“He Made Me Do It!”

Blaming someone else for one’s sins goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. God asked Adam if he had eaten the forbidden fruit. “The woman,” Adam replied, and then added, “that You gave me, she gave me the fruit.”

God asked the woman about it. “The serpent,” she replied. And if she had been as clever as Adam at blaming others, she could have added, “that You created.”

Now, some six thousand years later, people still try to blame someone else for their sin.

“My supervisor at work made me lie to a customer.”

“My friends made me drink too much at a party.”

“My girlfriend made me steal a ring for her.”

“My boyfriend made me get an abortion.”

“My boss made me work on the Sabbath.”

“My wife made me dress up like a zombie and take her to a Halloween party, even though it violates my conscience.”

In these situations it would be more truthful to say “My supervisor pressured me to lie; my friends pressured me to drink,” etc.

To say that someone “made” you do something is saying that they forced you to do it; you had no choice; there was no way you could refuse. Unless someone held a gun to your head or a knife to your throat and threatened to harm or kill you, no one “made” you sin. They pressured you to sin, and you gave in to the pressure.

When King David was confronted with his sin, his immediate reaction was to say “I have sinned.” He did not blame Bath-sheba for carelessly bathing in a place where she could easily be seen. He did not blame his sin on a midlife crisis, or on his genes or hormones, or on depression or loneliness, or on his hereditary weaknesses or personality type, or on some difficult trauma he experienced in the past. He simply said, “I have sinned.”

God immediately forgives the repentant sinner who immediately takes responsibility for his sin, and acknowledges and confesses his sin, and does not try to make excuses and blame someone or something else. So do not say someone or something “made” you sin. Don’t even say the devil made you do it.

Remember Hananiah, MIshael, and Azariah (aka Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego). They refused to bow down to King Nebuchadnezzar’s idol even when threatened with a horrible fiery death.

These three young men could have bowed down like everyone else and then said, “The king made us bow down to his idol.” But that would not have been true, not unless Nebuchadnezzar’s soldiers had physically pushed them down, forcefully bent their knees, and pushed their bodies down against their will. But the soldiers did not do that, because Nebuchadnezzar would be satisfied only if they surrendered their will and bowed down of their own accord. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah knew that if they bowed down of their own accord, even when threatened with death, they would be willingly bowing down and would have no one to blame for their sin except themselves. So they refused to bow.

When Satan tempts you to sin, refuse to bow to temptation. It was good that David said “I have sinned.” But how much better it would have been if David had been able to say “I was tempted but I refused to sin against God.”

| DB