“For Christ died for sins once for
all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”
-1 Peter 3:18
When Mike Wallace of “60 minutes” ran
a story on the notorious Nazi war criminal, Adolph Eichmann, he asked the questions,
“How is it possible for a man to act as Eichmann acted?” “Was he a monster? Was
he normal?”
The startling answer to these
questions came from an interview Mike Wallace had with Yehiel Dinur, one of the
men interred by Eichmann. Dinur was a Jew who lived to testify against Eichmann
at the Nuremberg War trial. A film clip from Eichmann’s 1961 trial showed Dinur
walking into the courtroom and seeing Eichmann for the first time after 18
years. Dinur began to sob uncontrollably, then fained, collapsing in a heap on
the floor. Dinur explained that all at once he realized Eichmann was an
ordinary man. “I was afraid about myself,” said Dinur. “I saw that I am capable
of doing this. I am exactly like him.” Wallace concluded the story, suggesting
that there is something of Eichmann “in all of us.”
Long ago, Paul said that we find the
dregs of sin which characterize the worst of us in the best of people. Paul
wrote of his own struggle with his old nature saying, “I know that nothing good
lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is
good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do;
no, the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing” (Romans 7:18-19).
God alone can change the heart of man
when the real problem lies. Peter, one of the three comprising the inner circle
of Jesus’ trusted advisors, wrote, “For Christ died for sins once for all, the
righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God” (1 Peter 3:18).
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