RBV: James 2:4

". . . have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?" 

—James 2:4

The apostle James begins chapter 2 of his epistle by confronting a problem that frequently rears its head in the church, that of respect of persons, also called partiality and discrimination. His entire thought in introducing the subject runs as follows:

My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, "You sit here in a good place," and say to the poor man, "You stand there," or, "Sit here at my footstool," have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? (James 2:1-4)

The example he gives is a common one. Human nature tends to be partial to the rich, the well-groomed, the finely appareled—those who make a good outward show of respectability. It is rather selfish of us to pay them so much attention and provide them with favors and upgrades that we would not normally lavish on others. We do these things because we want something from them, whether it be some future benefit we might receive as gratitude for our obsequious solicitation or merely to be seen with them, ratcheting up our status as a result. Respect of persons is, at its base, all about us.

Of course, it also diminishes those we pass over, essentially telling them, "You are not worthy of my time or favor. Take care of yourself . . . over there . . . where you'll be out of the way." Such partiality actually turns the godly order on its head. Those who are wealthy or powerful or good-looking or talented need no help; they are successful and prove by their success that they can take care of themselves. The poor and downtrodden, however, are the ones who need our help to give them a hand as they start up the ladder of recovery and eventual success. Human nature perversely offers help and advantage to those who need it least and denies it to those who desperately seek it.

Even so, James' central thrust in this long paragraph (which stretches all the way to verse 13) is that favoritism is wrongful judgment: "have you not . . . become judges with evil thoughts?" His argument against partiality obviously derives from his half-brother's comments on judging in Matthew 7:1, "Judge not, that you be not judged," where Jesus goes on to speak about a person's method of judgment of others being used by God to judge him. Jesus calls the one who judges his brother a hypocrite because he condemns his brother for a minor fault (a "speck") while he himself has much a larger sin (a "beam") to overcome. Thus, practicing partiality makes us judge, jury, and executioner of a fellow Christian—not to mention that we poach on one of God's prerogatives, sitting on His throne as judge.

James is speaking about unjustified discrimination. The distinction made between the rich man and the poor man in his example had its basis in purely outward and superficial reasons, and thus the judgment was unsound—or as he puts it, "evil." As the apostle points out in verse 5, God more often calls the weak of the world to righteousness (see I Corinthians 1:26-29), so the poor man is just as likely—or perhaps even more likely—to be the more converted of the two. This is not always the case, but it does make James' point that we need to be more thorough in our discernment of people lest we judge them by sight rather than by faith (II Corinthians 5:7).

Our example of this is God Himself. When the prophet Samuel went to Bethlehem to anoint the next king of Israel, he saw the strapping older sons of Jesse, thinking, "Surely it must be one of these!" But God saw things differently: "Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart" (I Samuel 16:7). The "poorest" of the family was chosen, as David was the youngest and smallest, the one that everyone seems to have forgotten about to the point that no one had thought to tell him that Samuel was in town!

Being quite limited in our spiritual perception, we have a hard time doing that, so our best course is to treat everyone with humility and kindness, preferring them in our interactions with them.

A Sign of Moral Decline

As the week ground to a close, one of America's last bastions of nominally Christian morality succumbed to the forces of tolerance and liberalism. On Thursday, during the Boy Scouts of America's annual meeting of its National Council in Grapevine, Texas, not far from its national headquarters, 61 percent of the roughly 1,400 voting council members who cast secret ballots decided to admit openly homosexual boys into the association, which currently counts about 2.6 million boys as members. The policy change will take effect on January 1, 2014.

The measure, drafted by the National Council's Executive Committee, says that no youth may be denied membership "on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone." The Boy Scout's chief executive, Wayne Brock, calls the organization's decision "compassionate, caring, and kind," saying the goal of scouting is to reach out to as many boys as possible. Further, a statement released by the organization argues, "The Boy Scouts of America will not sacrifice its mission, or the youth served by the movement, by allowing the organization to be consumed by a single, divisive and unresolved societal issue."

However, the change actually reveals the hypocrisy of its national leadership. They are required to pledge fealty to God, who does not in any way sanction homosexuality (see, for instance, the apostle Paul's unambiguous statement in I Corinthians 6:9-10). In addition, the new policy violates the part of their oath in which they promise to be "morally straight." At least the National Council refused to consider the considerably more contentious proposal to allow openly gay adults and leaders—though lawsuits may soon force the Boy Scouts to do so anyway.

John Stemberger, a conservative activist from Florida and a former scout, criticized the Executive Committee for its role in passing the measure:

What kind of a message are we sending to young people about being brave when its top adult leaders don't even have the courage to stand up to the pressure of a militant lobby when the bullies in Washington, DC, Hollywood or even some of their own renegade councils start pressuring and harassing them?

Christian and conservative members of the organization, who had lobbied tirelessly against the measure in the weeks prior to the vote, feel that the leadership ignored the beliefs of the majority of scouting families in order to fall in step with the sudden rise in public acceptance of homosexuality. Across America, there are more than 100,000 Scouting units, and a full 70 percent of them are chartered by religious institutions. Some of the largest sponsors are conservative denominations that have previously supported the broader ban of homosexuals, among them Southern Baptist churches, the Roman Catholic Church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many from these units are expected to quit the Scouts and form one or several alternative character-building groups for boys.

When asked why she opposed the inclusion of homosexuals as Boy Scouts, one mother of scouts responded frankly, "I am just as afraid of a gay boy tenting with my son as I would be if a straight 15-year-old boy tented with my 13-year-old daughter." While liberals would decry her fears as homophobia, Christians like this concerned woman would call it prudent parenting and fully in harmony with their faith.

Robert Schwarzwalder, a senior vice president of the Family Research Council and a father of two scouts in Northern Virginia, says: "The fallout from this is going to be tremendous. I think there will be a loss of hundreds of thousands of boys and parents. This great institution is going to be vitiated by the intrusion of a political agenda."

In reality, the move is simply the scouting leadership's attempt to "get on the right side of history," as they would consider it. The country's moral center has been steadily sliding to the left for many decades, and over the last few years, the pace of moral decline has drastically accelerated. According to a May 13, 2013, report from the polling organization, Gallup: "Just three years ago, support for gay marriage was 44%. The current 53% level of support is essentially double the 27% in Gallup's initial measurement on gay marriage, in 1996."

Young adults, aged 18-29, are leading the charge in changing Americans' views on gay and lesbian relations. Again according to Gallup, in 1996, 41% of Millennials supported same-sex marriage, while today, up to 70% of them do—a 70% increase over seventeen years. This group consists of the parents or potential parents of the next generation of scouts, and with this policy change, the Boy Scouts of America's leadership believes it is ensuring the future of the organization. The Executive Council thinks that, once this cultural storm passes, its brand of scouting will emerge on the other side stronger and with increasing numbers of members. Tolerance and inclusion are the wave of the future.

Additional polling data seem to support their belief. Another Gallup poll, this one from May 20, 2013, bears the headline, "In U.S., Record-High Say Gay, Lesbian Relations Morally OK." It is subtitled, "Americans' tolerance of a number of moral issues up since 2001." In summary,

Americans' views toward a number of moral issues have shifted significantly since 2001. Their acceptance of gay and lesbian relations has increased the most, up 19 percentage points in the past 12 years—to a record high of 59% today. Americans' tolerance toward having a baby outside of marriage is also now much greater, up 15 points since 2001, to the current 60%.

Americans have also become significantly more accepting of sex between an unmarried man and woman, divorce, embryonic stem cell research, polygamy, and cloning humans.

Such moral indifference can hardly be characterized as a wave; it is better described as a rising tide that sweeps all before it. Most younger Americans just have not been taught solid Christian values at home, and the public schools have done nothing but indoctrinate them to abhor discrimination of all kinds without moral distinction. Add in a constant media barrage of liberal ideas and feel-good "values," and the results are quite predictable: Anything goes.

Peter, quoting Psalm 34, gives some sage advice to those who still believe and follow the morality found in God's Word:

He who would love life and see good days, let him . . . turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil. (I Peter 3:10-12)

The Unique Greatness of Our God (Part Five)

In these essays, we have tried to grasp a measure of how wonderful God is, and while some of the things we have seen are awe-inspiring to consider, we realize that they are inadequate attempts to describe an infinite God. On the other hand, realizing God's greatness makes us all too aware of how far short humanity falls. What does the Bible say about man's true state?

David asks the same question: "When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You visit him?" (Psalm 8:3-4). The king of Israel gazed into the heavens, as we did in Part Three, and wondered, "Why God? You are so vast and Your mind is so incomprehensible. Why do you deign to think about us, much less care for us?" He obviously does not have a very high opinion of mankind in comparison to God.

Matthew 22:39 may seem a strange place to look for man's place before God, but consider what Jesus teaches: "And the second [great commandment] is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." For our purposes, we can paraphrase this to imply a kind of equality among human beings; we are to treat everyone equally with the same love that we show ourselves. Note that His command does not suggest our neighbors' worthiness, but only that we should express godly love toward them.

Philippians 2:3 ups the ante significantly: ". . . in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself." The apostle Paul urges us to respect other people as better than ourselves. This is the spiritual attitude we, in humility, are to have toward others. As in the previous example, this approach could make a person think more highly of mankind than is deserved, but God provides other instruction to give us the balance we need to gain a proper perspective.

What Paul writes in I Corinthians 1:26-29 is one of these balancing points:

For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

Though we are to have love and esteem toward fellow men, Paul tells us plainly that members of the church—representative of the majority of mankind—are not wise, mighty, or noble but foolish, weak, base, and despised. Matters have begun to look a little grim for humanity; we do not have much of which to be proud.

To make it worse, our own Savior says in Matthew 7:11 that mankind is evil! We will find, as we take a short tour through the Old Testament, that Jesus' statement is a summation of the Bible's view of man. Be warned: This may get personal.

What is written in Proverbs 30:2-3 seems contradictory to fact, especially as it appears in a book of wisdom collected by Solomon: "Surely I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man. I neither learned wisdom nor have knowledge of the Holy One." The next verses reveal that the author's declaration of stupidity is to be understood in comparison to God, so verses 2-3 are universal in nature. Every person is stupid. Everyone lacks understanding and wisdom. Before God, every individual seems unlearned and thickheaded.

Psalm 73:22, a psalm of Asaph, concurs and piles on: "I was so foolish and ignorant; I was like a beast before You." The word "like" is not in the Hebrew text; it should read, "I was a beast before You," making it less of a comparison than actual fact. In Asaph's estimation, we sometimes sink below the level of human, resembling animals in our behavior, giving ourselves over to beastly urges rather than exhibiting self-control.

In Job 25:5-6, where Bildad is speaking to Job, humanity descends still further: "If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm?" Could there be a worse comparison? Humans are like the slimy, creeping creatures of the earth that exist to break down rot and refuse. What makes this worse is that our Savior says the same thing about Himself in a prophecy in Psalm 22:6! "But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised by the people." As a man, Jesus Christ was God in the flesh, and if He considered Himself a worm, what does that make us mortal, corrupt, ignorant human beings?

It may be hard to believe, but the Bible's comparisons cut us down even lower:

Behold, the nations are as a drop in a bucket, and are counted as the small dust on the balance; look, He lifts up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor its beasts sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before Him are as nothing, and they are counted by Him less than nothing and worthless. (Isaiah 40:15-17)

Notice how this comparison proceeds. We begin as mere water molecules among the nations, which are just a drop in the bucket, and as tiny dust particles, as the nations are leftover dust in the pan of a balance. However, on second thought, that is not nearly insignificant enough. We are nothing—no, less than nothing and worthless on top of that!

By this point, we should feel thoroughly inconsequential and small, and this is the proper attitude to have when comparing ourselves with God. If we feel this way, we are well on the road toward the godly attitude that Jesus describes as "poor in spirit" (Matthew 5:3), whose bearers will possess the Kingdom of God.

In the book of Job, God is trying to teach Job something very similar to what we have come to understand in this essay. When Job finally grasps the lesson, he says to God, "Behold, I am vile. What shall I answer You?" (Job 40:4). The Hebrew word behind "vile" literally means "light" in terms of weight. Job may as well be saying that he feels so insubstantial that a breeze could blow him away at any moment. This word could also be rendered as "utterly insignificant." He had grasped the lesson. Later, he tells God, "Therefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:6). So, finally understanding the massive difference between God and himself, he would be wise to shut up, as God had every right to do to him whatever He pleased.

Fortunately, God does not leave us as nothing and less than nothing. Without Him, that is indeed what we would be: We would be without hope and without purpose. But when God enters our lives, when He initiates a relationship with us, everything changes. We are still worms and maggots, but when God is working with us and in us, helping and guiding us, we are more like caterpillars that can become butterflies. We just need to persevere with Him.

Evil Is Real (Part Six)

From I Peter 2:19-24, we could make a convincing theological argument that Christian suffering is our fight against evil because we receive the slings and arrows of others and experience the most inner turmoil in the midst of our fight against evil. We have a fleshly body and a carnal nature that inhibit us from doing the good we want to do. Thus, we suffer mentally, emotionally, spiritually. We suffer because a great struggle—a war—against evil is taking place inside.

Having ventured into the subject of suffering, the apostle Peter continues on it in I Peter 3:8-9: "Finally, all of you be of one mind, having compassion for one another; love as brothers, be tenderhearted, be courteous; not returning evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary blessing, knowing that you were called to this, that you may inherit a blessing." He repeats, from I Peter 2:21, that we have been called to this. God has called us, not just to suffer, but also to return goodness for evil. We have been called to react the same way to suffering that Jesus Christ did—and as we see in the gospels, He responded by doing good.

So all those who suffer, thinking that they are suffering for righteousness sake, if they are not reacting properly, they are not doing what they were called to do. The suffering and the godly reaction must go together! Otherwise, we are merely suffering to no good end. Peter continues in I Peter 3:10-12, quoting from Psalm 34:12-16:

For "He who would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips from speaking deceit. Let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil."

Notice the situation that Peter applies this idea. In verse 8, he writes, "All of you be of one mind," and then, "Love as brothers." He brings the fight to our community, the church! It is within the church, like it or not, that we may have the most trouble with the evil inside. Why?

In the world, Christians shine like beacons because the contrast between themselves and the uncalled is so stark. We keep God's commandments, the holy days, the food laws. We try to do good. However, when we are among each other, and the contrast is less discernable, how do we react? Do we react as Christians or as carnal? We often seem to be able to get along well with the world because we know where everybody stands, but among church members, we frequently have problems. Sometimes problems crop up because we lower our guard, and at other times, it is because we expect so much of our fellow Christians.

We do not want the evil in us to come out and defile our relationships within the church. Yet, if we see problems arising, then we know that evil is present. We have just allowed ho poneros, the wicked one, among us. It becomes imperative, then, to stamp it out as soon as possible. Thus, Peter advises: "Turn from evil. Do good. Seek peace and pursue it. If you do not, God will turn His face against us"—and we certainly do not want that. In I Peter 4:1-3, he continues:

Therefore, since Christ suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind, for he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles—when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries.

What weapon does he say we possess to fight this evil? We have the mind of Christ. Paul fought against disunity at Corinth and came to the same conclusion (see I Corinthians 2:16). We have access to the same Mind that prepared for and resisted the temptations of Satan the Devil for forty days. It is ours to access, if we only will. As Peter says plainly in I Peter 4:1, if we truly arm ourselves with such a mind, we will cease sinning. We will be applying it to our situations and resisting the motivations of the evil within us. We will not let that evil emerge. If we have and use the mind of Christ, we are taking the fight to the enemy. We are not just allowing evil to pull us around by the nose but taking the offensive to confront it and overcome it.

We must ask ourselves, then, if we have truly committed ourselves to the task of recognizing and fighting the evil within us. Peter says that we "should no longer live the rest of [our] time in the flesh." To put it another way, are we committed to stamping out our carnal natures? More positively, have we committed ourselves to live the life of Christ, to do the will of God? Or are we still reserving the right to "enjoy" evil on occasion? Each person has to answer for himself.

If we are not already, it is time to begin evaluating ourselves, trying to plumb the depths of our wicked hearts. We must begin seeing the evil and eradicating it, committing ourselves not to repeat the evils we have done. In Hebrews 12:1, Paul says that we need to "lay aside every weight" that besets us, that holds us back. Throw it off! It is crunch time!

In this vein, Peter provides us two major pieces of counsel. First, in I Peter 4:7, he writes, "But the end of all things is at hand; therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers." With this, he attempts to rouse us with hard, cold reality. We do not have time to indulge our desires and lusts! The return of Christ—the terminus of our period of judgment—is upon us! Besides, we could take a walk and be hit by a bus. Is our current spiritual state what we want to hand in for our final grade? It can be that close! Why do we dilly-dally about this? It is time to get serious!

The second piece of advice is found in I Peter 4:19: "Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him in doing good, as to a faithful Creator." In verses 17-18, the apostle had warned that we will be "scarcely" saved—by the skin of our teeth, as it were. It will happen, not because of any righteousness we possess, but because of the grace of God. Remember that He sees our "desperately wicked" hearts; He knows how depraved we are even still. We must understand this—and be thankful—but it should also motivate us to make the utmost effort to please Him. Our righteousness will never be good enough for salvation, but because the gracious, righteous Judge is watching and evaluating what we do, we are bound to strive to cooperate with Him in being transformed into His image. Thus, Peter says that we must dedicate our lives to doing good. We know that God is faithful and will save us despite ourselves, but we still must show Him that we are serious about living His way of life.

As Christians, we are engaged in a two-pronged maneuver: destroy the evil within ourselves and replace it with acts of goodness. This assault begins with the realization that evil remains in us, but through God's intervention in our lives, there is also in us a germ of good that is ready to grow. With His continued help, we can nurture it to eternal life.

Evil Is Real (Part Five)

Luke 4 contains Satan's temptation of Christ, and it is instructive to see what Jesus did in the face of evil:

Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan [where He had just been baptized] and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry. And the devil said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread." (Luke 4:1-3)

Just prior to this, Jesus had been highly complimented by the Father: "You are My beloved Son; in You I am well pleased" (Luke 3:22). Jesus, then, must have been feeling confident, for the voice booming such praise out of heaven was a massive pat on the back. Then, Luke 4:1 relates that He was filled with the Holy Spirit; the power, the strength, of God was pumping through Him. It was at just this point—before He commenced His ministry—that Satan pounced.

We should not think that Satan tempted our Savior with merely three or four temptations, as recorded in this chapter, as well as in Matthew 4. The text says that He was "tempted for forty days"—meaning that He was under constant attack for the full forty days, every day! This was an intense, prolonged test and more personal and powerful than we have ever experienced. The terrible evil that He faced in the wilderness would likely have crushed us.

The passage implies that Satan left the worst temptation to the very end, when Jesus was seemingly at His weakest point. He had not eaten food or drunk water for forty days. But was He passive all that time? Did our Savior just sit or lie on the sand for those nearly six weeks, allowing the Devil's temptations to batter Him like one sandstorm after the next? Luke does not present Him like that. Jesus did not fast because He had nothing to eat in a barren land. Remember, He is the One who inspired the instructions about fasting in Isaiah 58, so He clearly knew the spiritual strength that fasting provides. At the end of the forty days, He may have been weak as a kitten physically, but spiritually, He was the powerful Son of God.

Perhaps the temptations were not just storm after storm, but were like an ever-strengthening tempest that culminated in a hurricane. What did Jesus do? Each successive onslaught was harder to resist. How did He face it? Jesus bent all His will and strength on overcoming each temptation as it broke on Him. He pulled out every spiritual weapon to defeat each one.

Luke does not say that He pulled out His scroll of Deuteronomy and began instructing Satan on the finer points of God's way of life. Jesus already had them deeply embedded in His mind. He was prepared—by long years of study and deep meditation on what He learned—to face Satan's attacks. We also know that, not only was He fasting when out in the wilderness, but as His everyday practice, He prayed regularly, almost constantly.

Here are four tools that we also must use to rid evil from our lives: 1) Bible study, 2) meditation, 3) fasting, and 4) prayer. When Satan hit Him with temptation, Jesus did not need to do some emergency Bible study. Not only was He the Word of God in the flesh, but He also knew Scripture by heart. When Satan sent a temptation, Jesus quoted an opposing scripture verbatim. The right words—words that He had inspired as God of the Old Testament—came immediately to mind, and He hurled them at Satan like a razor-sharp weapon (Ephesians 6:17).

Christ never treated evil as if it did not exist. In addition, He knew the weakness of His own flesh. He is the only person who has ever totally resisted the pulls of the flesh, though He suffered them just as we do (Hebrews 2:14, 18; 4:15). However, He was strong in the Spirit of God and able to resist them. We see in this vignette from His life that, even so, it was no easy task for Him. We know that it is certainly not easy for us, but if we want to be like Him, we have to approach it just as He did.

The apostle Peter, who witnessed the life of Christ firsthand, had a certain approach to life in which events like this made a great impression on him. Thus his epistles, both I and II Peter, are full of advice on how to be diligent to overcome and grow. In the three middle chapters of I Peter, he tells us how we are to resist evil, how we are to do good, how we are not to be as the rest of the world is. Perhaps these things were tough for him to do too, which is why they made such an impression on him and thus is why he passed these instructions along. It is a good thing that he did! God inspired it to be included in His Word because we need the admonition.

Notice I Peter 2:19-24, where Peter is speaking about submitting to masters:

For this is commendable, if because of conscience toward God one endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer, if you take it patiently, this is commendable before God. For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps: "Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth," who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

What does he say that we are called to? Suffering! One could say we are called to be hit over the head for doing good. In reality, God's way is so antithetical to the way of Satan and of this world, that it is only natural that doers of good will suffer rather than be rewarded for their good works. Of this, Jesus Christ was the most extreme example—and not just on the last day of His life! He suffered every day He drew breath. Satan never stopped tempting Him for long, and His flesh never stopped trying to pull Him towards evil.

Peter says that Jesus overcame these things by committing Himself to the One who really knows what is in our characters, what our hearts are really like. In that commitment was great faith that the Father, knowing Him intimately, would guard Him and help Him to the very end—that considering Him as the apple of His eye, God would be with Him even through the grave.

Note, too, Christ's reaction to the evil that was done to Him: He did nothing like it in return. He did not return evil for evil; out of Him came no defiling sin. What did He do? He did self-sacrificial acts of goodness toward His revilers and persecutors—and not only for them, but as Peter goes on to say, He also did it for us, His brethren. Throughout His life, He consciously performed self-sacrificial acts of goodness for others. As Peter says in Acts 10:38, Jesus "went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil."

There is our pattern to follow! He did not allow evil to get Him down or to change His course—He just kept on doing good. That is how He fought it: He faced it down with the Word of God, committed Himself to His Father's will, and repaid evil with good. His method will work for us too.

Evil Is Real (Part Four)

In Part Three, we considered Jesus' discourse in Mark 7 about defilement originating within us. Of the evils He wants us to overcome, external ones actually appear far down the list, for we, being the weak of the world, have little control over them. However, if we change what is inside, which we can control, our own external actions have a far better chance of being righteous. Vanquish the sins at their point of origin, and our deeds will be clean before God.

Far from perfect and peaceful, then, our Christian lives are a running battle to overthrow the accumulated remnants of evil from our pre-conversion lives, as well as what sins we retain and commit from that time forward. As Paul phrases it in his discussion of baptism in Romans 6, "the old man" with all of his sins is "crucified with Christ," doing away with the body of sin that had accumulated over a lifetime of rebellion against God. Coming up from the water, we are raised to an entirely new life—we are a "new man," who is now challenged to increase in righteousness day by day (Romans 6:11-14), even "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13).

Despite experiencing God's forgiveness and being set on the right path, the evil nature that has grown within us for many years is not removed. It is not even fundamentally changed. It is still there, influencing our every decision, conscious or unconscious. This means that the fight between human nature and God's nature rages on (see Galatians 5:16-17). Many newly baptized church members are distressed about how soon they sin after baptism, and the reason is because God does not take away our evil nature. We must still engage it and overcome it.

What happens at baptism and the laying on of hands to receive the Holy Spirit is that we are forgiven of all the evil we practiced before accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior, and God gives us a measure of His Spirit to help us to transform into Christ's image. However, the poor habits, the bad attitudes, the wrong ideas, and all the ingrained behaviors that have built up over the years remain. The evils that we harbored and nurtured all the while we lived without the true knowledge of God linger on, and it becomes our Christian duty to put them down every day.

Many of us know Jeremiah 17:9 by heart, since it is a basic reality of the human condition. Nevertheless, do we really believe what God says here? God is speaking in this passage, giving an evaluation of mankind. In verses 5-6, He relates that curses come upon those who trust in men, and in verses 7-8, He reveals that blessings accrue to those who trust in Him. Verse 9, though, is not focused on the blessed or the cursed but on everyone, humanity as a whole. It reads, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?"

God means this! Do we believe it? From a human perspective, what He says cuts to the quick anyone with a hint of pride. No one thinks of himself as thoroughly evil; in fact, most of us believe we are pretty good. We grew up among other Christians. We think we did a fair job of keeping the commandments. We try to get along with almost everyone. Yet, God's words bring us up short. Are we fooling ourselves? Are we really making a sincere effort to live God's way? Are the things that we do merely a show? Do we act as we do to make people like us? Are we in reality only conforming to peer-pressure? Do we do what we do for the right reasons? What condition are our hearts really in? God answers, "You can't know it. It is most desperately wicked and deceptive."

Further, whom does it deceive the most? Us! Upon acknowledging this revelation from God about ourselves, we have to ask, "Have my motives ever been good for doing anything?" Perhaps, since human nature is one of good and evil. However, God's answer in verse 10 is that only He really knows our real character—and thank God for that! We would despair to see ourselves as we really are, although part of the Christian life is endeavoring to realize just how corrupt our hearts actually are.

Recall the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Luke 18:9-14). The Pharisee is a perfect example of "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." He fools himself into thinking that, between himself and the publican, he is the good, upright one. He stands before the Temple, lifting his eyes toward heaven, taking a pious position as close as he can to the altar, thanking God that he was so much better than the wretched publican. Yet, Jesus informs us that the publican, not the Pharisee, "went down to his house justified rather than the other" (verse 14). The Pharisee may have been righteous in his own eyes, but not in God's.

The publican—a lying, cheating tax collector—was humble enough to realize that his heart was, indeed, desperately wicked. He probably did not know the depths of the evil that he could do, but he knew that he was a sinner and not worthy of approaching God. He understood that, next to God, he was dirt and less than dirt. He merely beseeches God to show him mercy. The one who earned Jesus' respect is the person who recognized the evil within himself!

In Jeremiah 17:9, God pulls no punches. The human heart—the seat of man's intellect, his emotions, his attitudes, his inclinations—is dishonest and evil. Most of us take evil far too lightly, especially the evil that is within us. We do not like to think of ourselves as evil. We always like to think that we are the guys in the white hats, the good guys. Everybody else has the problem. We tend to be quite quick to point the finger at others, all the while maintaining our own, lily-white innocence.

Such is the attitude that leads to sins like self-righteousness, pride, and sloth in overcoming and growing. This kind of self-justification can eventually manifest itself in poneros, active rebellion against God. If we reach the point where we think that we have nothing more to change or repent of, our growth will slow and soon stop altogether. Before long, our trajectory will be headed away from God because such an attitude is the exact opposite of what He is looking for in His children.

Our example of the Christian life is, of course, none other than Jesus Christ. We are Christians, His followers. To be a Christian is to live the life of Christ. Did He take evil lightly? A quick scan of the Gospel accounts will show that He encountered evil on a regular basis. He did not shrink from it, nor did He minimize it. He called it what it was and set His divine power against it, for that is the reason He came as a human being to this earth: to pay the price to conquer sin and Satan once and for all.

We have been called to follow His example of concentrating our power against the forces of evil, but our target is inward, staving off temptation, battling persistent sin, and clearing the field to produce good fruit in our lives. We will see more on this in Part Five.

Evil Is Real (Part Three)

Part Two began to explore the subject of carnality. When we are first born, our nature is essentially neutral, not having been affected one way or the other by outside influences. At birth, then, we are a tabula rasa, a blank slate. However, because we are clothed in flesh, with all of its needs and desires, we have a tendency toward evil, toward self-satisfaction and sheer selfishness. We humans generally do not want our flesh to be denied what we feel are necessary things—and what we believe is "necessary" varies with the individual.

By the time that we begin to think rationally and logically, we already have at least one foot on the evil side because human nature has begun to pull us in that direction. For all intents and purposes, a young child is helpless, so his parents or other caregivers find themselves constantly meeting his needs from food to hygiene to entertainment as soon as he cries. As children, then, we learn to fulfill the desires of our flesh. Thus, the apostle Paul teaches in Romans 7:14 that carnal human beings tend to sell out to evil.

In Matthew 7:11, part of the Sermon on the Mount, we receive a smack between the eyes, so to speak, from our Savior. Speaking to His disciples, Jesus says, "If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!" We might feel slightly better about being called "evil" by our Lord if He had used the general Greek word for "bad," kakos, here, but sadly, He did not. Of course, He uses poneros, suggesting active, rebellious evil, as in the kind Satan does. Jesus does not pull His punches but matter-of-factly informs us that we are fundamentally wicked and depraved. The evil He spies in us is morally corrupt and in opposition to God.

Christ uses our evil nature as an example to contrast the goodness of God, who always gives good things. We are shown to be on one end of the moral spectrum as being evil—comparable to Satan, who is the quintessence of evil. At the far other end is God, who is transcendently and eternally good. Jesus concludes that between these two extremes there is little, if any, commonality—except that every once in a while, despite being evil, we condescend to do something good for our children.

Jesus' statement dovetails with what happened in the Garden of Eden. God instructed Adam and Eve not to take of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:16-17), which represented the full range of moral choice. We know that our first parents indeed took and ate of that forbidden tree, and ever since, with the exception of Jesus Christ, each individual among mankind has repeated the same process. In doing so, we have given ourselves permission to experience life through trial and error and then decide what is good and evil. Rather than teach us wisdom, as the serpent promised (Genesis 3:5-6), this course of action has fixed us on the debit side of the ledger—under the curse of sin—because our nature tends toward doing evil. As Paul declares in Romans 3:10, 23, "'There is none righteous, no, not one;' . . . for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."

This is not very encouraging, is it? Yet, these are the plain words of Scripture. Despite repenting and learning the truth, we Christians are a mixed bag, having a nature with a tendency towards evil and rebellion against God, but also divinely called (John 6:44), given the Holy Spirit, and presented with the challenge to move from the evil side to the good side. In addition, though God has forgiven our past sins, we still carry with us a great deal of baggage from sinful things that we have done along the way. To complete His challenge to transform from evil to good, we are charged by God to overcome these difficult obstacles.

How aware are we of the evil within? Do we acknowledge, as Paul does, that evil is still present within us? Years ago, the cartoon character Pogo said in a comic strip, "We have found the enemy, and the enemy is us." How true that is spiritually. It is primarily the evil in us that we must recognize, face, and overcome if we are to grow in the image of Jesus Christ.

Without doubt, there is evil in the world. The world is composed of sinful people just like us—worse, they are unconverted, never having been offered the opportunity to be redeemed from the enslavement of sin. In this way, the evils that exist in the world, being so raw and blatant, are obvious and avoidable. It is quite easy to hear the news of a murder and see it as evil, and most of us are not the murdering type, so we find it easy to avoid this form of wickedness. In the end, the evils of the world are far down the list of our concerns because we lack the wisdom and power to change them. Ultimately—and realistically—we cannot do anything about them, except perhaps to be an example of goodness in a sin-blighted world. Our best play is to keep these evils from touching or tempting us and to overcome those that remain in us.

In the same vein, we cannot change Satan and the evils he inspires. Our Savior has already defeated him, and his doom is sealed. True, he still has power to influence us to disobey God, so we are called as soldiers to "resist him, steadfast in the faith" (I Peter 5:9). But we fight Satan, not by frontal assault, but by indomitably defending our ground (Ephesians 6:10-13), and we accomplish this by avoiding temptation, doing good as we are able, and overcoming the evils within. It comes back to recognizing and fighting internal sin.

What is our spiritual duty? Notice what Jesus says in Mark 7:14-16:

When He had called all the multitude to Himself, He said to them, "Hear Me, everyone, and understand. There is nothing that enters a man from outside which can defile him; but the things which come out of him, those are the things that defile a man. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!"

What is Jesus trying to tell us? "Work on yourself!" He advises. The evils that we have to recognize, face down, and obliterate are inside. They are the defiling sins that spring from our "deceitful . . . and desperately wicked" heart (Jeremiah 17:9). If we really want to clean up society and deny Satan victory over us, our job is to root out the evils within.

Jesus explains what His teaching means in a private discussion with His disciples:

What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man. (Mark 7:20-23)

That the sins that defile us are generated from inside is a point He wants us to acknowledge, for He mentions this fact three times in seven verses. The evils that we have been called to fight and subdue are what we conceive, nurture, and express from within—the evils that we see when we look in the mirror. Do we have ears to hear our Savior?

Evil Is Real (Part Two)

It is amazing to realize how blunt God is in His Word; as the saying goes, He is not afraid to call a spade a spade. He did not go to college to get a degree in public relations, nor does He believe in spin. He never sugarcoats the truth in fear of causing someone's feelings to be hurt because He knows that, if something truly needs to be said, it is worth saying truthfully. As Numbers 23:19 affirms, "God is not a man, that He should lie"—even a "little white lie" that to which many people often resort to spare another a bit of emotional distress.

In terms of evil, God does not spare anyone. We normally use the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible to determine how many times a certain word is used in Scripture. It renders various Hebrew and Greek words into "evil" and its forms 639 times. God's Word speaks about evil a great deal! Obviously, it is a major subject in His Book.

However, that is not the end of the matter. The foregoing tally was only for the word "evil," but we know that other words mean the same thing. Take "wicked," for example, with its variants such as "wickedness," "wickedly," and so forth. They appear an additional 494 times in the KJV. Now we are approaching 1,100 words in the Bible that concern evil. We can also add the words "cursed" and "accursed," which are found 94 times. Our count is nearing 1,200 biblical occurrences on the subject of evil. Notice that we did not include any of the occurrences of such words as "sin," "iniquity," "trespass,"
"transgression," and the like. Plus, we failed to consider words that describe specific sins like "hate," "covet," "steal," "kill,"
"lust," "lie," etc.

God's Word mentions evil quite a bit, so it is not something that we should shrug off like a minor nuisance. If God treats evil as very real and present with us, then we need to take notice.

The Old Testament primarily uses one word for "evil," the Hebrew word ra' (Strong's #7451, closely associated with ra'a', #7489),which, according to Vine's Dictionary of Old Testament Words, means "bad; evil; wicked; sore [severe]." Ra' connotes the opposite of "good" in thoughts, words, or deeds (see Deuteronomy 30:15; Micah 3:2). Further, what is ra' is wrong in regard to God's intent, as well as its effect on men. Something that is ra', then, is a thing that God considers to be evil, and when it touches people—or people commit it—evil results. For example, Jeremiah 24:2 speaks of "bad figs," rotten and noisome, which ultimately stand for bad people and the evil acts they commit.

This word often describes, not just evil deeds, but also inner attitudes, that is, what we think and feel inside—in our hearts—toward God and other men. Some of the kings of Israel and Judah "did evil in the sight of the LORD." It was their inner attitudes of pride, lust, revenge, and other evils that manifested in acts of rebellion against God during their reigns. Biblical history is full of their idolatries, child sacrifice, wars, adulteries, and other evils. Their inner attitudes—evils—toward God or man brought disaster and dishonor upon themselves, others, and their nations.In addition, ra' can also describe moral deficiencies—a lack of good character traits—that harm the self or others. Clearly, it is a very broad term, covering anything that is bad or ends badly.

The New Testament uses two main words for "evil": kakos and poneros. Kakos (Strong's #2556) covers things that are bad, base, or wicked in character, making it the Greek equivalent of ra'. Poneros (Strong's #4190) describes things that are evil in their influence or affect. Thus, kakos is the general word for "bad," "evil," or "wicked," but poneros concentrates on how evil works.

To put it simply, poneros denotes evil that causes labor, pain, sorrow, and further evil. In the end, it essentially means "active rebellion"—and in the Bible, that equates to rebellion against God! It is a more heinous form of evil than what kakos implies. In poneros we see evil in action.

A phrase in the Greek Bible, ho poneros, helps to bolster this idea of active evil. Ho is an article, equivalent to English "the." Therefore, ho poneros means "the wicked [one]." We have no trouble identifying who "the wicked one" is: Satan the Devil. This connection should give us a good idea of the extent and activity of the evil covered by poneros—the kind of evil Satan does.

Perhaps a better definition of kakos, rather than the general "bad," is "ungodliness" or "sinfulness." Notice the apostle Paul's use of kakos in Romans 7:19-21, where it is twice translated as "evil": "For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good."

Realize that Paul is writing this to church members in Rome sometime in the mid-AD 50s, and this war between his desire to do good and the evil that he finds himself practicing is still taking place within him. How long had he been a converted son of God by this time? Historians place the calling of the apostle on the road to Damascus in the early mid-30s, perhaps as early as AD 33-34. Thus, by this time, he had likely been converted for about twenty years—and he was still intensely and uncomfortably aware of the struggle against the "law of sin" occurring in him. This battle was being fought internally, he says in verse 18, in his flesh, and in verse 23, in his members.

He is telling us, "I don't want to do evil! It is my will not to do it, but too often I find myself caving in to it." In his mind, he knew he should not do these things, but he would do it anyway because of the evil that remained in his flesh. Even after a long period of conversion, there is an evil "law," as Paul calls it—we could also call it a principle, an attitude, a mindset, a tendency, an inclination—that is still present within us. It is almost like our worse nature (as opposed to our "better nature")—a kind of "devil on your shoulder." Worse still, it is in us!

Earlier, in Romans 7:14, Paul had given another insight into this evil in us: "For we know that [God's] law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin." He is again speaking of this tendency toward evil because of the flesh that clothes us, which he names "carnality." Our carnality is what sells us into slavery to sin. One of the great responsibilities that falls to us upon our redemption through the liberating blood of Jesus Christ is to cease being slaves of sin and, instead, become slaves of righteousness (see Romans 6:15-23).

However, it is a terrible struggle—an all-out war—because, with our minds, we have already thrown off the shackles of sin, but our bodies, still receiving orders from the human nature that remains with us, are always trying to return us to those shackles. The battle goes back and forth—sometimes our spiritual mind triumphs, and other times, we let our flesh prevail. Unfortunately, this conflict will rage until we die, but we can thank God that He covers these frequent—yet, we hope, diminishing—lapses. We will look into this more thoroughly next time.

Evil Is Real (Part One)

Back on March 8, 1983, at an Orlando, Florida, meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals, the President of the United States at the time, Ronald Reagan, gave a speech amid an ongoing Congressional debate over a proposed "nuclear freeze," a policy advocated by the Soviet Union. His comments made national and international news because he had the audacity to call the Soviet Union "an evil empire," referring to communism as "the focus of evil in the modern world." Many of us whose memories stretch back that far remember the furor of the media's reaction to his statement. Because he dared to call another nation "evil," Reagan was, according to opponents, the worst person who had ever lived.

First, the press derided him for his simplicity. How could he reduce the Cold War to such black-and-white terms—to the altogether silly notion that "They" are evil and "We" are good? That is what they claimed he implied, although the text of his speech proves otherwise. Then, after deriding him, they chided him for being judgmental, saying that the U.S.S.R. was not evil, just different from America and opposed to our ideas of "good government." Then, they called him "bellicose" and "dangerous," implying that he was trying to provoke the Soviets into war. To his credit, Reagan did not back away from his remarks.

A significant criticism of liberalism is that liberals rarely consider actual outcomes—that is, they often promote a course of action without studying how such actions have worked out in the past or in similar contemporary situations. Not wanting to repeat this mistake, we should consider what resulted from Reagan's identifying the Soviet Union as "an evil empire": Ultimately, the West, led by the United States, won the Cold War! Certainly, the process was not quite as simple as that, but his speech "alarmed moderates of the West, delighted millions living under Soviet oppression and set off a global chain reaction that many believe led inexorably to the fall of the Berlin Wall and to freedom for most of Eastern Europe" (Frank Warner, "New Word Order," The [Allentown, Pennsylvania] Morning Call, March 5, 2000, p. A-1).

It was by defining the enemy in stark terms and facing the problem realistically that Reagan's America brought down the Evil Empire of the Soviet Union. In 1989, the Berlin Wall indeed came down, and the Soviets watched helplessly as their superpower status slipped away in less than a decade. Even today, more than twenty years later, it is still desperately trying to regain its lost territories, its defanged military, and its lost influence and prestige—and it is slowly gaining them back. Nevertheless, Russia has been sidelined and diminished for a generation.

Can we Christians learn a lesson from this?

In contrast, during the 1990s, America experienced an administration that considered every matter from a post-modern viewpoint, that is, a way of looking at things in which no absolutes exist. There is no right. There is no wrong. According to this philosophy, every belief and opinion is equally valid because each person determines for himself what is true. Unlike Reagan, President Bill Clinton failed to identify and define America's enemies in realistic terms. In fact, America did not have any enemies during his administration—unless they were right-wing religious fanatics and domestic militias. These were the only people the Clinton administration dared to tar as "evil"—because conservatives and the religious right opposed nearly everything it attempted to do.

In terms of international relations, America's military activities were mere "conflicts" fought before making those on the other side our friends. So, we sent our armed forces to Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia, Kosovo, and many other places—in fact, up to his time, Bill Clinton sent more military personnel to fight in foreign lands than any other President in history. Worse, they went to those places with few clear objectives and ended up staying for extended periods. America's military was often part of a multinational, humanitarian "Meals on Wheels" effort, a kind of foreign aid at the point of a gun. Few of those soldiers, happily, came home in body bags.

As in Reagan's example, the effects of his stance did not manifest themselves until a few years later. America did not feel the full consequences of Clinton's "conciliatory" approach until he was out of office. While America's soldiers did not return home in body bags due to Clinton's forays into international relations, ironically, the nation was less fortunate at home.

By failing to recognize and identify—and fight—evil for eight long years, the United States paid the piper when about 3,000 American civilians died in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania in the attacks of September 11, 2001. The evil that went unrecognized and unnamed was radical Islam. By failing to make a moral judgment about it, our leaders failed to anticipate how its hatred for America would reveal itself. In not taking it seriously, the nation did not have its guard up against it, did not prepare for it, and so suffered from it.

People are still grieving over this tragedy, and they will be grieving for the rest of their lives because an American administration—and, to be frank, much of the nation in support of it—would not make a judgment about evil. Regrettably, the subsequent Bush administration called for a "War on Terror," playing semantics to avoid "offending" and "radicalizing" Muslims, and the Obama administration has continued and compounded the farce by renaming the war the "Overseas Contingency Operation." The whole world still finds itself beset by radical Islam, enduring the penalty of failure to identify and eradicate the evil of Muslim terrorists.

In these examples resides a spiritual lesson for everyone who is a Christian, and a few questions can help to delineate it: Is evil real to us? Do we believe in evil? Can we recognize it? Do we know how evil works? Are we aware of the forms that it takes? Do we realize that we are in an all-out war against evil? Are we prepared to fight that war?

Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist of many centuries ago, wrote a book called The Art of War. It is now frequently used as a textbook on how to fight one's way to the top of the ladder in the cutthroat business world. However, he did contribute one remarkable yet simple maxim that applies to this lesson. He wrote, "Know your enemy."

How can a person fight an enemy about which he knows nothing? He cannot—in fact, he will be slaughtered on the battlefield! For starters, he will not even realize he is in danger! Once he gets his nose bloodied, he will not know how to react to his enemy. He will not know his enemy's strategies or tactics. He will be totally ignorant of his numbers, his weaponry, and his experience. A person who does not know his enemy will quickly suffer ignominious defeat.

Do we know our enemy? Do we recognize that we are in a fight for our lives? Do we appreciate how real evil is? We will consider more on this next time.