And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. — Genesis 3:12
As I looked across the living room, I saw an absolute mess. Pillows and blankets that were once on the sofa were all across the floor. There were toys all around the room. It looked as if everything was picked up and just thrown around chaotically by a tornado. There, in the middle, I found my son playing his latest imaginary game.
As I walked into the room, he quickly jumped up. The problem was not in him playing his game, but he had just been told he shouldn’t take the pillows and blankets and put them in the floor. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me that he didn’t make the mess. He said that the dogs had made the mess I was seeing.
We don’t have to look far to find where this started. When Adam faced questions about eating the fruit in the garden, he immediately started placing blame everywhere else. Most would see that he blamed Eve, because she gave him the fruit. But he also blamed God!
In this verse, he said, “the woman thou gavest.” In other words, God, it wasn’t my fault. It was your fault for creating her and her fault for giving it to me. But in the end, it was Adam’s decision to eat the fruit. The same is true for our own decisions, we can blame others but we are the ones who decide in the end.
Each of us must take responsibility for our own action and sin. While others may influence us to make bad decisions, we ultimately make them and are responsible. While blaming others may help us feel better in our own mind, it doesn’t change how God feels about our sin. Taking responsibility is not always easy, but it is what God expects as He holds us accountable for our sin.
Thankfully, that isn’t the end of the story for us. While we may sin, God is faithful to forgive. Rather than passing the blame, our response should be to take responsibility for our sin, confess it, and ask God to forgive.
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