Psa 50:21 These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.
Do we do this? Do people do this? Do we imagine God to be one like ourselves? We who have so many flaws, we who are filled with the results of sin have the audacity to imagine that God is anything like us?
In this passage the wicked are being talked of…
Psa 50:16 'But unto the wicked God saith, …'
God is not a man.
Yes, God's Son became man in all ways without sin, but God is Spirit and not man. We are made in God's image but the image of something is not necessarily anything like the composition. You can decorate a cake to make it look like a *real* car but in the end you can cut into that cake and eat it while you can't cut into a real car eat it. The composition of cake and metal are completely different. The image might look the same, but the substance is not. Am I saying we in our sin depreciated state are anything like the first man created out of dust? Yes. We are like the first man but not in the newly created state. Made in the image of God and yet God is not altogether one like we are- either in a physical state or any other.
The wicked imagine God to be like themselves, that God condones their actions but He doesn't. Many wicked people live healthy and happy in themselves and the godly suffer painfully. The wicked and the godly might associate this fact with having God's favor or not. The wicked might go on believing that God understands them and is like them and that is why they are allowed to prosper, never fully realizing that is far from the truth. On the same token, the godly might believe God has abandoned them when He hasn't. God's ways are not our ways. To even imagine believing God is 'altogether such an one as the' wicked is ludicrous and yet the arrogance of the wicked blind them.
Lucifer imagined Himself as God and has been proven wrong and he is an angel. The wicked imagine God like themselves and they will be proven wrong as well. God does not agree to anything evil.
Psa 50:16 But unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth?
Psa 50:17 Seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee.
Psa 50:18 When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers.
Psa 50:19 Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit.
Psa 50:20 Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son.
The wicked HATE instruction.
The wicked cast God's words behind them.
The wicked consent to evil.
The wicked partake with evil.
The wicked give their mouths-their tongues to evil.
The wicked speak against their own flesh and blood.
God is NOTHING like the wicked and will not accept the wicked. The wicked can imagine God to be like them all they want. The wicked can delude themselves and will delude themselves, believing God understands their evil and accepts them anyway- they don't know God at all. God will not accept evil.
We can let ourselves be fooled into believing God will accept us when we refuse His instruction, when we ignore His words, when we consent to evil and partake in it. We need to seek repentance and forgiveness from God, believing in His words fully, knowing that He will NOT consent to evil even if the most supposedly God-fearing person believes He will. People are led astray when they bring God down to their level and imagine Him to be like them. God will NOT consent to evil in any way, shape, or form. Evil must be confessed. Evil must be repented of. Evil will be destroyed never accepted. Our sins, by the grace of God, will be forgiven and this is the plan of salvation offered to us through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Savior.
As I think about what I've just written it strikes me once again that this is on point with the theme introduced with C.S. Lewis' writing on excusing sin… I'm going to copy it once again here.
Excerpt from Weight of Glory - "On Forgiveness" C.S. Lewis
'I find that when I think I am asking God to forgive me I am often in reality (unless I watch myself very carefully) asking Him to do something quite different. I am asking Him not to forgive me but to EXCUSE me. But there is all the difference in the world between forgiving and excusing.
Forgiveness says--
"Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before. "
But excusing says--
"I see that you couldn't help it or didn't mean it; you weren't really to blame."
If one was not really to blame then there is nothing to forgive.
In that sense forgiveness and excusing are almost opposites.
Of course, in dozens of cases, either between God and man, or between one man and another, there may be a mixture of the two. Part of what seemed at first to be the sins turns out to be really nobody's fault and is excused; the bit that is left over is forgiven.
…. But the trouble is that what we call "asking God's forgiveness" very often really consists in asking God to ACCEPT our excuses.
What leads us into this mistake is the fact that there usually is some amount of excuse, some
"extenuating circumstances."
We are so very anxious to point these out to God (and to ourselves) that we are apt to FORGET the really important thing; that is, the bit left over, the bit which the excuses don't cover, the bit which is INEXCUSABLE but NOT, thank God, UNFORGIVEABLE . And if we forget this, we shall go away IMAGINING that we have repented and been forgiven when all that has really happened is that we have satisfied ourselves with our OWN EXCUSES. They may be very bad excuses; we are all too easily satisfied about ourselves. '
End excerpt.
We really are to blame for our sins and God- who is NOT like us- will not excuse our sins. Let's stop fooling ourselves. Let us not be afraid to speak out against sin and the inexcusability of it. Yes, we sin- and we can be forgiven of our sins, but NEVER excused for them.
By the grace of God may we never, ever try to place God on our level, never!
In His love, in His mercy, only by His grace and love!
Amen.
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