The Deceitfulness of Sin

Luke 6:6-11

6 On another Sabbath, he entered the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was withered. 7 And the scribes and the Pharisees watched him, to see whether he would heal on the Sabbath, so that they might find a reason to accuse him. 8 But he knew their thoughts, and he said to the man with the withered hand, "Come and stand here." And he rose and stood there. 9 And Jesus said to them, "I ask you, is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to destroy it?" 10 And after looking around at them all he said to him, "Stretch out your hand." And he did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.


This incident reinforces the depravity of the minds of the religious leadership. Now, instead of reacting to something Christ permitted, as with the disciples shucking ears of grain on the Sabbath - they have compounded their error. This is a progressive hardening of the heart. It is a clarion call to us all. "While it is called today repent and do not harden your hearts!" They have begun not merely to question - not only to criticize - but now to sit in judgment watching for an opportunity to attack.

How easily sin multiplies in the human heart! How readily we rush to add more corruption to our already sad state! We can sit in judgment on these men only inasmuch as we are identifying with Christ against ourselves - against our own sin. There, literally but for the grace of God, go we. Yet we must hate sin as Christ hates it. And we can do so properly only when we agree with Him about our own helpless condition, apart from the operations of His grace upon us. When we condemn, we condemn ourselves. Yet we must condemn sin wherever it is found. What wisdom there is at work in this!

So here the scribes and Pharisees hold up the mirror to me. When my foot slips I see how much more readily the next mis-step comes; how much easier it is; how by and by one thing can lead to another until, unless Christ had bought me, I would become a reprobate by my own hardening. O how God calls for me to see the exceeding sinfulness of sin - the deceitfulness of it. How the way that leads to destruction is broad and easy and natural to that man which I was, and that monster that I still am unless yielded to Christ. God save me from myself!

I hope I never think - and that no Christian gives rein to that line of thought - that there is not such malice in me as to lay in wait for Christ, the King of Heaven, to twist His pure words and deeds into something that serves my own corrupt need for validation, power and renown at His expense. I am a son of Adam just as these and, in Adam, was just as lost. Did Christ not even now sustain me I would be amongst these wolves like a cur, growling alongside them and yearning for blood.

It is the human condition, pointed out by non other than Paul in Romans 2:1, to ease our consciences with the false comfort that others are worse than we. But no! We are of the same lump of clay. It is God who sovereignly forms of this same lump one vessel for honoured use and another for dishonoured use. (Romans 9:21)

Let not my own lament detract from the evil that lies at the hearts of these men. For like all evil it strikes ultimately at the heart of God. All sin is against Him, and is to be abhored. No less this petty, sly, calculating perversity that watches a man in need and regards that need only as a form of bait to trap the holiest man who ever drew breath. Can you see the depravity of it? Can you see it and abhor and condemn it? Does not the Word of God in some measure draw back the curtain of your own hardened heart from its overweening familiarity with sin and begin to let you see sin’s horror?

Yet the malice of men has no power to threaten Christ - to intimidate in the slightest. His course is straight. He came to do God’s will, as it is written of Him in the scroll of the book, and He would not depart from that for the whole world. Without a moment’s hesitation and undoubteldy knowing what was in their hearts, He turned not aside from love and compassion and mercy, though He knew they would as like to have killed Him for it.

O God! Were I but possessed of one small iota of such selfless love! Would I but suffer death to show God’s love in the world before His enemies - yes, and even to them. But I often find it difficult enough to let His love be expressed in me toward my friends. Were it not for grace there are times I might despair. And at the moment when all seems blackest and most hopeless He deigns to brush my cheek with some faint glimmer of His love for me that spurs me on again.