I’m not doing this to you. I am doing this for me.This was his answer to my question “why do you keep doing this to me?” My ex husband had been cheating for years. I had forgiven him for years. I wrote off this girl as this and that girl as that. I kept giving him a break, because I really believed he did love me and ultimately he always left the wicked women to come back to me. But I finally had enough. When he came back from Thailand after having a week long affair that he should have spent at home with me and our kids, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Why are you doing this to me?!” It was the only question I could come to after years of this betrayal. “I’m not doing this to you. I am doing this for me.”
Looking back on this now, I remember Romans 1-2. How the people behaved wickedly, men not knowing how to be men and women not knowing how to be women. Having wicked and inappropriate lust-filled relationships with each other. With the opposite sex. Mistreating and abusing one another.
Romans 1:26-32 says“Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose. And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!”
That last few verses really resonates. “They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care.” It was so similar to what my ex said from his perspective. “I’m not doing this to you, I am doing this for me.” His ultimate desire was self pleasure, and not at my expense, but at Gods. This offense, though it harmed me, when I stood behind my big God and allowed him to be my shield that He so loved and desires to do for me, suddenly the offense was against God, not against me. My ex spat in Gods face. But God does not stand for that. Not for his own disrespect and disregard and not for the harm of his loved little children. He is a mama bear at her worst. What a terrifying thought to be on the receiving end of Gods wrath. I am so grateful to know and love Jesus and be on this side with God, to be fully exempt from that wrath, because God calls me His child because when He looks at me, He sees His Son!
This should inspire us to obedience and action. I know you’ve been wronged, but if your abuser has never been introduced to Jesus, there is grace even for them. Nineveh and Jonah is the example. Jonah was harmed by the Ninevites. This is why he did not want to preach of God to them. But he ultimately had to obey and go and do and anyones refusal of God would result in wrath and acceptance would result in grace.
Romans 2:12-16“If you sin without knowing what you’re doing, God takes that into account. But if you sin knowing full well what you’re doing, that’s a different story entirely. Merely hearing God’s law is a waste of your time if you don’t do what he commands. Doing, not hearing, is what makes the difference with God.When outsiders who have never heard of God’s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God’s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God’s yes and no, right and wrong. Their response to God’s yes and no will become public knowledge on the day God makes his final decision about every man and woman. The Message from God that I proclaim through Jesus Christ takes into account all these differences.”
Whether your motivation is like Jonah, a begrudging obedience (I would encourage you, if it is to please forgive. See previous blogs on how to forgive evil people.) or an excited and longing obedience, regardless please share Jesus. The time is short and our world is so wicked. The greatest impact we can have is sharing Christ, especially with evil people.
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