WHEN SELF-DEFENSE IS A SIN
And he, willing to justify himself, said…
Luke 10:29
Endless are the devices by which we try to justify ourselves. When Samuel faced Saul returning from battle and disobedient to God, Saul tried to argue the case and explain why he had not exterminated the Amalekites as God had commanded. It is a mark of the disobedient heart to defend itself. David, when confronted by Nathan, did not argue, he broke into the penitence of the Fifty-first Psalm. Saul said, “I have sinned,” but true repentance does not substitute sacrifice for obedience. The sacrifice God wants is a broken spirit. David offered that sacrifice. But Saul tried to substitute a burnt-offering.
When the voice of God confronts you with your sin, do not offer God an argument. You cannot justify yourself, anyway. One could finish the text above with dozens of alibis men offer to explain themselves. But when a man really does business with God all arguments and excuses are forgotten in the honest confession, “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned.” God justifies freely by His grace, and we are “just-as-if-we’d-never-sinned.”