It is always important as Christians to be ready and willing to accept mistakes or significant errors. Every Christian is a leader because to follow Jesus Christ, we must always be prepared to lead the way. We are leading the way as Christians, and we must be the first to do what is acceptable and pleasing to God for all to follow. We are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. One of the essential aspects of leading the way wherever we find ourselves is to accept responsibility for our errors and mistakes rather than finding excuses or blame game. We make mistakes because we are human. Alexander Pope said in his poem ‘An Essay on Criticism’, “… Good-Nature and Good-Sense must ever join; To err is Human; to Forgive, Divine. It is worth noting that there have been occasions when we have all made mistakes, and the most remarkable thing we must always do is embrace our mistakes, own up to them, accept responsibility and be ready to right the wrongs.
In Genesis 3, God came to the garden and called to the man because God realized that he was hiding. This was because he had eaten of the tree that he was forbidden not to eat. Let us look at the dialogue going on in this scripture. The Lord God asked where he was because, at this point, he was hiding; he could not come forward to meet the Lord God when he heard him in the garden. Adam’s excuse was that he was naked. At this point, he had forgotten that God created him and knew everything about him. The creature now underestimates The Creator.
When we do something against the Lord, we instantly feel the same way as Adam and quickly move to find cover, thinking we can outsmart Him. He sees everything we do, whether in the dark or hidden. We instantly feel a particular gap between God and us, and even when we hear his voice, we become scared and unable to approach him because sin makes us feel naked, which makes us vulnerable, giving the enemy a chance to penetrate. God asked Adam a simple question; ‘where are you?’. Instead of answering the question, he made the whole thing complicated. We always complicate things in our relationship with God by not hitting the nail right in the head.
Adam did not accept his mistake but blamed it on Eve, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate.’ he blamed it on the woman, who also passed it on to the serpent. If Adam had accepted the error, things would have been different. At that moment, Adam separated himself not from the mistake only but from God and Eve as well because, by extension, he was blaming God for even giving him Eve. Adam couldn’t take Eve out of his mistake but pulled her in; this portrays the loss of unity, and together between Adam and Eve, the unity was not there. A moment ago in Chapter 2:23, Adam said, “Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called Woman, for out of Man[b] this one was taken.’. The question is, what changed? The answer is simple: a mistake has been made, and someone must take the blame for everything, including my errors.
My dear Christian friends, God is not interested in marking our guilts; all he wants from us is to accept our faults, be remorseful and come to him for pardon because if he should mark our guilts, none of us can survive. God understands that we are human, and we will make mistakes, and to help us overcome this, he sent unto us his only begotten son to come and die for us so that we will be saved from the sin of Adam. We must believe in Jesus Christ for the remission of sins so that when we make mistakes, we will own up to it, stop blaming others for it and approach the throne of grace. We may be down, but we must be assured that “because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will bring us with you into his presence.” (2 Corinthians 4:14).
The will of the Lord is that we do the will of God because this will move us closer to Him. We will go through a lot as Christians and fall along the way, but we must see this as an opportunity to move on in Christ because greater rewards await us. Let us accept our faults, embrace them, and be ready to approach the Lord for forgiveness rather than blaming others for our errors. Let us be prayerful, and God Almighty will take us through it. AMEN