It's Not All Us
Posted by:
Bible Blogger on
September 7, 2007 at
9:45PM EST
I was visiting a website and there was a group of people slamming
Christians for giving any blame to Satan when we commit a sin. They
tried to claim that the only sin comes from within us and when you say
it's Satan you're doing nothing but avoiding your personal
responsibility.
They get this idea from passages like this:
" So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being,but
I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind
and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." -
Romans 7:21-23 (ESV)
I can see where someone could try and build
a case for the contention that sin only comes from us. In the purest
sense, Satan cannot make us sin. We can give into the temptations he
puts in front of us and therefore we commit a sin but in the strict
sense sin comes from within ourselves.
Still, the impression
left is that sin is independent from temptation. That sin is just
there, it's always there and if you give into sin then it's purely your
fault. It puts the onus completely on your shoulders as if you were
out seeking to fulfill the desires that come in your weakest areas of
life.
While I'm all about personal responsibility and taking
ownership of the sins you make and asking for forgiveness it's an
incomplete picture to discount the level of impact Satan can play in
the way sin eats away at our lives. We can be going along in our life
perfectly fine and not even thinking about something that can tempt us
to stray when Satan will have the perfect temptation cross our path.
Yes, if we give into sin, it's our fault for doing so. That doesn't
mean Satan didn't play a part in it.
So when you face that
person telling you that a Christian who falls into sin needs to "suck
it up" and own what they did agree with them. Then explain the bigger
picture to them.
