Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live (Exod 1:15-17).
            Those verses seem straightforward enough, don't they?  So I thought until I started digging a little deeper.  Imagine my surprise to find out that several conservative Bible scholars, meaning they believe that the Bible is actually God's Word, say that the Hebrew here is in the genitive case and can be translated "midwives of the Hebrew women," meaning [Egyptian] midwives who served Hebrew women. Logic also comes to play in that how could Pharaoh have expected Hebrew women to kill the infants of their own people, and that the Hebrew women themselves, were probably toiling as slaves for Pharaoh rather than working in service roles to others.  However, Keil and Delitzch, two of the most notable conservative scholars of their time, come right out and say, "The midwives were Hebrews." 
            So why does any of that matter?  Just this:  if these women were Hebrews, they as a nation understood the sanctity of life as far back as 3000+ years ago.  If they were Egyptians, we can be even more amazed that pagans believed in the sanctity of life.  Some things were just understood—you don't slaughter babies. 
           Fast forward a couple thousand years and you will find Cicero, the Roman statesman, lawyer, and scholar, stating in his On the Laws 3.8, "Deformed infants shall be killed."  That "deformity" included an unwanted child, a sickly child, a deformed child, or simply a child of the "wrong" gender.  Seneca, the Roman philosopher said, "…mad dogs we knock on the head…unnatural progeny we destroy; we drown even children at birth who are weakly and abnormal."
            After reading that, it is surprising to find that a few centuries before, killing infants was not looked on favorably.  The Etruscans were notable in that they raised all the children borne to them.  These people influenced the Roman Empire until about 400 BC, and things seemed to take a downhill turn from there.  By the time of Caesar Augustus, the one who taxed the Roman world in the first century, the institution of the family had become so endangered that he enacted laws against adultery and "unchastity."  Epictetus, a stoic philosopher of the same era, stated that even a sheep or a wolf does not abandon its own offspring.  Thus the "progress" of the Roman Empire was actually seen as their downfall by some of their own.  Not every Roman believed babies could be killed just to suit their parents' lifestyles.
            And what has happened to us?  Have we "progressed" like the Roman Empire?  Are you aware that some infants are born alive after abortions and then left to die?  If this is progress, I want no part of it.  And neither did a lot of pagans. 
             
For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them  (Rom 2:14-15).
 
Dene Ward
 

Psalms 74 and 79, along with the books of Lamentations and Habakkuk, are national psalms of lament for the people of God.  In light of the year 2020, it seems like a good idea to explore them and make some application to our own country.
         Those two psalms will make you cringe in their horrific detail of destruction.  Women and young girls raped, leaders' bodies hung up for all to see, the Temple in ruins, mutilated corpses lying everywhere, far too many for the few left alive to bury.  Psalm 74 lists sacrilege after sacrilege:  God’s enemies standing in the meeting place; the intricate and artistic carvings of the Temple chopped to pieces by heathen axes, the sanctuary on fire, the dwelling place of God razed to the ground.  Psalm 79 uses opposites to the same effect:  the holy defiled; Jerusalem, the city of God, in rubble; God’s servants as carrion; and blood flowing like water in the streets.  Imagine seeing all this one horrible morning and then speaking to God these words:  Help us, O God of our salvation, 79:9.
         God of our salvation?  How could the psalmist possibly use that description?  Where in all this nightmare does he see salvation?
            The poet understood this basic truth:  even in this dreadful event, God is still seeking the salvation of His people.  He could still see a Father’s love behind the most severe discipline.
            Again in Psalm 74, the psalmist says, Yet God is my King of Old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.  Not just in the midst of the earth, but in the middle of all this horror, he can still see the true nature of God.
            Habakkuk in his lament ends with the same thoughts:  For though the fig-tree shall not flourish, Neither shall fruit be in the vines; The labor of the olive shall fail, And the fields shall yield no food; The flock shall be cut off from the fold, And there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in Jehovah, I will joy in the God of my salvation. Hab 3:17-18.
            What do we see when evil befalls us?  If all we feel is the pain, if all we see is the sorrow, Satan already has a foothold.  We must learn to use what happens in our lives as a steppingstone to Heaven, a lift to a higher plane of spirituality. 
            A single trial isn’t always punishment from God as it was for those people, but if not, it becomes even more important to see events in the correct way.  We are in a world that is temporary, that is tainted with sin.  Of course we will have problems.  Are we so naïve as to think that something Satan has poisoned will ever be good?  Jeremiah tells us in his lament, that if it weren’t for God there wouldn’t be anything good left in this world at all, Lam 3:22, and we have no right to expect it to be any different because "all have sinned." 
            If I cannot see the salvation of God even in the midst of trials as Jeremiah did, I am blind to who He is.  He is there, helping us prepare for a world where those things will be no more.  If I rail against Him when the trials come, I do not know Him.  Illness and death are the tools of Satan to lure us away, but with faith and the proper perspective--seeing the God of our salvation instead of the God of our pain--we can use Satan’s own tools against him as a road to triumph. 
            It is better to depart and be with the Lord, Paul said, Phil 1:23.  To die is gain for a Christian, v 21.  “O death where is thy victory, O death where is thy sting?  The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the Law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” 1 Cor 15:55-57)  If I see death as the victor, I am giving myself away—showing that my perspective is indeed unspiritual, immature, and faithless. 
            Is it easy to have this perspective, especially in the middle of a traumatic life event?  If this past year has cost you a job, a home, a lifestyle you have grown so accustomed to you almost consider it deserved, or the lives of loved ones, no, reading through a psalm will not make the bad things go away and your mattress suddenly be filled with roses.  We are still in this flesh and suffer that way.  But while in this flesh the Lord Himself conquered all these feelings and temptations, and expects us to follow His example, as difficult as it may be.  And He gives us the means to do it. 
            In the midst of trials such as the year we have just had, and which will not go away just because the calendar page turns to 2021, may we have the same insight that gave those ancient brothers and sisters of ours hope in the middle of a horror we can scarcely imagine:  He is, and always will be, the God of our salvation.
 
But as for me, I will look unto Jehovah; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me, Mic 7:7.
 
Dene Ward
 

The other day I was talking with a friend who loves to cook as much as I do.  We both spoke of how much more fun it is to cook for people who were not picky eaters.  When all that effort sits in the bowls and platters on the table with scarcely a dent made in them because this one prefers this and that one prefers that, it is hard not to be offended.  The very fact that I know so many more picky eaters these days than I did as a child emphasizes how wealthy this society has become.  Hungry people are not picky eaters.
            Real hunger is not a concept we understand.  We eat by the clock instead of by our stomachs, which may be the biggest reason so many of us are overweight.  If we only ate when we were truly hungry, would we eat too much on a regular basis?  A celebratory feast, which used to happen only once or twice or year, has become a weekly, if not daily, occurrence for many.
            And because we do not understand true physical hunger, we cannot understand Jesus’ blessing upon those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.  We think being willing to sit through one sermon a week makes us worthy, when that is probably the shallowest application of that beatitude.  We don’t want a spiritual feast.  We want something light, with fewer calories, requiring little effort to eat.  In fact, sometimes we want to be fed too.  Spiritual eating has become too much trouble.
            How many of us skip Bible classes?  How many daydream during the sermons, plan the afternoon ahead, even text message each other?  If more than one adult class is offered on Sunday mornings, how many choose the one that requires more study or deeper thinking?  When extra classes are offered during the week, what percentage of the church actually chooses to attend?  How many of us are actively pursuing our own studies at home, studies beyond that needed for the Sunday morning class?  If we won’t even eat the meals especially prepared for us by others, how in the world will be seek righteousness on our own and how will we ever progress past simple Bible study in satisfying our spiritual hunger?
            Picky eaters suddenly become omnivores when they really need to eat.  For some reason we think we can fast from spiritual food and still survive.  Amazing how we can deceive ourselves so easily. 
            So, what’s on your menu today, or have you even planned one?
 
Oh how love I your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandments make me wiser than my enemies; for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers; for your testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the aged, because I have kept your precepts. I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might observe your word. I have not turned aside from your ordinances; for You have taught me. How sweet are your words to my taste! sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way. Psalm 119:97-104.
 
Dene Ward

It is a danger, even for people who love Christ, that we not become so concerned with doing things for Him that we begin to neglect hearing Him and remembering what He has done for us.  We must never allow our service for Christ to crowd out our worship of Him.  The moment our works become more important to us than our worship, we have turned the true spiritual priorities on their heads.
            In fact, that tendency is the very thing that is so poisonous about all forms of pietism and theological liberalism.  Whenever you elevate good deeds over sound doctrine and true worship, you ruin the works too.  Doing good works for the works' sake has a tendency to exalt self and depreciate the work of Christ.  Good deeds, human charity, and acts of kindness are crucial expressions of real faith, but they must flow from a true reliance on God's redemption and His righteousness.  After all, our own good works can never be a means of earning God's favor; that's why in Scripture the focus of faith is always on what God has done for us and never on what we do for Him (Rom 10:2-4).  Observe any form of religion where good works are ranked as more important than authentic faith or sound doctrine, and you'll discover a system that denigrates Christ while unduly magnifying self.  

from Twelve Extraordinary Women by John MacArthur.

Does he thank the servant because he did the things that were commanded?  ​Even so you also, when you shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which it was our duty to do.   (Luke 17:9-10).

Dene Ward

I have to admit it—I seldom look at Bible dictionaries.  They scare me a little.  I cannot read a word of Hebrew or Greek so how can I check out what these guys are saying?  At some point I just have to trust them.  That’s why I love it when the Bible itself tells us what a word means.  Sometimes you have to read carefully or you will miss it, usually because you have read past it all your life and can’t seem to stop that bad habit.  At least that’s my problem.  You have to pay attention when you read God’s Word, like every time you read it is the first time.
            And by doing just that I found a new, obvious definition.  Read Ezekiel with me.
            If I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die,’ and you give him no warning, nor speak to warn the wicked from his wicked way, in order to save his life, that wicked person shall die for his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the wicked, and he does not turn from his wickedness, or from his wicked way, he shall die for his iniquity, but you will have delivered your soul. Again, if a righteous person turns from his righteousness and commits injustice, and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and his righteous deeds that he has done shall not be remembered, but his blood I will require at your hand. But if you warn the righteous person not to sin, and he does not sin, he shall surely live, because he took warning, and you will have delivered your soul, Ezek 3:18-21.
            Did you catch it?  God tells Ezekiel exactly what a righteous man is—someone who warns (and delivers his soul) or someone who listens to the warning and repents.  But what about the “righteous man” who commits injustice, you ask?  He has “turned from his righteousness” and “none of his righteous deeds are remembered,” which means he is no longer righteous.  The only two righteous people in that whole paragraph are the one who warns and the one who repents.
            Notice, God says nothing about the way he is warned.  If you have not read the book of Ezekiel you need to.  Ezekiel preached hard sermons.  He preached plain sermons.  Yet God still demanded that those people repent.  Getting their feelings hurt did not make them “righteous.”  Getting angry about the way they were spoken to did not make them “righteous.”  The only thing that made them “righteous” was heeding the warning and repenting. 
            Think about that Syrophenician mother who came asking Jesus to heal her demon-possessed daughter.  At first Jesus ignored her.   Then he insulted her.  If she had left with her feelings hurt, her daughter would never have been healed.  She understood that something was more important than her feelings.  And Jesus called that attitude “faith.”  Ah!  Another Bible definition.
            When I hear the warning, if I want to be counted righteous, I must stop blaming others and recognize my responsibility to listen and act.  The failures of others will not save me.
 
Take heed how you hear…Luke 18:8.
 
Dene Ward

In the fall we took a vacation, our first in three years.  We rented a cabin in the mountains of North Carolina and proceeded to have one adventure after another—none of which we had planned on, and none of which anyone would have planned on.
            We got lost four times, despite following written down directions as carefully as possible.  We locked ourselves out of the cabin—a very remote cabin, nowhere near the rental office.  We had to have our ailing twenty-two year old truck towed twenty miles to a mechanic in the middle of Tourist Town, then take a taxi drive that same twenty miles to pick it up two days later.  Then a tropical storm blew over us the morning before we were to leave.  Floridians, mind you, hit by the remnants of a hurricane in North Carolina!  We never did do any of the things we had actually planned on doing.  But, oh, it could have been so much worse.
            I guess I was an adult before I realized that prayers did not have to wait for some formal occasion.  Just like an earthly father, our Heavenly Father is willing to listen whenever we call.  Believe me, we called that week again and again.  Another thing I have learned is that God will bless people who are not necessarily His children simply because of their connection to His children, Potiphar, for example (Gen 39:5).  And so that week I found myself again and again thanking God for the good people He sent our way and asking Him to send them blessings.
            Good folks like these:
            The two or three people who took the time to send complete strangers on their way in the right direction.
            The kind woman on the phone at the rental office who helped us find the hidden lock box with the extra key to the cabin in it, gave us the code to that box, and would not hang up until she was sure we had gotten back in.
            The fellow tourist at the neighboring cabin who offered to look at our truck and when he couldn't fix it, looked up a mechanic with the highest ratings and called him for us, giving him details he needed because Keith,, being deaf, cannot function on a cell phone.
            A tow truck driver, a mechanic, and a taxi driver who were not only friendly, but refused to price-gouge a couple of desperate tourists, who were honest and fair in their business dealings instead.
            Again and again we asked our Father to shower these people with blessings as He had done for us by sending them our way.  The greatest blessing for us was seeing, in the middle of a tumultuous year, when it's so easy to believe our nation is going down the tubes in a headlong plunge, that there are still good people out there, people who will help strangers, who will do the right thing when the wrong thing would have been so easy and much more profitable.
            Look around as you go about your daily life.  Find the good people.  Thank God and ask Him to bless them as well.  Don't be selfish with the grace He gives, but as a child mimicking his father, spread it around as He does every day, giving the sun and the rain to all.  And who knows?  Maybe you will have somehow, some day, made it possible to share with them the greatest gift of Grace there is.
 
I exhort therefore, first of all, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men…That your way may be known upon earth, your salvation among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you.  (1Tim 2:1; Ps 67:1-3).
 
Dene Ward

The two-lane mountain road wound tight and steep, first up, then down, again and again.  The landscape was beautiful, sharp ridges softened by a leafy covering of fall colors—gold, canary yellow, pumpkin orange, rust, candy apple red, and cranberry, accented by an evergreen here and there and the bare gray branches of early shedders.  How much of did I see?  Not much.
            That twisty little road kept all my attention.  It was crawling with tourists who, unlike my hillbilly husband, did not know how to drive in the mountains.  The road itself didn't help.  We tried to hug the white line on the outside edge, but occasionally it disappeared, having crumbled into a foot or more deep hole, with no guard rail in sight.   Still, we had to stay as close as possible because every third or fourth car coming around the bend toward us had strayed over the center line.  A time or two we were nearly side-swiped, our rearview mirrors coming within inches of high-fiving one another.  Those fifteen miles were anything but relaxing and enjoyable.
            Yet I am sure that if there had been an accident, every one of those folks would have sworn in court that they had not even touched that double yellow line, much less crossed it, and would have really believed they were telling the truth.
            Aren't we the same?  We see those double yellow lines in our lives—the Thou shalt nots that God has designed for our good--and do our best to stay away from them.  But curves in the road of life have a way of swinging us around, sometimes further than we ever intended.  Or the distracting scenery of concern and worry or just simple busyness makes us careless and we drift into that oncoming traffic without ever realizing it until it's too late and the damage has been done, damage that can wreck your life far worse than a shattered mirror or scraped fender.  We may think we would never do such a thing—whatever that thing may be—but the devil can keep us in such a whirl with the circumstances of life that we never notice what we've done and will even deny it to the last breath.
            Be careful today as you wind your way over the hills and valleys and around the perilous curves of life.  Don't stray over the double yellow line.  Don't even get close to it.
 
How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. ​With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! (Ps 119:9-10)
 
Dene Ward
 

My two grandsons love to go to the park.  They love to swing and slide.  I’m not sure they have discovered the joys of my own childhood favorite—the seesaw.  Back then I was always looking for someone else to sit on the other end, and seldom found the perfect playmate.  She was always either too heavy or too light to balance it out, and one of us always hit the ground with a bang.  As for the boys, I usually put both of them on one side while I sit on the other, carefully balancing things with my own legs so they don't bounce off the top and I don't hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.
            Over the years I have come to see that God requires His own kind of balance.  Nearly every major fault of His people has come with that old pendulum swing—from one extreme to the other.  From undisciplined emotionalism to empty ritualism, from faith only to works salvation—we struggle all the time to get the balance just right.  “Obedience from the heart,” Paul calls it in Rom 6:17.  And it has been so for thousands of years.
            In our Psalms class, we came upon another passage recently that emphasized yet again the problem of balance.  Over and over and over you read things like this:
            …you have tested me and you will find nothing; I have purposed that my mouth will not transgress, 17:4
I have kept the ways of the Lord and have not wickedly departed from God, 18:21.
            Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the LORD without wavering, 26:1.
            It always bothered me a little when I saw passages like this, especially the ones written by David, as these three are.  Isn’t he being a little arrogant?  Especially him?
            But, as with all the Bible, you have to put things together to find the balance point.  Psalm 130, one of the Psalms of Ascents, certainly shows the opposite feeling:  If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? v 3.  After that, another quickly came to mind:  Enter not for judgment with your servant; for in your sight no man living is righteous, 143:2.
            The psalmists all seemed to understand the balance.  No one deserves salvation, but yes, we can be righteous in God’s eyes when we do our best to serve Him, when obedience is offered willingly, when adoration, reverence, and gratitude are the motivations behind every thought and action, when we don’t just do some right things, we become righteous.  The author of Psalms 130 goes on to say, “But there is forgiveness with you…” and “with Jehovah there is lovingkindness and…plenteous redemption.”          
            These men saw that salvation was a matter of a relationship with God, not ritualistic obedience nor self-serving obsequiousness, both of which are more about “me” than the God I claim to worship.  They proclaimed the balance that would fall before the Lord in reverence and service and yet stand before a Father singing praise and thanksgiving. 
            And I love that they did not feel required to offer qualifications to what they said.  “I am righteous,” they said, not bothering to add, “but I know I have sinned in the past, and may sin in the future.”  They never let the false beliefs of others compel them to soften a strong statement of faith in their Lord to do what He says He will—be merciful.  Why are we always dampening the assurance of our hope by pandering to the false teaching of others?  Let’s strive for perfect balance with this long ago anonymous brother:  With Jehovah there is plenteous redemption, and he shall redeem us!
 
Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom Jehovah does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no guile, Ps 32:1-2.
These things have I written…that you may know you have eternal life, 1 John 5:13
 
Dene Ward

Last year, before her death, I could not reach my mother one day, even after a full day of phoning.  I called her best friend Linda and asked if she could go check on her.  At least once before she had found her in the floor, unable to get up on her own.  So Linda, who lives in the same town as Mama and 25 miles closer than I, jumped in her car and ran over to her apartment.  As it turns out she was fine, but she had lost her phone.  She heard it ringing all day long and scoured the place (she thought) but was unable to find it.
            The next day we were in town for a class I was teaching, so Keith and a friend went to her apartment for a visit while I was occupied.  They, too, looked up and down and could not find the phone.  Keith ran downstairs to the front desk and asked them to call the phone while the friend waited there to help.  Surely one of them could follow the ring and find the thing before it went to voice mail.  The phone began ringing and they knew it was in the bedroom, but look high and low they still could not find the phone.
            When I returned from class, we tried again with my cell phone.  This time Keith went into the bedroom and this deaf man suddenly called out, "I found it!"  He walked out of the bedroom and said, "Come here."  He led us to my mother's bed.  "Do you see it?"  No, it hadn't been under anything like a pillow or robe, he said.  It was lying out right in the open.  Finally I saw it—right on the bed.  My mother's phone is magenta, sort of halfway between rose and purple, a little darker than fuschia.  The bedspread was white, decorated with pink, purple, and magenta roses.  Everyone who had walked into that bedroom looking for the phone had thought they were seeing another rose on the bed, a rose that was really a phone.
             We often do the same sort of thing when we study the Bible.  We can't see what is in plain sight because it is hidden by our preconceived notions, by the things "we've always heard," or by the instant acceptance of the mistaken ideas we grew up with as a child.  I have a husband who constantly questions things.  Some days it's very annoying, but if it hadn't been for him, I might never have discovered the truth of the matter in many of my Bible studies.
            For a quick example, how about that gate called the "eye of the needle" that everyone thinks exists in Jerusalem?  And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Matt 19:24).
           Our first problem is that we don't keep reading.  The very next verse says that the apostles were "astonished."  Why would they be astonished if this were a well-known gate where, according to some of the things I have heard preachers say, you had to unload your worldly goods off the camel and then have it go down on its knees to get through this tiny little slit of a gate?  That would make a great analogy, but the apostles, who would have known of such a thing, were flabbergasted, meaning they thought he meant the eye of a needle, not a gate.
            Second, Jesus used language just like we do.  He spoke in hyperboles quite often.  Have you ever seen a man going around with a two by four sticking out of his eye?  We go around using hyperboles all the time (notice what I did there?), and Jesus wanted to communicate with us in ordinary, everyday language so why wouldn't he do the same?  What Jesus was really saying was, "It's really, really difficult to be saved if you are wealthy."  But don't despair.  Even the disciples were a little slow on that one.  They took it literally, too, but we need to be careful of something we are constantly fussing at our friends about when they study the book of Revelation.  Sauce for the goose, and all that.
            And third, there is neither archaeological nor historical evidence of such a gate in ancient Jerusalem.  The first instance of this story occurred several centuries ago, which was many centuries after Jesus spoke these words.  Even the Talmud calls the "eye of the needle" a metaphor, a figure of speech.  But we wouldn't need this outside knowledge if we had just kept on reading, noting the disciples' reaction and using a little common sense.
          A lot of old chestnuts are floating around out there because we have gotten lazy.  We accept what we have always been told far too easily.  We don't look for the truth that is hidden in plain sight.  We are too blinded by what we have always believed, or heard, or read.  Be careful this week when you read God's Word.  Don't let the Truth hide among the roses.
 
Your testimonies are righteous forever; give me understanding that I may live.  (Ps 119:144).
 
Dene Ward

A few Sundays ago I listened to some wonderful prayers in our group worship.  However, something struck me that day and not for the first time.  In our Bible study prayer we prayed for “forgiveness of sins.”  In our “opening prayer” we prayed for “forgiveness of sins.”  In our “closing prayer” we prayed for “forgiveness of sins.”  I suddenly looked around me and thought, “What in the world has everyone been doing in the past two hours?”

            I think in our efforts to avoid any resemblance to the doctrine I grew up calling “the impossibility of apostasy,” we   have done ourselves a grave disservice and a very discouraging one as well.  As a child I saw good men who often prayed, “Lord forgive us, because we know we sin every day.”  Or “all the time.”  Or “so often.”  I used to look at them and wonder what it was they were doing.  I never saw them sin, or heard anyone else say they saw them sin either.  I began to feel like sin must be some sort of miasma that follows you around and then, bang! when you least expect it, it infects you like some kind of airborne germ.

            That is not the Bible definition of sin.  Everyone who does sin, does lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness, I John 3:4.  No, I am not gong into some heavy theology.  I don’t think I need to.  John plainly teaches that sin is something you do.  Now sin may involve wrong thinking, too, but still it is a specific thing.  It is not some sort of germ you catch without ever knowing it.  By making it into that sort of thing, we make ourselves miserable, living a life of despair instead of hope.  God said you can control yourself.  He said you can overcome.  He said you can live a godly life.  Give yourself a break!  God does. 

            Does that mean we won’t sin?  Of course not.  But why in the world do we feel so compelled to always add the negative, especially when we are talking to one another, to those of us who know the truth that we can fall from grace?  We should be encouraging one another, not trying to build stumblingblocks of cynicism and pessimism.  Of course, using the correct definition of sin, something we actually do and can quantify verbally, forces us to specifically repent of actual things we have done, instead of being able to say, “Lord, I know I sin a lot, and probably don’t even know it when I do, so please forgive me.”  Maybe that is the real problem—too much pride to admit the wrong we do, and actually try to become better people.  If you never know when the germ is going to get you, it’s not your fault right?  But that’s not the way it works, at least not to someone sincerely trying to grow as a Christian.

            I know that when I sin and realize it, I feel so heartbroken and ashamed that, like David, I ask for forgiveness again and again, but.should someone who has been a Christian for a decade, who is supposed to have grown in strength, need to pray for forgiveness three times for three different sins in two hours’ time?  I hope not.    If we really are “sinning all the time,” we need to take a serious look at our lives.  Theologians have a name for that doctrine too.  It’s called “total depravity.”  When a society became totally depraved, “sinning all the time,” God destroyed it.  Sodom, Assyria, Babylon, Rome, even the whole world in Genesis, except for one man who walked with God, and found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  If Noah could do it, so can we.

Let not sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey the lusts thereof; neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.  For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace, Rom 6:12-14.

Dene Ward