Self Justification

"You shall not murder.”
Out of God’s ten famous instructions, this is probably the easiest for the majority of us to read. Most people have never murdered anyone, nor even come near to doing so. So we can give ourselves a satisfied pat of the back…at least until we start reading the New Testament.
Jesus launched a concerted campaign to stop religious people from administering satisfied pats to their own backs. Armed with a strong understanding of God’s forgiveness, Jesus made it his business to cast each and every one of us in the role of “sinner”. He said, “You’ve heard it said from way back, ‘Don’t murder’ … But I say to you: anyone who makes their brother/sister angry is liable to judgement.”
We human beings have a natural instinct to self justification. Without pausing for thought, we cover over our failures, make up excuses and point the finger of blame at other people. It’s not pretty, but we all do it.
When we consider God’s 10 instructions our natural instinct is to justify ourselves, attempting to tick as many boxes as possible to reassure ourselves that we are good people.
Jesus’ advice is: don’t bother! He wanted every person listening to his Sermon of the Mount to walk back down the hill understanding themselves as a sinner in need of forgiveness. OK, you may never have murdered anyone, but you have annoyed plenty of people, and insulted them, and spoken ill of them behind their backs. That hurts God too.
God did not give us those 10 simple instructions with the expectation that we would all live faultless lives. That was never likely to happen. God gave us 10 simple measures to help us understand how far short we consistently fall. He is not inviting us to justify ourselves, he is inviting us to turn to him for forgiveness.

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Sunday 8th October 2017

When things go right for us, we like to think that it is because we have done well and are reaping our just rewards. If we include God in this picture, we like to think that God is blessing us because he is pleased with us.
When things go wrong, on the other hand, we quickly assume that someone has fouled up and we are suffering for their mistake. Some of us will be inclined to take the blame on ourselves; some will tend to point the finger of blame at others. If we include God in this picture we conclude that either God has inexplicably failed to look after us, or that we are being punished for our (or someone else’s) failing.
This is normal human behaviour. We learn this process of apportioning blame and credit from an early age.
Jesus sees it differently. He said, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
God is indiscriminate when it comes to blessing people. If we are enjoying God’s blessing, it doesn’t mean we are better than anyone else. If the rain falls on us at just the wrong moment, it doesn’t mean we are worse. God delights to bless all his people - good and bad alike, and that’s how he wants us to treat each other.
Let us not be judgmental about who we help, who we support, and who we devote our energies to. We are children of the God who provided for Adam and Eve both before and after they disregarded the one and only rule he had given them. We need to follow his example.