God knows what to do with evil

Leviticus 15–16

John 9:1–12

Song of Solomon 7:5–9

Some of the sin in my life is secret. That is, no one knows about it except God. If I can excuse myself past the truth that God is grieved over my sin, it is easy to make the excuse that because no one knows about it, then no one is affected. I can have a bad attitude, a nasty thought, or so on, and it will mess up my day, but not harm another person. This is not true . . .

I’m reading in Leviticus about the problem of a bodily discharge. Obviously it is going to affect the person who has it and anything that it comes in contact with, but after the other readings this week about OT laws, it seems that these regulations go beyond what they seem to describe. A discharge is a private matter, but could God be using it to illustrate those sins that I think are not going to bother anyone else?

In this passage, the discharge is unclean, but so is the bed he lies on, and anything he sits on. Anyone who touches his bed is also unclean, as is anyone that sits in the same place, or that touches him. If he spits on anyone, they become unclean. So is his saddle, and so is anyone who touches the saddle or anything else he touches, or anyone else he touches. All the earthenware vessels that he touches shall be broken, and every vessel of wood shall be rinsed in water. (Leviticus 15:1–12)

This shoots down the idea that sin is a private matter. It is not.

The Jews understood. They carried that idea of sin affecting those around us into the time of Jesus, so when He saw a man blind from birth, His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” They thought that the sin of the parents was passed on to their children. While sometimes it is (those who cannot control their temper unlikely will not teach their children how to do it), the Bible says each person bears their own sin.

In any case, Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”

We are quick to blame the misfortunes of others on something they did to deserve it. Like Job’s comforters, we cannot conceive of a world where bad stuff happens to good people, but it does. Misfortune is not always the consequence of sin or stupidity. Evil just happens, but our biggest problem might be that we don’t do well at defining good and evil. At least we cannot define it the way God does. When Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery, that was obviously (to us) a bad thing, but as Joseph said, “God used it for good.” (Genesis 50:20) When Jesus died on the cross, this seemed the worst evil imaginable, that humans should slay the Son of God, but God used it to redeem sinners. How can we make any distinction between evil that is the consequence for sin and evil that is part of God’s plan for good?

As for the blind man, Jesus told them He would display the works of God in this man. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:1–7)

When I see God at work bringing good out of what seems bad, my heart is filled with delight. And when God sees me rejoicing in Him, Solomon suggests that He is saying back to me: “How beautiful and pleasant you are, O loved one, with all your delights!” (Song of Solomon 7:6)

I don’t blame God for evil, but I am so glad that He knows what to do with it.

Guard your heart

The Grisham book I’m reading combined with these devotional thoughts concerning Judas make an interesting combination. How easy to condemn the traitor Judas. How easy to condemn the characters in the book — even though they are fictional, they do represent those who make the evening news.

Yet in both I can see the power of small sins, sins that many dismiss as not important. However, they grow from secret to suspect to glaringly public. Sin is never content to stay a trifling indulgence. Once given a place in the human heart, it is like a weed that drives its roots deep. The visible parts may seem small, but try pulling that sucker out of the ground!

Judas had an indulgence. He liked money. In the beginning, it never occurred to him that his love of money would lead him where it did, but the Lord knew.

Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.” He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him. (John 6:70–71)

Judas may have begun with a secret delight in putting his hands in the money bag and feeling the coins. Soon he thought that if a few feel that good, more would feel better. Of course, he didn’t care for giving any of it to needy people, or even sharing it with others. No one kept count. Why not repay himself for his service to the other? His pilfering became fraud and finally his desire for more led him to sell out the Son of God.

Would things be different if he’d been held accountable? No one knew what was received and what was spent. Each trusted and each was trusted. What if a balancing of ledgers or auditing of accounts had been required? Would that have changed anything? I doubt it. The Bible says that Judas was avaricious, miserly, fraudulent, a “thief” and if being a traitor was not in his mind at first, his sin would have come out anyway.

Because of his greed, when the opportunity came, he gave in. Money had become more important than Jesus, at least until he realized what he had done. He threw away the coins, but because his love for them had spoiled his love for Jesus, he could not ask for forgiveness. Instead, he hung himself.

I don’t know yet the rest of the story in the Grisham book, but I know my own story and I know the power of one seemingly hidden sin. It can, like today’s devotional says, “twine itself around the fibers of the heart and choke and kill with its poisonous embrace whatever was pure and noble and good.” The goal is to replace any love for God with love for self, and if it can do that, then when the lights come on, the sinner is left hopeless and without recourse… or so it seems.

History, like that of King David and his affair with Bathsheba, warns that even the greatest spiritual privileges and places of power can be neutralized by the indulgence of one illicit passion. A life lived in unclouded sunshine can end in the darkness of guilt and despair, all because a single sin sprang up and drove down roots in secret. By the time it began to surface in actions instead of thoughts, the sinner was already ruined.

All this is to say that there are no small sins. Even thinking in a selfish and indulgent way can grow into ravenous and destructive choices.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23)