Are Christians Any Better than Others?
Some passages in the Bible are hard to read. I just finished the Book of Judges and it was tough to get through.
Not that the book is boring. Judges is full of interesting stories of war and leadership…mostly the lack of leadership. It contains the familiar stories of Gideon and Samson. But even in those familiar stories there is such a dark side to the circumstances and the people involved, even the heroes of the book, that it’s hard to read. The last three chapters are the worst. They contain an awful tale of abuse of women, rape, murder, kidnapping, wide-scale bloodshed, and civil war. When I finished it I thought, “These people were no better than the Canaanites they replaced."
And without God, they weren’t.
That was the problem. Repeated over and over throughout the book are the words, “And every man did what was right in their own eyes.” The author was emphasizing the state of affairs, even with God’s chosen people, when God is forgotten.
After all, that’s the definition of evil. It’s what you have left over when God is absent.
When Israel did whatever was right in their own eyes, evil took over and permeated the culture. Without Yahweh, they were simply depraved people who were prone to the same sin and corruption as any people without God.
You see, we are no better than anyone else. The Apostle Paul drove this truth home in Romans when he said, “There is no one who is good, not even one.” The only good in us is infused by the presence of God. Without him, left to our own devices, we are just like everyone else.
But with reconciliation, with the infusion of God’s Spirit by the life of Jesus given to us in conversion, everything changes. I love the passage in Ephesians 2 when Paul painted a realistic picture to the Ephesians of what their lives had been like, and he mentions every sin imaginable that they were guilty of. He even makes the statement, “just like everyone else.” He was reminding them that they were no better than anyone in the world…until verse 4 of chapter 2. Here we have two words that are pivotal. Before these two words we are all described in dark and discouraging terms. After these two words everything changes.
The words: BUT GOD!
When God entered the picture and actually became a part of our lives, everything changed! And it has to. With his life in us, things cannot remain the same. The life of Jesus in us transforms the whole course of our lives, our way of thinking, the things we say and do, what we live for, our eternal destination.
You and I are no better than anyone else. God, however, is the difference maker. You let him have his way, and forget about doing “whatever is right in your own eyes”, and instead let his spirit in you take the lead, and your life won’t have to read like the last chapter of the book of Judges. He will have rewritten the entire book.