daily java

Daily Java:

How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart?
      Cleanse me from these hidden faults.
   Keep your servant from deliberate sins!
      Don’t let them control me.
   Then I will be free of guilt
      and innocent of great sin. (Psalm 19:12-13)

It is amazing what we are capable of, things we end up doing that we never dreamed we would.

I read an article a few years ago by a young man who had participated in a gang rape in a bar. He said he was repulsed by the whole idea, yet the mob mentality was so strong that he found himself engaged in the very act that appalled him. He said it was as if he had no will of his own and was deeply ashamed.

A friend of mine was a policeman in Houston involved in undercover narcotics work. There was rumors of a riot planned in one part of Houston and the police sent in my friend along with several other undercover policemen to see if they could diffuse the riot from inside before it got going.

He told me that the mob moved and began to chant and throw rocks through business windows. He threw a rock and thought, Wait. I am the police. Again, it was as if he had no volition of his own. He became part of the mob without wanting to.

You find some money and keep it, even though you have an idea of where it came from. You say something to hurt someone and wonder afterwards why you would ever do that. You engage in an affair with a woman, even though you love your wife and you cannot figure out how it was you even got started.

You do stuff that is stupid and you think, Wait. I am a child of God! Why am I doing this?

Sin lurks in our hearts. That sounds melodramatic, but it is absolutely true. It is just sitting there waiting for the opportunity to jump out. It is no wonder that the Bible speaks of the devil as a prowling and roaring lion, seeking whom he can devour.

Romans 3:23 says: All sin and fall short of the glory of God. That is for the world, for non-Christians and everybody for that matter. Everybody sins and messes up. It is the way we are made. God made us able to make choices, and the problem is, when the choice is too hard, we make the wrong one. It is human nature.

Even Christians have the problem of sin. 1 John 1:8 says: If we say we have no sin, we are lying and the truth is not in us. That is for Christians.

In other words, everybody sins. Some are saved sinners and some unsaved sinners, but we are all sinners needing the grace of God.

And the bad thing is – if the others are not bad enough – we don’t even know all we do in our hearts, all we are even capable of.

We do both deliberate and hidden stuff all day, both Christian and non-Christian. So if we all sin like this, who then can be saved?

We are not lost by the sins we commit, we are lost by the fact that we have not accepted Jesus and his grace. We are not saved by the sins we do not commit, we are saved by the grace of Jesus.

The Lamb’s Book of Life does not have the things we have done listed in it, it has our names listed. If we are his, our names are there. If not, they are not.

He knew and knows that we sin. It is our nature. But when we take him into our hearts, it changes the nature of our lives. We are no longer ruled by sin. We are ruled by him and his grace.

That doesn’t mean we do not still make mistakes. But what it does mean is that we stand before him clean and pure by his power, not ours. We are free and innocent by his strength. He makes us that way.

Praise his name!