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It’s Very Easy to Fallby Steve Cox,
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The past few years I have been making a renewed effort to be consistent in the basic disciplines of walking with God, in particular, in the discipline of daily devotions. Thankfully, the Lord is faithful to challenge me with many lessons as I work methodically through the Bible, prayerfully reading segments of Scripture. As I have been working through Genesis recently, one of the themes that has been standing out is the frequency and ease with which the patriarchs deceive others in order to protect, or benefit, themselves. Abraham twice deceives kings about his wife because he thinks his deceit will protect him from harm. His son Isaac learns well from his father and uses the same deceit about his own wife. In a sense, Isaac’s son Jacob (whose name means deceiver) tops them both with his multiple deceits to get ahead in the world. Even Jacob’s sons fall into this pattern of deceit to get even with someone who harmed their sister (Genesis 34:13). In Leviticus 6, the Lord says to Moses: “If anyone sins and is unfaithful to the LORD by deceiving his neighbor.” Deceiving another person is not only a sin against that person. God considers it unfaithfulness to Him. I do not bring this up as a means to beat up on the patriarchs and in some way make myself (or us) look better. But I do think it is an important lesson to consider that the great people of the Bible had their sins even when they exhibited great faith in other aspects of life. Abraham displayed great faith in his willingness to sacrifice his own son as God instructed. But when he was faced with a fear of his own making, that someone might kill him to take his beautiful wife, he forced her to lie, risking her safety and risking God’s judgment on the people of the land (Genesis 12 and 20) just to protect himself from an imagined threat. I believe God shares these events with us to challenge us to evaluate whether we are falling into the same or similar sins. If even the great heroes of the faith repeatedly fell in certain areas of personal weakness, how can I learn from their examples? Paul encourages us to respond to these examples with a sense of awareness, humility, and caution. “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us…So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” (1 Colossians 10:11-12) Being aware that I am prone to fall (to disobey the Lord by seeking to serve myself), being humble enough to recognize my weaknesses, and staying cautious is a good place to start. Moving from the negative (things we are to avoid to prevent a fall) to the positive (right things we can do to prevent a fall), Peter encourages us to seek to grow in Christ-like character qualities such as faith, perseverance, and love. He concludes with this: “If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ…. if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” 2 Peter 1:8,10-11 In addition to being aware of weak spots, and focusing on growing in Christ-like character, the writer of Hebrews tells us that meeting regularly with other believers that can “spur” or encourage us to grow spiritually throughout our lives is essential (Hebrews 10:24-25). To me, one of the greatest encouragements in this area of striving not to fall was written by Solomon, another great man of the Bible who gives us examples of both obedience and of falling into disobedience. He writes: “For though a righteous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity.” Proverbs 24:16) In other words, both the person seeking to be righteous and the “wicked” person fall at times. But God describes the righteous person as one who gets up after every fall, seeks forgiveness, and rises again to pursue an obedient walk with Him. I am thankful for these examples of Scripture that serve as warning
and as encouragement. May we as a church continue to encourage each
other to grow in Christ-like character and obedience so that we all
“receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.”
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