Hey, this is Anton. I went from Ukraine to Israel to the US–the latter initially just for study, but then I became Christian, married Isabelle and followed her to Riverside just about a year ago. I did a PhD in English literature, but I’m looking for work elsewhere, and everything is a little up in the air.
Today we are looking at the very concise Exodus 7:6 verse: “Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them.” Seems very mundane and uneventful: when God goes so far as to explicitly tell us what to do–with the added bonus of forecasting how events will play out in response–there’s nothing but go ahead and do as we are told.
Now, take a few minutes to consult James 2:19-25, and soak in the unease. Those who don’t do as commanded are likened to demons shuddering under God’s impending judgement, and the standard of obeying is set at Abraham’s ever-so-problematic assent to sacrifice his only son? I myself have for sure all too often acted against God’s commands, even if most of them weren’t issued in direct personal communication. The passage hardly seems to present the compassionate, forgiving God that we know.
Unexpectedly, it is in likening myself to Rahab the prostitute that I find a way out of this conundrum. In the book of Joshua, Rahab protects the Israelite spies from her fellow Canaanites, citing Jehovah’s power (and thus implicitly her belief in God) as the reason for her action. A member of a sinful nation, reduced by ruthless circumstance to a life of sin, is in fact set next to Abraham in James (incidentally, she also appears in the list of Jesus’ ancestors at the beginning of Matthew, again alongside Abraham, David, and other illustrious figures).
God is truly eager to forgive sinners–but He calls us to repent and walk in His ways. He does not demand a life of perfection, but we must make an honest effort to do good, and there is real merit in doing a righteous deed even in the midst of a painfully imperfect life set in our broken world. If it is a prostitute’s example that serves to remind us of this, let us count this as a call to humility and compassion.