As a Man Thinks (15)
Posted by Vincent Cheung on September 25, 2005This bleak view of human loyalty may be depressing to some people, but it is what Scripture reveals about people. Christians should and could be better than this, but they are often not, or at least not yet.
Popular opinion urges us to trust in people, for only then can we have healthy relationships and achieve success. Unfortunately, even many believers have accepted this, and assume that it is the biblical attitude. However, Scripture teaches the opposite, admonishing us to place no confidence in man.
This is what the LORD says: "Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD. He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
"But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit."
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve." (Jeremiah 17:5-10)
It is on the basis of this admonition, that we should have no confidence in man, that Scripture also instructs us concerning the only proper alternative. Returning to Jesus and Paul, the former did not only say, "But a time is coming, and has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home. You will leave me all alone," but he also added, "Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me" (John 16:32). And after saying, "At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me," Paul wrote, "But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength" (2 Timothy 4:16-17). This is why we do not despair at the fact that people are unreliable, because God is always reliable, and we place our trust in him alone.
(to be continued)