Who Can We Trust?

Christians more than any people should have a pretty solid understanding of human nature. When we come to Christ we first admit and confess that we are sinners, slaves to sin, unable save ourselves or even fix ourselves.

Scripture teaches us clearly who we are as humans.

"for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written,
“There is none righteous, not even one;
There is none who understands,
There is none who seeks for God;
All have turned aside, together they have become useless;
There is none who does good,
There is not even one.”
“Their throat is an open grave,
With their tongues they keep deceiving,” " Romans 3:9-13

Most of us are well acquainted with our own sin and flaws. Still we tend to be surprised when we hear of sinful behavior in others. Sin becomes rather abstract in our relationships.
We trust people in our relationships too blindly and all too often find ourselves pained by those we have trusted. We often don't walk out our understanding of human nature in our everyday lives. But Jesus did.

"Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name,

observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man". John 2:23-25

The good news is that this frees us up from performing for God's love. God loves us not because we are lovable but because He is love. He proved this in sending Jesus to pay the price for our sin and free us from slavery to sin.

Yet the truth is that we still occupy corruptible bodies and are tempted by sin and self interest and none of us has arrived yet at the sinless state of Jesus on earth. That means that even those who are in Christ are not fully trustworthy. We still seek our own interests first most of the time. Furthermore, those in the world who do not know Christ, who are still dead in their sins, are even more corruptible and slaves to self interest and evil impulses.

No one is righteous, Not one. Not you or I or your spouse or children or parents or friends or pastors or doctors or teachers or police or government. None. Those of us who are in Christ may be justified before the Father but we are yet far from the purity of the selfless, sinless life in this world. We must stop walking around naively believing that people will behave differently than what we know about people. Trust is limited solely to where our interests align.