In 1978, one Conservative rabbi Harold Kushner, wrote and published a book ” When Bad Things Happen to Good People but if you look at this title, with the eyes of the scripture, you realize none of us is good. My question has been, who and what determines who is good or bad?. As human beings, even at our best, we’re capable of committing UN-imaginable sins that even those who hold us highly, can wonder in amazement when the real “you” and “me” come out. As I write this, maybe you’ve heard of great people who committed heinous crimes in society, yet they were the most respected and of great moral authority to many.
In 1982, an American singer Marvin Gaye, a son of A pastor, went away from what he was taught at home and wrote, and recorded a song titled “Sexual Healing”. I don’t, as a believer advocate for that song but his father, who was a preacher in the Hebrew Pentecostal Church and a proponent of a strict moral code was so infuriated by the song that he shot his son dead. My question is, what made this man of God bend so low?
You don’t need to read far from the scriptures to realize, that with our human standards of good and bad, we cannot meet God’s righteous demands. What the man of God did, was not far from what Moses did by killing an Egyptian in defends of his people Israel. He had to run away for safely. Isaiah says “We are all infected and impure with sin. our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.(Isaiah 64:6).In Jeremiah 17:9, the word of God says “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Yes friend, however how composed you’re, you’ll never know who you’re until a calamity strikes, a temptation is placed in your path or immersed in deep soup. In those moments, when you lose your focus from the path of Christ, the media is yet to report another heinous crime to the shame of the church, committed by a believer in Christ
When talking to himself of the futility of our good works verses the law of God, Paul says,” We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. (Imagine our pastor, if asked, hated murder, but that’s what he did-killing his son.)
Paul Continues,” if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. Romans 7:14-20
In concluding this, the Apostle asks himself a question that all of must be asking our Lord constantly… What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? (He then answers himself) Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!(vs 21). Paul must have heard what Jesus said to his disciples. It’s only in Christ that we have a clear standing. In his address to the disciples, Jesus said “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:5.. Our natural instincts tells us we can do so much but Christ said without him, we can’t do anything. Our confidents is built on Christ and his work at the cross because even in the best of us, the worst of all resides within.
Christian blog posts 
Leave a Reply