Overcoming Deception
One of the most basic attributes that makes us humans is our ability to be deceived. In fact, it’s one of the earliest characteristics of humanity that the Bible describes. Even before sin entered the world, Adam’s and Eve’s hearts and minds had the capacity to be deceived. They chose to submit to that capacity and opened the way for sin to enter into the earth, and its destructive power to curse everything good that God had made.
Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, where God had walked and talked with them Separated from His presence, the deception in human hearts grew wider and deeper. Without God’s continued mercies to keep the race alive, humanity would have destroyed itself a long time ago. He made covenants with Noah, Abraham, Moses/Israel, and David…in order to maintain His presence among a wayward people and lead them back to the abundant life He always meant for them to have.
But it wasn’t until the covenant through Jesus Christ that an eternal peace could be secured. Through Jesus’s death and resurrection, there is assurance of hope. One day, He will establish an everlasting kingdom where all the effects of sin will be vanquished, and death will be defeated. Until then, those who recognize that deception is still so very innate in our nature, can find strength to overcome that deception by hiding themselves in Christ. When we recognize He is the only way to overcome this weakness, He saves us and gives us the gift of the Holy Spirit. And that makes all the difference.
Here these words from Paul to the faithful church planter, Titus:
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life. (Titus 3:3-7)
That first sentence that describes the people of Paul’s day is also prevalent in society today. Not much has changed, because our fallen condition has not changed.
BUT…
It does not have to stay that way! Just as Adam and Eve had a choice, so do we. When we give Christ control of our deceived and deceptive hearts, God’s mercy washes us and makes us new. He transforms our minds, instructs our steps, and helps us to look beyond this broken world to the future where all things will be restored, and when this struggle will no longer define us.
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25).