For the good that I want, I do not do,
but I practice the very evil that I do not want….
I find then the principle that evil is present in me,
the one who wants to do good.
Romans 7: 19, 21

Last week, I decided to study a word from 1 Peter 3:8–12, the passage Pastor Tim was scheduled to preach on the upcoming Sunday. The word was evil which Peter used a whopping five times in five verses. But that was only one reason for selecting it. I also chose it because it’s a word I tend to attribute to bad people, not to myself.

Because I’m not evil. I don’t go around planning evil deeds to discredit others or hatching evil plots to take over the world. I’m a nice person. Just like you. So while studying this particular word would reveal much about the Hitlers and Neros and Stalins of the world, what it revealed would have little bearing for me. Or for you.

The strategy worked well at first. In the gospels, Jesus outs evil vineyard workers (not me) and an evil slave (not me and certainly not you). But then, Paul turned up the heat in Romans 2:9 where his list of slanderers, haters of God,…inventors of evil, and disobedient to parents made me slightly uncomfortable. Not the inventors of evil bit. After all, I don’t go around inventing evil. But some of the other things listed–slanderer and disobedient? I, and perhaps you too, may have indulged in a few of them when we were young. Very, very young.

Then, in Romans 7 Paul describes how he struggles to do good and continually chooses evil. He declares that though he wants to do good, the principle of evil is present in him. That was where my not-like-me strategy fell apart completely. Because Paul wasn’t just describing himself. He was describing me. Like Paul, I start each day with the best of intentions. I resolve to speak kindly to my husband, forgive people who are unkind, give the benefit of the doubt when someone lets me down, and eat only healthy food.

On a good day, I don’t fail until after breakfast. On a bad day, I’m holding a grudge before I can turn off the alarm clock. Every single day, like Paul and perhaps like you, I find then the principle of evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.

Paul’s words tore the blinders off my eyes, and I saw myself as God sees me. Evil. I am evil. The truth of those words crushed my heart because I knew that tomorrow and the next day and the next, I would want to do good, and I would choose evil.

I wallowed in hopelessness until I remembered how the Pharisees told Pilate Jesus was an evildoer. Until I remembered that though Pilate found Jesus not guilty, he delivered an innocent Man to the cross. Until I remembered that Jesus bore my evil deeds, and yours too, in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. Until I remembered why the Friday Jesus died is called good and not evil.

Because covered in Christ’s righteousness, God sees me and you and all who believe in His Son not as evildoers, but as His children who not only want to do good, but actually are good. Alleluia! What a Savior!