Saturday, May 16, 2020

IN ME DWELLS NO GOOD THING


“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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