A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 29: 16 "Bring Bad Back"

Proverbs 29: 16     When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increases; but the righteous will see their fall.

The more bad people there are, the more bad things will happen.  It’s not a complicated equation, but it’s a formula that we regularly deny. 

People open their mouths and list the many wrong, just plain inexcusably wrong things they’ve done and are still involved in doing.  Then those people say with the same mouths, “But I’m a good person.”  And we all nod our agreement.

We all see that there is increasing evil performed.  How then can it be that nobody (at least nobody who looks like us or is liked by us) is a bad person? 

The sums don’t match.

O.K., look at it like this.  What’s sin?

Sin means doing bad things on purpose

What do you call somebody who sins?

A sinner?  That’s right.

So, what is a “sinner”?

A sinner is somebody who does bad things on purpose.

So if they, or you, or I purposely do things which God says are bad to do, then the things we do are......?  Sins.

And doing them means that we’re........?    That’s right.  SIN-NERS.

But in a world where everybody’s “a good person,” nobody can be a sinner.  If I’m not a sinner but I still do these things that I do, then the things that I do cannot really be sins, because if the things I do were really sins then I’d be a sinner.  But I’m not a sinner.  How can I be a sinner when “I’m a good person”?

Now, here’s why messing up the formula is a problem:  

The Bible compels sinners to repent and stop sinning.  If I’m not a sinner, if I’m already a good person, then I don’t need to repent.  I can read the Bible, sing about the Bible, preach from the Bible, and call on the God of the Bible to fulfill the promises of the Bible, but as far as my actual personal behavior------------- I don’t need to change a thing.  

And that’s how we end up with a world where more bad is being done, but nobody’s a bad person.

We have created a world of bad things done by bad people who call ourselves good persons.

And the whole situation is just so, so, very, very TIRED.

Malachi 2: ¹⁷     You have wearied the Lord with your words. “Yet you say, “In what way have we wearied Him?”

In that you say, “Everyone who does evil is good in the sight of the Lord, and He delights in them,” or, “Where is the God of justice?”

It is an unsustainable situation, and the saddest part is that every time we reject the reality of our sin we also reject the reality of God’s redemption.

In John chapter 8, when Jesus delivered an adulterous woman from a hypocritical crowd, He sent her away with the words, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.” (John 8: 11).

Today, that woman might have turned to Jesus and replied, “Sin?  You calling me a sinner?  I ain’t no sinner!  Yeah, I slept with a married man, but that married man also slept with me.  I don’t see nobody dragging him into the temple early in the morning and talkin’ about stoning him.  I may not be all righteous like you, Mr. Jesus Christ from Nazareth, but I know this much:  I’M A GOOD PERSON.” 

The reason why there is so much bad in the world is because there are so many of us being bad people.  The beauty of the formula is that the moment we accept and confess our badness to God is the exact moment that the redemptive work of Jesus can transform from a bad person into an actual good person.

2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 

That’s how we win-----not through some imaginary rule or tool that will make all the bad stop, but by bringing people to Christ to be transformed from bad to good.  But to start that process we have to bring bad back.  We have to reintroduce the terms sin and sinner as realities and as negatives. 

Some feelings will be hurt.  Some egos will be scuffed. 

But if we don’t honestly see that we honestly are not good people, then we never will be.

---Anderson T. Graves II

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is the pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church

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