply a backhanded way of blaming God, as He created the angelic being who became the Devil. We can reach a couple of brief conclusions from our evaluation of Adam and Eve's experience: First, if we do not honestly and fully accept responsibility for our sins before God, we will surely reap their grim effects. Sin's fruit, regardless of the circumstances in which it is committed, is always the same. When sin occurs in the course of history makes no difference. Adam's and Eve's sins occurred at the outset of mankind's history, and they are still affecting us. Not every sin has this level of power, but the potential exists. Besides the death of the sinner, like leaven, sin's effect is to spread from its initial point of origin. Second, as shown by Adam's and Eve's excuses, self-justification tends to blind us to God's goodness, His gifts, because it intensifies what originally occurred. In our haste to absolve ourselves, we forget things that God has provided us: life itself, a mind that can gather information, the ability to reason, the ability to remember, and a spirit that, not only makes us human, but confers the potential to be like God. Adam's blaming of God for His gift of Eve reveals his horrendous ingratitude for what he had been given.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Leadership and Covenants (Part Seven)
|
|
Mark 7:20-23
In the Judgment, we cannot say, “The Devil made me do it” or “The world was so corrupt, I didn't have a chance.” Despite outside influences, each of us makes the choice to sin or not. Our choices reveal what is in our hearts, and too often we choose these wicked activities and others beside. We cannot foist the blame onto others because our sins come from within.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Are Humans Good or Evil?
|
|
2 Corinthians 7:9-11
There is nothing difficult to understand about what repent means. It simply means "to change one's mind." In biblical usage, it implies changing one's mind in relation to God and His way of life. Repentance, though, is invariably preceded by something else, usually a deeply felt sense of concern, arising from guilt that one has done wrong. It can also be fear for one's life or reputation, or it may be sorrow over the horrible mess one has created. We must understand that concern, unease, guilt, fear, or sorrow is not repentance. However, these feelings can lead to repentance, the change of mind that contains the resolve never to repeat whatever made us feel uncomfortable about our relationship with God. Paul had, in effect, chewed them out in a previous letter, and it set off a chain of reactions: It produced the sorrow that leads to repentance, the change of mind in relation to God. That, in turn, produced a change of conduct because they set their wills never to allow their unrighteousness to be the cause of breaking their relationship with Him again. If a person changes his mind in relation to God rather than merely because of the pain that his conduct caused himself and others, it opens the door to making real change in attitude and conduct. A number of factors always work to keep us from admitting responsibility for the destructive conditions surrounding us. First, sometimes we simply do not "get" it! It sometimes takes a while to understand that, by our own conduct, we are shooting ourselves in the foot and hurting our loved ones besides. In human nature, the tendency always exists to blame others before ourselves. Second, sometimes we are so unfeeling, so unconcerned, and so self-centered that we just do not care! This attitude is dangerously destructive—in fact, biblically suicidal. This attitude is similar to what occurs to people in the grip of a drug, whether it is alcohol, a chemical like heroin, cocaine, or the nicotine in a cigarette. The third reason is more subtle and difficult to grasp, and it resides at the foundation of a great deal of our failure to repent and change. Because of our tendency to think we are nothing, we cannot seem to get it through our minds that what we do matters! Are we not only one of billions of people on earth? Or, are we not only an insignificant member of community, family, club, or church? It is a careless but nonetheless strong inclination to believe that nothing we do has any effect whatever on the improvement of life for anybody else. Do we realize that almost everybody else also carelessly feels the same way? Thus, the whole family or nation continues its violent, heartbreaking, pell-mell rush into the pit and on to oblivion! The same beliefs confronted Amos as he preached to the people of Israel more than seven hundred years before Christ was born. They also confronted Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and all the other prophets, as well as Jesus and the apostles! Isaiah lamented with all his heart, "Lord, who has believed our report?" (Isaiah 53:1). They are the ministry's challenge to this very day. It is also where our relationship with God becomes so vital to the quality of our lives. We cannot afford to let ourselves be lulled into thinking that our attitudes and our conduct do not matter—that they do not contribute to the disaster that is this world. The drought that the Charlotte area endured in the past provides an interesting illustration in this regard. In 2001, voluntary water-use restrictions were imposed, producing a 23 percent water savings. in 2007, in the second-worst drought in Charlotte history, mandatory restrictions produced 30 percent savings, a modest seven-point increase. Why was a higher percentage of water not saved during a far more serious drought? Measurements reveal that 50 percent of the water drawn from Charlotte's reservoirs goes to home consumption. The reason for the modest increase, then, largely comes down to the attitude in each individual's human nature that says, "What I do doesn't matter." But to the Christian, it does matter! Why? Because watching our response to governments and circumstances that God has established is, in an overall sense, what He is judging most closely. In each of His regenerated children, He wants to see whether we really do perceive Him to be sovereign over His creation and will submit to Him by faith. He wants to see whether we will look to Him beyond the human government He ultimately installed; beyond what everybody else is doing; beyond our cynicism, distrust, and skepticism; and beyond our feelings of being of no consequence.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Unity and Personal Responsibility
|
|
James 1:13-15
This pattern of producing sin began in the Garden of Eden when Satan tempted Adam and Eve by stimulating their desire for the forbidden fruit. From that small beginning, sin entered and blossomed. It is easily seen that every problem produced by immorality, whether individual or national, is caused by allowing temptation to develop into sin. Sin is illicit desire brought to fruition, and everybody from peasant to king is subject to wrong desires. From the beginning of time, it seems to have been a human instinct to blame others for our sins, just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. James sternly rebukes that view. God does not cause sin and neither do things. Sin would be helpless if there were nothing in man to which it could appeal. Sin's appeal is to human nature's self-centeredness, which then builds through our desires. If a man desires long enough and intensely enough, the consequence—action—is inevitable. It is because we desire our own way that we dishonor our parents and murder; because we desire a thing, we steal; because we desire being well thought of, we lie. Illicit desire can be nourished, stifled, or by the grace of God, eliminated. If one gives himself to Christ by submitting entirely to God, there is little or no time or place left for evil desire. The tenth commandment pierces through surface Christianity, truly revealing whether a person has surrendered his will to God or not. The spiritual requirements for keeping this commandment are in some ways more rigid than any other because they pierce right through to the thoughts.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Tenth Commandment
|
|
Revelation 21:7-8
God declares that He will cast the cowardly into the Lake of Fire. This should give us pause because few of us are the kind of people who "run to the sound of the guns." For most of us, we have sometimes been brave, but perhaps many other times we have been timid and fearful. So what can we do to avoid being a coward when it matters most? We will start with a definition. Webster's American Dictionary defines a coward as "a person who shows shameful lack of courage or fortitude." Fortitude is "mental and emotional strength in facing adversity, danger, or temptation courageously." The root of the word "coward" derives from the Latin word coe, which means "tail." Obviously, it comes from the common sight of an animal "turning tail" and fleeing "with its tail between its legs," metaphorical expressions still in use today. An Old English word for "cowardly" is earg, which also means "slothful." This brings to mind Matthew 25:24-30, where the slothful servant (KJV; the NKJV calls him "lazy") is sentenced to "outer darkness" for failing to carry out the job he was given to do. The servant justified his lack of action, saying, "I was afraid, and went and hid your talent in the ground" (Matthew 25:25). Examples of cowardice are found throughout the Bible. The first is that of Adam and Eve, who hid themselves from God, and then, after he was caught, Adam attempted to shift the blame for his actions onto his wife. As the old joke goes, "Adam blamed Eve; Eve blamed the serpent; and the serpent, well, he didn't have a leg to stand on." Later, both Abraham and Isaac called their wives their sisters to save their skins. In Moses' day, the ten spies sent into Canaan were afraid to challenge the inhabitants of Canaan, and their cowardly actions dispirited the whole nation. The New Testament contains examples of cowardice, too: the parents of the blind man whose sight was restored feared the Jews, the rich young ruler feared the loss of his wealth, the disciples feared the storm on the sea, and, of course, Peter denied Jesus rather than die with him as he had pledged. In Galatia, Peter and others played hypocrites because of fearing the church's Jewish leadership (Galatians 2:11-14). The common thread in these occurrences is self-preservation; we all want to continue as we are without sacrificing anything. But God owns us heart and soul, and because of that fact, we need to consider the end toward which God is leading us. Jesus says in Matthew 16:25, "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it." Jesus set us the perfect example of self-sacrifice and boldness, as His crucifixion was only the culmination of a lifelong example of dedication and sacrifice. So we, too, must deny ourselves and follow Him regardless of the cost to us (Matthew 10:39). An old adage says, "Sow an act and reap a habit; sow a habit and reap a character; sow a character and reap a destiny." Human experience shows it to be generally true. If a person does something repeatedly, even if at first it is against his will, it will become a habitual practice, especially if it turns out to be a pleasurable experience. If the person continues in his habit until it becomes a necessity to him, it will engrave itself on his character, and at that point, his destiny is pretty much set. So it is with cowardice, running away in fear of hard choices and sacrifice. We cannot allow fear and flight to become our necessary, habitual reactions to difficult situations lest they become set in our characters. As we have seen, cowardice is related to self-preservation, laziness, faithlessness, and the wrong kind of fear. In I Corinthians 16:13, Paul exhorts us, "Watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong." Deuteronomy 11:8 informs us that being strong comes from obeying God's commandments. Moses exhorts the Israelites in Deuteronomy 31:6, "Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the LORD your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you." Paul encourages us in Ephesians 6:10-17 to take the steps now to dress ourselves with the proper battle gear so that, when we must face the enemy, we will be ready to stand rather than run.
John Reiss
Fear Not (Part Two)
|
|
 |
The Berean: Daily Verse and Comment
Sign up for the Berean: Daily Verse and Comment, and have Biblical truth delivered to your inbox. This daily newsletter provides a starting point for personal study, and gives valuable insight into the verses that make up the Word of God. See what over 150,000 subscribers are already receiving each day.
Email Address:
|
We respect your privacy. Your email address will not be sold, distributed, rented, or in any way given out to a third party. We have nothing to sell. You may easily unsubscribe at any time. |
|
|
