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Matthew 7:11
In Matthew 7:11, part of the Sermon on the Mount, we receive a smack between the eyes, so to speak, from our Savior. We might feel slightly better about being called "evil" by our Lord if He had used the general Greek word for "bad," kakos, here, but sadly, He did not. Instead, He uses poneros, suggesting active, rebellious evil, as in the kind Satan does. Jesus does not pull His punches but matter-of-factly informs us that we are fundamentally wicked and depraved. The evil He spies in us is morally corrupt and opposed to God. Christ uses our evil nature as an example in contrast to the goodness of God, who always gives good things. We are shown to be on one end of the moral spectrum as being evil—comparable to Satan, the quintessence of evil. At the far other end is God, who is transcendently and eternally good. Jesus concludes that between these two extremes, there is little, if any, commonality—except that every once in a while, despite being evil, we condescend to do something good for our children. Jesus' statement dovetails with what happened in the Garden of Eden. God instructed Adam and Eve not to take of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16-17), which represented the full range of moral choice. We know that our first parents indeed took and ate of that forbidden tree, and ever since, with the exception of Jesus Christ, each individual among mankind has repeated the same process. In doing so, we have given ourselves permission to experience life through trial and error and then decide what is good and evil. Rather than teach us wisdom, as the serpent promised (Genesis 3:5-6), this course of action has fixed us on the debit side of the ledger—under the curse of sin—because our nature tends toward doing evil. As Paul declares in Romans 3:10, 23, "'There is none righteous, no, not one;' . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." This is not very encouraging, is it? Yet, these are the plain words of Scripture. Despite repenting and learning the truth, we Christians are a mixed bag, having a nature with a tendency towards evil and rebellion against God, but also divinely called (John 6:44), given the Holy Spirit, and presented with the challenge to move from the evil side to the good side. In addition, though God has forgiven our past sins, we still carry a great deal of baggage from sinful things we have done along the way. To complete His challenge to transform from evil to good, we are charged by God to overcome these difficult obstacles. How aware are we of the evil within? Do we acknowledge, as Paul does, that evil still exists within us? Years ago, the cartoon character Pogo said in a comic strip, "We have found the enemy, and the enemy is us." How true that is spiritually! It is primarily the evil in us that we must recognize, face, and overcome if we desire to grow in the image of Jesus Christ. Without a doubt, there is evil in the world. The world is composed of sinful people just like us—worse, they are unconverted, never having been offered the opportunity to be redeemed from the enslavement of sin. In this way, the evils that exist in the world, being so raw and blatant, are obvious and avoidable. It is quite easy to hear the news of a murder and see it as evil, and since most of us are not the murdering type, we find it easy to avoid this form of wickedness. In the end, the evils of the world are far down the list of our concerns because we lack the wisdom and power to change them. Ultimately—and realistically—we cannot do anything about them except perhaps to be an example of goodness in a sin-blighted world. Our best play is to keep these evils from touching or tempting us and to overcome those that remain in us. In the same vein, we cannot change Satan and the evils he inspires. Our Savior has already defeated him, and his doom is sealed. True, he still has the power to influence us to disobey God, so we are called as soldiers to "resist him, steadfast in the faith" (I Peter 5:9). But we fight Satan, not by frontal assault, but by indomitably defending our ground (Ephesians 6:10-13), and we accomplish this by avoiding temptation, doing good as we are able, and overcoming the evils within. It comes back to recognizing and fighting internal sin.
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Evil Is Real (Part Three)
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