The beauty of the gospel

Have you ever been reading scripture and something just jumps out at you unexpectedly? It doesn’t matter if you have read it a hundred times – God always seems to surprise you with new things to learn from familiar verses.

Recently, I was reading through the book of James and had this experience. I have read these verses so many times, but God chose to show me something different this time as my eyes took in the verses about temptation and about gifts that God gives to each of us.

The verses that I read were James 1:13-17 which state, “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.”

The first few things that God showed me tied in with the verses about not blaming God for temptation and realizing that God does not tempt anyone. Thinking through the past few months, I realized that that is exactly what I have been doing. I have been blaming God for the temptations that I have been struggling with and even giving into at times.

When I started to think about it, I was shocked at the fact that I could ever possibly blame the God of the universe for tempting me into sin. Why do we do that? I think the biggest reason is because we don’t want to bear the responsibility of overcoming that temptation. If we have someone else to blame for it, then we don’t feel as guilty about caving and giving into the pressure.

Another thing I noticed was the verse about God giving us perfect gifts. I am an extremely relational person. I love being with my friends and I love getting to know new people. The past two semesters, I have been struggling in this area. But God decided to bless me with friends that I did not expect to gain.

However, with the wonderful love for friendships comes the temptation to idolize them. And that is what I began to do. As I started to notice this temptation creeping up on me, I started asking God why he would put me in this kind of a situation. Why would he put people into my life that would just be a distraction for me?

Then I read these verses, and it was kind of like a slap in the face. What I realized was this: God knows that I am a relational person, and he blessed me this semester with some new friends that I was not expecting. I accepted this gift, but I also let my desires get the better of me. I let myself be dragged away and enticed. God was not doing the dragging. He doesn’t “change like shifting shadows” by giving me a wonderful blessing and then leaving me to try and handle the temptations that he has just bestowed upon me in the form of a gift. He doesn’t work like that and therefore does not deserve the accusations that I throw at him.

It’s humbling to realize the extent of your sin. It wasn’t easy to confess this to God and ask for his forgiveness for blaming him for something that I have been bringing upon myself the whole time. But it was freeing.

It was freeing to know that I had his instant forgiveness. It was freeing to know that he is there to help me through these temptations and provide a way for me to stand up under them. It was also wonderful realizing that he loves me enough to bless me with gifts that I don’t expect.

So despite the fact that reading these verses brought my ego down a little, it allowed me to experience another gift from God: his word coming alive in a new and different way. And that’s the beauty of the gospel. It’s always alive and ready to teach whoever is willing to learn.