Here’s a hard truth: Deflecting responsibility for our own wrongdoings onto others ultimately shifts blame onto God. Let me say that another way: pointing a finger at someone else to shift blame away from you is, in truth, pointing that finger at God Himself!

They say ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’ and nothing could be truer when it comes to the blame game; the garden of Eden being the scene of its first recorded occurrence in human history. When God confronted Adam for eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam immediately blamed Eve. And, in turn, when God confronted Eve, she immediately blamed the serpent. (Genesis 3:8-13¹) And the game has been played over and over again throughout the ages. We are all experts at this game. It comes completely natural to us to avoid, at any cost, any semblance of impropriety. Just the appearance alone of indiscretion would knock us off the thrones of our own little worlds. It would force to us to face the reality that we all try to evade: we aren’t the gods we all want to be!

Sin turns us into devoted ‘self-excusers’! I recently read that “we all have very active inner lawyers, who rise to our defense in the face of any accusation of wrong”². We have convinced ourselves that the biggest problems in life live outside of ourselves because they certainly couldn’t live within us. We have become virtuosos at arguing that any wrong we have been accused of says more about the flawed character of the world we live in rather than it does about our own character. We are much more troubled by the sin of others than we are about our own sin, but, John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

The unimaginable self-righteousness that resides within us all requires nothing short of the life-altering grace that only God can provide. We need our overbearing, unwilling, self-righteous hearts turned into humble, willing, help-seeking hearts. All we really want is peace in our worlds, but the only path to real peace is through God. Rescuing us from ourselves and giving us peace is something only our merciful God can do. Only the Father’s grace can open our eyes to our realities. Only grace can give us the ability to set aside our own interests for the interests of others. Only grace can cause us to stop pointing our fingers away from ourselves and to run to our Redeemer for His forgiveness.

We now recognize how futile it is to pursue righteousness on our own. Our never-ending pursuit of avoiding responsibility and self-appointed righteousness proves to us every day just how much we are in need of His grace. And we will never find the peace we are desperately seeking until we accept that grace.

For further encouragement: 1 John 1:5-10: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” ☧

1. Genesis 3:8-13 ↩︎
2. “New Morning Mercies” by Paul David Tripp ↩︎