"Are We Any Better?"

"Are we any better?  Not at all!  We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin." (Romans 3:9-NIV)

As with most every day's devotional, today's text is a part of my regular reading. Some may not be aware of it, but historically, it has been "controversial" even in evangelical circles.  Much of the dissension in the Church over the centuries can be traced back to the denial that, "Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin."  But it is not only a Church problem.  It is global now, and has been a "forever" plague on humanity. 

I found the following article while I was checking a prayer request concerning slave trade activities in modern Liberia.  It is from a timeline history of the country:  "1865- 346 immigrants from Barbados joined the small number of African Americans coming to Liberia after the American Civil War. With overseas immigration slowing to a trickle, the Americo-Liberians (as the settlers and their descendants were starting to be called) depended on immigrants from nearby regions of Africa to increase the republic's population. The Americo-Liberians formed an elite and perpetuated a double-tiered social structure in which local African peoples could not achieve full participation in the nation's social, civic, and political life. The Americo-Liberians replicated many of the exclusions and social differentiations that had so limited their own lives in the United States." (History Of Liberia: A Time Line- American Memory.  Library of Congress)

Human nature is a sin nature.  It does not matter the color of one's skin, his ethnicity, or "national origin."  Arabs invaded Europe centuries before the first crusade.  American Indians ("Native Americans) were murdering, pillaging one another long before the Europeans arrived.  Then there was Genghis Khan, of whom one historian said, "His main legacy is of plunder for plunder's sake."  And what of the Aztecs, the object of praise of humanist multiculturalists?  Their ruling classes were masters of forced labor.

The temptation to see everyone else as the problem and see myself as victim is an age old battle.  But we don't have to find someone to blame for life.  We just need to find someone who saves life.  "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus."  The whole race was under the condemnation of sin, but all people who surrender to Jesus Christ can say, "We were all baptized by one Spirit into one body--whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-- and we were all given the one Spirit to drink."

Father, in Jesus' Name, bring conviction any time I justify sin in me and condemn it in others.  Amen.
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"Looking Unto Jesus"
Hebrews 12:2



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