Sin Stands in the Way
Marvin and Gloria left the counseling session assuring each other of their devotion. They renewed their vows never to fall short again. But they were soon back. They couldn’t inspire each other to be consistent.
“But we are Christians,” they pleaded. “What can we do?” John wrote: “I write these things [which give you a true picture of yourself] . . . to help you to avoid sin. But if a man should sin, remember that our advocate before the Father is Jesus Christ the righteous, the One who made personal atonement for our sins” (1 John 2:1-2, PH).
You must be careful with the word “sin”; you must be sure of its meaning. Sin is the inability to do the good you want to do; it is the drive within you that causes you to do what you don’t want to do (Rom. 7:14b-15, 19).
Marvin and Gloria have moments when both agree that they are violently opposed to each other. Yet when they try to face the truth, they deny it and attempt to reassure each other that all is well. But it isn’t. They want peace, but they fight the process that leads to peace. They fail to take advantage of one of the important benefits of marriage–the means that marriage provides to self-discovery. Because the tendency is to fight against such discovery, many find marriage distasteful. They do not like to be reproved, even if the criticism is true.
The same holds true regarding work, social, and church relationships. The story of George Lund illustrates the point. George wanted to clear up the gnawing sense of anxiety and growing unhappiness that plagued him, hopefully before anyone found out his condition; so he sought professional counseling. He would rather have died than have his associates learn that he was bored with church and its activities, dissatisfied with his wife, and annoyed with his fellow employees at work.
But the counseling experience was a shattering one. The counselor, who George felt was a non-Christian, pressed him to share his antagonisms, and George did not like it. He insisted he had no antagonisms. He stoutly maintained that since he was a Christian he loved everyone and was nice to all. Still the counselor probed. Finally George blew his top.
Afterward he was ashamed. He had been a poor example of what a Christian ought to be. The counselor pointed out that George was filled with anger and hatred toward people, rather than with love.
Then George came to see me. He was confused. Was he a Christian or wasn’t he? He had asked God to give him love toward all persons. Hadn’t he meant it? “Since this counselor forced me to blow up,” he said, “I’ve been pretty nasty to a lot of people.” What evil thing, he wanted to know, had the counselor done to him?
What had the counselor done? He had led George to face the truth about himself. What truth? That he was an angry man with hatred burning in his heart toward the people with whom he worshiped at church, toward the people he worked alongside of at the office, toward his own wife and family–and now, toward the counselor who, he maintained, had caused him to blow his top.
Because George pretended to be a happy man, he wanted to believe that he was one. That was why, since becoming a Christian, he had always acted politely to everyone. His annoyance was his own secret. He controlled himself for the sake of his testimony. The psalmist described such a man: “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, yet they were drawn swords” (Ps. 55:21).
Pretending to be happy didn’t make him so. Yet he believed that essentially he was a happy man. He was only being true to human form. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9)
George Lund’s emotions–-his heart–-told him he was a nice, loving, happy man. But he refused to recognize the deceit of his heart. What the counselor had done was to expose George to himself, to lay open the falseness of his heart. He made George see that his smooth, soft words covered a bitter war raging inside, that they sheathed the sword of hate and malice.
George might have discovered this truth for himself. Like the fever that warns that all is not well in the body, the gnawing sense of uneasiness in his relationships with others ought to have made him aware that all was not well between him and the people in his life. But George did the natural thing–he disregarded the symptoms, denying the truth.
Because he was a Christian, George could not admit to himself that there was anything in his heart but love. And this is where Christians often encounter difficulty. Unlike non-Christians, who can despise others and unashamedly justify their position, Christians know they have a high and noble standard to measure up to. Non-Christians may settle for a less exacting standard. They know that if they fail, everyone else fails as much as they. So why not relax instead of trying to change the world? But for Christians, God’s standard allows no bitterness and strife. Therefore, if they are not always what they know they should be, they at least act like Christians.
George was proud of his acting ability. “Usually I control my anger,” he said. “Don’t I get any credit for that?” His ability to act lovingly toward others presented an impressive testimony; but it did not satisfy him. As he became aware that he was only acting, the truth shook him up; he began to lose the control that he had so tightly held.
“I’m confused. Why doesn’t God give me peace?” he asked.
Though the truth told him that he was only acting, he found it hard to admit it. How hard it is to help a self-righteous man! He sees no need to turn to God for help. But the Bible states that sin does lurk in the heart: “Your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isa. 59:2).
Repentance is rare. One tends to defend himself. Time after time George insisted he was an innocent man. He said the fault lay with the conduct of people around him, including the goading counselor. Nevertheless, the facts of his contradicted him. His iniquities separated him from God and denied him God’s peace.
When he finally did focus on the true picture of himself, he became not repentant but defensive, dismissing his own responsibility.
“He egged me on,” George said repeatedly, reminding me that the flare-up was not his fault. One day he admitted that maybe he did lack love for certain people. But if he did, he asked petulantly, why didn’t God give it to him? Now he blamed God for his anger.
When you get a glimpse of your true nature, it is to be expected that you will want to dodge the truth. But be aware that when you deny what you find in the recesses of your life, the results will be anxiousness and vague unhappiness that slowly envelop you in their tentacles.