Can sin in my life take away my joy?

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1 John 1:8 “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

That the whole family gets sick when one person is acting out is a hard concept to understand and accept. Our lives and our choices look pretty good…maybe even amazingly good by comparison, don’t they? And if we are sometimes unkind or we do things to retaliate, aren’t we justified? I mean, look how badly we’ve been treated.

That sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? But it just won’t fly. You see, our prodigal isn’t the measuring stick. The Lord Jesus is. And all of us are individually accountable to God. (Rom 14:12) I know how hard it is to do the right thing yourself when everyone else is acting out around you. And I know from personal experience what it’s like to strike back and act out yourself when you’re feeling hurt or betrayed.

I was sitting in church listening carefully as my pastor asked, “What’s that sin you’ve been carrying for a long time…you know, that one you haven’t acknowledged or confessed?” The thing that came immediately to my mind didn’t happen yesterday or last week or even last year. It happened 20 years ago!

Back then, I was angry and hurt, and I felt justified in what I did…after all, he had hurt me first! Didn’t he deserve any payback that I gave him? But in that moment just a few weeks ago, I realized that the “person” I had sinned against wasn’t the person who had hurt me. It was the Savior who had died for me. And with tears of shame and a broken heart, I saw my actions clearly for the first time.

It’s easy to lose our perspective when someone we love is acting out in destructive ways, hurting and disappointing us. Sometimes the sense of betrayal is so great that everything within us wants to strike back. I totally understand that. However, understanding isn’t the same thing as condoning. And believe me when I tell you that the things you do to “pay him back” will eventually come back and haunt you for the rest of your life.

People who are in recovery from substance abuse know they have to “work an honest program,” showing integrity, telling the truth, making amends if they possibly can. If they don’t do those things, they will relapse. And if they relapse, they may die. Even if they don’t die, they will lose the freedom they fought so hard to attain. And that applies to us as much as to our prodigals.

Bob Jones Sr. was right when he used to say, “Do right even if the stars fall. Do right!” Why? Because one of the basic realities of life is you cannot do what’s wrong and have it turn out right. Life just doesn’t work that way. And if we choose to do something permanently stupid because of our temporary problems, we have no one to blame but ourselves when we lose our joy.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, stopped justifying ourselves and chose to do the right thing?