I Will But I Don't

"What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. Hewent to the first and said, 'Son, go and work today in the vineyard.' "'I will not,' he answered, but later he changed his mind and went. "Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing. He answered, 'I will, sir,' but he did not go. Which ofthe two did what his father wanted?" "The first," they answered. Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, the taxcollectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you." -- Matthew 21:28-31 (NIV)

I will but I don't.

That pretty sums up most of our Christian walk, doesn't it.

We Christians have this great desire to serve God fully with all our lives, all our heart, with evey molecule and atom of our body...but we don't.

In fact, to twist and paraphrase Ghandi: It is the Christians that give the church a bad name.

I don't beleive that we can be anything but hypocrits - in the sense that we do what we don't want to do and don't do what we want to do. We profess this great love of Christ but fail to follow His simplest of commands - to love one another, to serve one another, to put your self last - and this brings great shame to the body (the church - those who profess Him Lord and Savior).

We are pretty good with the Savior part. I have that down pat. I live with the assurance of my salvation. Unfortunately that leads me to live this horrible, prideful lie that because Christ is good that I am now good. I am in terms of how God no longer holds me to account, but I still sin - sometimes purposely, sometimes callously, sometimes with great resolve, always without regard for God and what He did for me.

Oh, we say we will but we don't, so let's stop kidding ourselves. We are not only co-conspirators with other sinners, we are instigators and, worse yet, betrayers of Christ. We Christians hold the nails to His writs waiting for the "sinner" to hammer!

Our response to sin needs to be to look at ourselves first and see if we have said we will and didn't. When we go to rebuke a sin, we must do it in context not as a superior but actually as someone worse - someone who knew better and did it anyway. Someone who didn't do a "mistake" but did an "on purpose".

It is okay to point out sin, but we need to start from within first, and then move outward.

For His Glory,
Tom