Seeing that man will always frame law to himself in a great bias for either self exaltation or to ameliorate its penalties, it has therefore no effect on the flesh. For it is the flesh that frames it thus. The law is good, and as the apostle said, holy. But something (or rather someone) must come to show the perversity of the flesh to weaken it, to make it subject to himself by many amendments, loopholes, work arounds and the like. The man who might proclaim how much he loves (the) law, how very lawful he is in his devotion to it either must be shown how little he regards it in all truth, and stand convicted before it and by it, or continue in his self delusion.
We easily see the first man’s preference for self when frankly confronted of his conduct in regard to the commandment to not eat. He did not say “Yes, I ate”. And of all the things we might speculate over as to what might have been available to say, we do know he said this, “The woman you gave me…”
Already there is a shifting of blame away from himself, a stance as apart from both the woman and the One who gave her to the man as to where the fault truly lay. And also, and no less, a distance set by self excuse…from the commandment.
But even in this I have no place to accuse nor judge Adam, for I am of myself no less guilty in this maneuver. “I would be a better man if all around me would just do right” is an attitude with which I am not unfamiliar. It is “everyone else” that make it so very hard…for me to “be good”! I “only lose my temper because“…or “circumstance has caused me…” and therefore create a world of sin in which I see myself as apart, or distinct to whatever measure I assign it, to the end of self exaltation by self justification. I judge creation to excuse myself. Even judge He who is source of it.
What a perverse created thing.
Yet there remains God’s purpose in all.
Jesus asked this very pointed question and, one would think, to some end of discovery for us in the “why”.
“Why do you behold the mote that is your brother’s eye but do not see the log in your own?”
And I have been persuaded it is only the asker of that question, who sees this in operation so very clearly, that is able in any way to help us understand.
“Yes, Lord, why do I?”
For it truly is neither the log nor the mote that are much at issue…but this predilection to not see what is “of myself” in preference to finding some fault in another. I am in the possession of a thing, even possessed by a self that is so deluded as to how things truly are that it not only cannot see, but refuses to acknowledge the same is, as is over it, as to what it would hold another as “under”.
And who can deliver…from self? Self interest, self aggrandizing, self motive, self justification as all and in all? Has any come to “do” not…his own will?
Happy are you if you know His name. For He alone is your justification for being.
And it is not that you need no other.
There is no other.
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