How Can I Change? Part 3: Take Responsibility for Your Sin

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies.

Viewer discretion is advised.

Christ Alone and the Coming Judgment

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and gloom. The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words,.

They will act upon them,.

And when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this latest episode as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

Taking Responsibility for Sin as the Path to Change

On this episode of Bible Bashed, we'll be answering the question, How can I change? In order to talk about how can I change, we'll be talking about a fundamental principle of sanctification, and that principle will be to take responsibility for sin.

Now, we're living in a victim society right now, and perhaps no greater society throughout the history of the world has been characterized by victimization or the propensity towards victimization than the one that we actually are living in right now.

Now, there's a sense, obviously, that victimization is as old as the first sin. So when Adam and Eve eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Eve instantaneously blames the serpent who deceived her, and Adam blames both God and the woman.

So Adam basically says, It's the woman that you gave me, God, and there's implicitly a critique of God. If you didn't want me to do this, you shouldn't have given me this creature right here. So Adam blames the woman, he blames God.

So this propensity towards claiming to be a victim in an inappropriate way is as old as the first sin, but then we have so many mechanisms right now in our society that will allow us essentially to claim that coveted victim label.

So it was the case that for many years there's always going to be some sort of claim towards victimization that individuals are going to go towards. We have so many sophisticated forms of this right now that it's gotten to be a bit out of control.

Now, in former years, psychology basically taught us that nothing was our fault. So psychology is, the basic presupposition of secular humanistic psychology is essentially that we're not to blame for anything.

So man is essentially morally neutral, and the more that you adopt a psychological view of the world, man is not viewed as a villain, but viewed as a victim of his past or his circumstances or his upbringing.

And no doubt this is due to the fact that we view human beings as basically good and neutral. And then if there's some kind of major glitch in the programming, we're just biological beings, we're not moral beings with eternal soul, there must be some biological glitch that happened.

And so it must be the individual is clinically insane or has bipolar or has some sort of chemical imbalance. Psychology gave us not only behavioral categories of victimization or upbringing categories of victimization, but psychology gave us also these quasi-biological categories of victimization.

Now we can claim to not be responsible for anything we do because we have some sort of glitch in our programming and that kind of way. So psychology worked in that way to give us a pseudoscientific method of victimization.

But then with the advent of critical theory in the world, one of the things that's happened is that if you're a member of a perceived victim class, so if you're a gender minority, if you're a woman, even though there's more women than men, if you're a woman, you're going to be given part of this victim status because the world has seemed to be oppressed by old white men.

And so if you're a woman, you have some sort of claim to victimization. If you're a minority woman, due to intersectionality, you have even more claim to victimization. If you're a sexual minority, meaning if you're a sodomite or a man or a woman pretending to be the opposite gender than you actually are, you also have a unique claim to victimization.

But then the point there being is that with the advent of critical theory, you have essentially these victim categories that have gotten out of control. And obviously once an individual gets one of these labels of victimization, then it's almost as if there really is no personal responsibility that this individual is responsible for at all at that point.

And that's why you can look at the media coverage as it relates to the capital incursion and then you compare that to the riots that happened during the summer of love and you'll realize that there's this gross imbalance in the way that we even think about these victim categories.

And so if African-Americans burn down our cities for months and months at a time and you have videos of them basically looting Louis Vuitton stores for reparations and all this, one of the things you'll realize is that in this kind of framework, once you get that victim label, it doesn't matter anymore.

You're not a moral responsible agent anymore. And the same thing is true as it relates to issues of rape or sexual abuse or anything else. One of the things you'll notice is that once an individual has this victim of being sexually abused even, so you're just thinking about how it relates with the Me Too movement.

One of the things that happens is that once you get that label, you can like all of a sudden, there is no moral accountability in your life whatsoever. And so let's say that you were raped as a kid and as awful as that happens to be, and then you grow up and you at that point live a promiscuous lifestyle voluntarily.

It doesn't matter anymore. None of that's your fault because once you get that victim label, you're once a victim, always a victim, victim for life, and there's almost nothing that you can do wrong at that point.

So famous individuals can get on TV and they can commit all sorts of sin, but if they claimed in their past to be victimized, there's no rules anymore, and that's the way our society works. And this is just a complex victimization kind of scheme.

So we've gotten more sophisticated in how these things work, but these are problems that are as old as sin, literally. So if you're thinking about how do I change, one of the principles of change is to take responsibility for your sin.

Biblical Responsibility for Actions, Desires, and Emotions

And what that means is why do we do what we do fundamentally? Why do we do what we do? Well, the Bible gives us answers to these questions. James 4 tells us, Where do wars and fights come from among you?

Do they not come from the desires for pleasures which wage war in your members? So the Bible is answering a very practical question, the kind of question that we all want to answer. Why do we have wars?

Why do we have fights? Why do we have conflict? And the answer is not because you were victimized. It's not because you have some sort of a chemical imbalance. It's not because you had a poor upbringing.

It's not because you suffered from a lack of education. You didn't get to go to appropriate school. You didn't get to go to the same school that rich kids get to do. You didn't have all the same opportunities and everything else.

It wasn't because you had some sort of mental problem. The reason why we have wars and fights and conflicts is because we have desires for pleasure which are waging war in our members. We have hearts that are fundamentally sinful.

There are sinful desires in our heart. And often, the desires that we have, they're not always bad. Most people, if you ask them why they commit the evil that they commit, why are you looting that store for reparation?

Why are you stealing? Why are you committing crime? Why are you doing the things that you're doing? Often, it's good things. I just want to be respected. I just want to feed my family. Whatever it is, we have often, if you think about the reasons why you have fights with individuals, if you're a husband-wife couple, often you start yelling at your wife.

Why are you yelling at your wife? Well, because she doesn't respect you. You might have a good desire to be respected. Wife, why are you screaming and hollering at your husband, not submitting to him?

It's because I want to be loved. I want to be cherished. I want someone to feel what it feels like to have someone be kind to me for once in my life. Those things are good. Often, our desires are good.

They just become so important to the point where we're willing to sin to get it. But then, if you're going to think about real biblical change, real biblical change starts with personal responsibility.

The Bible tells us, A good man out of a good treasure of a good heart brings forth good. An evil man out of an evil treasure of an evil heart brings forth evil. Out of the heart comes sexual immorality, adultery, theft, rampant wickedness, and all these things.

If you think about things from a biblical point of view, one of the things you'll realize is that the past is influential. It's not determinative. An individual can have a poor upbringing, have a bad past, not develop good habits in life from an early age, but they're a moral agent and they're responsible for their choices.

You can double down on that bad upbringing. You can double down on those bad parents. You can double down on that poor education. You can take a bad problem and turn it into a worse problem. But the reality is that we have to take responsibility for our sin.

No one's making us angry. No one's making us frustrated. No one is taking away our self-control from us. Unless they literally enslave you and tie you into a chair with duct tape and everything else.

The vast majority of cases, that's literally not happening. We are responsible for our actions. You can't blame it on your past. You can't blame it on your upbringing. You can't blame it on some chemical imbalance.

You can't blame it on your parents. You can't blame it on some kind of identity, some sort of intersectional identity that's given you license in order to be filled with bitterness and wrath and clamor and anger and slander.

The reality is we're responsible. It is impossible to make any progress in the Christian life if you're going to blame your sin on other people.

So why are you worried?

It's because you're a sinner. Why are you depressed? It's because you're a sinner.

Why are you angry?

It's because you're a sinner. Why fundamentally do you have all this hate in your heart towards members of different ethnicities? It's because you're a sinner. Why do you steal? Why do you rob? Why do you cheat?

Why do you have anger? Why do you do these things? It's because you're a sinner. And so it's not just the behaviors. That's the thing. And so the Bible holds us accountable not just for the actions that we do, but for our desires even.

So the Bible says, The good man out of the good treasure of a good heart. That treasure word is the word that means desires. Not only what you do brings forth good, but what you desire to do. The Bible tells us to hate the evil and to love the good.

So we're responsible for our behavior. We can't blame our behavior on anyone else. Not only are we responsible for our behavior, we're responsible for our desires, what we desire to do. We need to learn to hate evil, love good.

So put off covetousness, which is desires for things that don't belong to us, that belong to other people. We have to deal with sin at a desire level, not just a behavior level, but not even a desire level, also an emotional level.

The Bible holds us accountable for our emotions. So contrary to what the world we live in seems to think right now, we seem to think that a person can't help the way that they feel. And I can't tell you how many times I've sat in a counseling situation with a husband looking at me as their wife is totally losing her mind and saying, you know, she just can't help the way she feels.

The problem is you can't help the way you feel. God holds you accountable for how you feel. So we're told to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. And that means that our emotions even are not off limits.

Okay? So when God didn't accept Cain's sacrifice, Cain became angry and his face fell. And God looked at Cain and he didn't say, oh, poor baby, you know, I victimized you and you can't help the way you feel, Cain.

And, you know, I understand why you would just feel sad because you didn't get your way. No, God says, if you do evil, won't your, or if you do good, won't your offering be accepted? You know, why are you angry, Cain?

And the implied answer is you shouldn't be angry, Cain. It's not right for you to be angry. And God, over and over again, when he's interacting with Jonah, he basically looks at Jonah and he asks him, why is he angry?

So, like, the thing is, like, is it good for you to be angry, Jonah? And Jonah's response is, yes, it's good even to death. But he didn't get the point that he's responsible for not only what he does, but how he feels.

And Jonah felt anger that was unrighteous and his emotions are not honored. Our emotions, at times, are not honoring to God and we can't take our emotions and blame them on other people. That's the point.

So not only can we not blame our actions on other people, like we can't blame others, we can't even blame on God. So God says, let no one say when he is tempted, he's being tempted by God. God can't be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one.

A man is tempted when he's lured and he's enticed by his own desires. So we are individuals who have behavior problems and we have desire problems, we have emotion problems, and, like, none of them are neutral.

None of them are neutral and we have to learn to take responsibility for not only what we're doing, but what we're thinking and what we're feeling. And the more that we take responsibility for these things and quit blaming them on other people, you know, you're making me so angry and you're frustrating me and, you know, you're causing me to lose my patience and everything else.

We need to take responsibility for what we're going to do and you're not going to make any progress in the Christian life unless you learn. You're not going to make any progress against your sin unless you learn to take responsibility for your sin in all of its form, in its actions, its desires, and its emotions.

Quit blaming them on other people.

Closing Exhortation and Listener Support

This has been another episode of Bible Bashed. We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

Please reach out to us with your questions, pushback, and potential topics for us to discuss in future episodes at BibleBashedPodcast at gmail .com and consider supporting us through Patreon. If you would like to be Bible Bashed personally, then please know that we also offer free biblical counseling which you can take advantage of by emailing us.

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.