After listen to my friend describe the morally concerning actions of one of her other friends, she proceeded to say “You probably have a bad impression of them after what I’ve told you…”
Yet, what first crossed my mind was that this person is exactly the same as every other person living in this world. A person who chooses to ignore their sins and continue living in it for their own self. Every single person does it on a daily basis whether they choose to acknowledge it or not, and no matter what degree of severity the sin is, it doesn’t excuse the core logic that you are guilty of breaking the moral law which leads back to sinning against God.
“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” (James 2:10)
It’s so easy for us to point fingers at another person when we know they are doing something wrong, but how often do we ourselves ignore the conscience embedded in us by God, in order to fulfill our own selfish desires? When you look at it from the perspective of a perfect and just God, it’s literally like the pot calling the kettle black. Yet we choose to detach ourselves from that perspective because we don’t see our own sinfulness and don’t relate our sins to the people we criticize.
“Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5)
It just shows how critical and prideful our spirits are and how limited our view is when we cannot even distinguish the fact that we are all in the same sinful boat. Yet even with our hypocritical, sinful natures Christ never stops loving us and earnestly wanting us to come to repentance of our sins.
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)
The desire I felt to want to reach out to help this person instead of criticizing them, is something that can only be obtained through the peace of God which goes beyond human understanding. What a wonderful blessing He has given my heart and my prayer is that you may also come to the understanding that we are all dirtied with soot and grime but God is the only one who can wash us clean.
