Making Choices

Someone asked my sister how Christians could forgive those who harm them. She had a specific instance in mind and it made no sense to her. My brother thought that talking about forgiveness is easier if it is in the lap of someone else, but if the harm happened to him or one of his family, he would seek revenge.

My sister and I felt that we could not know for sure. Most Christians have little idea what Jesus will do in our hearts should something terrible happen to us. We really don’t know if we would forgive until life demands such a response. We also agreed that being able to forgive comes from the One who lives in us, not from ourselves. In the flesh, we would likely retaliate.

Today I’m reading 1 John 5. Verses 10-13 describe the essence of what it means to be a Christian and affirms our subjective witness of that reality:

He who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; he who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has given of His Son. And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.

When Jesus Christ came into my life, He brought with Him His life. By myself, I cannot live forever, but because Jesus lives in me, I have that hope. I am in possession of His very life, but of course that life is measured by far more than its length.

The life of Christ is unique. Jesus never sinned, always obeyed God, always knew the right things to say and do and deeply cared for sinners. He also died that we might live and forgave those who crucified Him. Because He lives in me, I have the potential to be like Him.

Of course I am still me, and even though the old nature is separated from God because of sin and spiritually died on the cross with Christ, it still flops around like a chicken with its head cut off. My sinful, fleshy nature will be with me until I step into eternity. In the meantime, God gives me a choice. Will I follow it? Or Him?

After God led His people out of bondage in Egypt, Joshua challenged them to put away the gods their fathers served back in that place and serve the Lord. He said, “If it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. . . .” (Jeremiah 24:14-15). They were offered choices: serve their old religious ways and traditions, serve new religions, or serve the Lord.

Proverbs 3:5-6 say, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” In other words, I’m challenged to choose between obeying God based on faith or following my own ideas.

As a Christian, I’m told in several places in the New Testament to “put off the old” and “put on the new” life that I have in Christ. Galatians 5 says I have been called to freedom, but never to use my freedom as opportunity to live according to the flesh. Verses 16-17 say, “Walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that you wish.”

My sinful nature will always want that which is contrary to God’s will. In every instance of life, He gives me choices. Will I obey Him? Or do my own thing?

The reputation of the church suffers because too many of us do our own thing. Instead of choosing to obey God, or even consulting Him on many matters, I so easily go ahead with what seems right to me. With incredible patience, God lets me find out the hard way that what seems right to me is contrary to His will—every time.

Yet the grace of God is amazing. We have times in our lives when the Spirit of God and the power of the indwelling Christ simply shove aside any fleshy responses and we do the right thing, the godly thing. Sometimes that means we will genuinely forgive someone who harmed us, just as Christ did when we sinned against Him. On our own, this would never happen, but because of Jesus, we have a different sort of life.

My lament is that I block His life far too often with my selfishness and foolish choices, and then go through the school of hard knocks before I finally give up my way and choose His.