Then Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. Matthew 27:3
It recently came out in the news that the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-racism organization, has been spending A LOT of money paying racist groups to go out and do racist things. If they’re paying to keep the turmoil stirred up, it makes me wonder if they really want to overcome the problem.
Do we really want to overcome our problems? In the movie Fireproof, a man struggling with the temptation of pornography takes a baseball bat to his computer and leaves it outside with the garbage. How many of us are that committed to overcoming the lust of the flesh and of the eyes (1 John 2:16)?
But don’t forget about the pride of life! There are more subtle ways that we cling to sin, like allowing our victimhood to become our identity. Not that overcoming the pain of the past is always easy, but sometimes we don’t really want to overcome the pain that gets us sympathy and spares us judgment.
When you’re the victim, by definition you’re not the one who is guilty. And when you’ve been victimized in one area of life, it’s very tempting to try to apply that metric to every part of life, which means you never have to take responsibility for your own sins. You never have to change. Thus the situation goes from bad to worse because there is no salvation without confession of sin (Romans 10:10).
Sometimes we say we want to overcome something, but our actions betray the fact that we really don’t.
Gable Price calls this “treason to your heart.”
Sin is not just betrayal of God. It’s treason against our own selves. Who are we hurting most when we take what Satan offers in exchange for our souls, whether it be sins of the flesh or the heart? “What will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16:26).
We can read about the Faustian bargain where a man trades his soul’s eternal destiny for supernatural knowledge and unlimited power in this life. We have legends about men giving their souls in exchange for mad guitar skills. A man may lay his soul down like a chip on a poker table in exchange for pleasure that will only last a few minutes. The Bible talks about those who “exchanged the truth of God for the lie,” (Romans 1:25). Most of us are not very good deal makers.
The paltry things that Satan tempts us with are often harmful to our health, they have a high emotional cost, and they separate us from God. They are appealing in the moment, but divert us from our true identity as children of God. What Satan offers us is so very temporary, not worth it in the next life, and usually not worth it even about five minutes later.
When Judas betrayed Jesus, it must have hurt God to watch a man that He had created turn against Him for money. But who was hurt the most? A short time later, Judas was miserable, looking for some way to make it right. He found none. He who had walked with Jesus for so long couldn’t see the way back. Truly, “the wages of sin is death,” (Romans 6:23).
Do we really want to solve the problems in our lives, or is there a part of us that just wants to keep the status quo? If we realized how we were hurting ourselves, we would smash our bad habits with a baseball bat.
Only Satan would want you to find your identity in victimhood, and anything he has to offer only leads to more pain. No one could come up with a wiser or more loving design and purpose for your life than God has, so don’t betray His plan. To do so is “treason to your heart.”
Everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ. Philippians 3:8 NLT
by Christie Cole Atkins
Dear God, so often we are fooled by Satan as were our ancestors in the garden. Just as we have all been hurt by the sins of others, we have all hurt others, including You, with our own sin. Please give us eyes to see sin for what it is and for where it leads. May we always stay loyal to You and to Your plan for our lives. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
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