February 2007

Childlike

            My wife and I are blessed with two wonderful daughters.  I can honestly say that they have been a blessing and never given us reason for any serious concern.  There were the normal bumps in the road, but they remain great blessings in our lives.  They were, of course, normal children.  I remember one time when we told one of our daughters not to leave the yard.  Her response was to go up to the sidewalk and place her toes as close to it as she could to it.  She did what we told her, but she wanted to go to the edge.  One day, our youngest daughter was standing out in the middle of the road in front of our house.  She was not doing it in defiance, she was too young to understand the danger.  We lived on a hill, and the road turned just before our house and just after, so oncoming traffic was difficult to see.  But something had caught her attention.

            I was more like the child who, when told not to go in the road, would have looked for the first opportunity to run onto it.  I identify with Paul who said, “Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘Do not covet.’ But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire” (Romans 7:7-8).  There is something that happens inside of us when we are told not to do something. 

            Some people do wrong things out of innocence, not knowing that what they are doing is wrong or dangerous.  Some go to the edge.  Others do only what they think they can get by with it.  Still others do wrong defiantly, willingly.  They know the dangers and do not care.  It is more important for them to do what they want to do than it is to do the right thing. 

            All of this is understandable and is part of the human condition.  Again, Paul experienced this in his own life, and we can all identify with him, when he said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15).  He went on to say, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:19). 

            It is difficult to understand why we, or anyone else, would continue in a lifestyle that is self-destructive, but it is the nature of sin to destroy.  The Bible says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  I am grateful that at a young age I gave my life to Christ and avoided many pitfalls.  Even then, it is only the grace of God that has helped me choose the gift of God.  With the character named “Christian” in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, I run crying out, “Life, Life, Eternal Life!”

By the Grace,

Rod