September 19, 2007
Serves You Right
Grace is often described as ‘not getting what we really deserve’. Having been a recipient of God’s grace when I hear of someone suffering the consequences of their actions, I’ve sometimes felt guilty for doing a ‘you-deserve-what-you-get’ dance in my head. However, that was before I read about the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18. “In one hour she has been brought to ruin! Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged her for the way she treated you.’” (Rev 18:19b-20 NIV) Maybe I don’t feel so guilty after all.
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Gail;
-----I think of the Babylon of Revelation 18 like a mathematical equation. It is able to define many things. With a set of abstract variables, I see it defining Satan’s rebellious following of people and their culture. In concrete terms, I see a real city in a real place and time. In personal terms, I see the hand of sin, with its various fingers of persuasion, reaching into the soul of a man and gripping him in the state of imperfection, gripping everyone alike. The common expression, regardless of the terms, is rejection of God’s system for one’s own system. Rebellion. The elimination of that will be an event for rejoicing.
-----But the man gripped by rebellion is not the equation. I feel gracious toward someone trapped in trouble, even when it is of his own making. I feel sorry for what could have been, or could be, if not for a different decision. I have had enough trouble in my own life to imagine the feelings and thoughts of others. The fact that one was the cause of his own troubles lays aside of the anguish that might be in him.
-----However, though he is the victim of the harm upon his life, he is also the villain. And we also relate to the villain in a man. The villain is not the one we have mercy upon. He is the one who is the dead man in us, the one who should die in those who do not know the Lord. When we withdraw our desire to support someone who is continually kicking his feet out from under himself, it is the villain we wish to starve. It is a hand of Babylon taking grip on what that person has offered to be a handle for her.
-----Until Jesus changes us all into the perfect beings we long to be, we all have a bit of a handle for her. The more we love the Lord and try to obey Him and grow up in Him, the more we try to eliminate that handle. But we never really succeed in eliminating it. In fact, the very thought that we can eliminate it is a handle in itself. For as much as we long to be perfect in a perfect existence, we are bound to these bodies of failure in a system of failure. Therefore, each of us in our own various ways fall victim to ourselves. Each of us is our own villain. And that is why I will rejoice at the destruction of Babylon and will feel a twinge of pain for the victims who will be destroyed with her.
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