Bernard of Clairvaux once mentioned an old man who, upon hearing about any professing Christian who fell into sin, would say to himself: “He fell today; I may fall tomorrow.” The apostle Paul commended the same mindset when he wrote, “let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). There is great wisdom in not trusting our own ability to stand. When I was a boy, my father would often say, “The person I trust least of all is myself.” It should shock us to hear a professing Christian say, “I would never do that,” or, “How could anyone do that?” The Scriptures record great sins of unbelievers and believers alike to instruct us in diverse ways. The former teach the unregenerate their need for the new birth. The latter teach the saints their need to distrust themselves. It is one thing to understand the sinful actions of unbelievers in Scripture; it is quite another to understand the sins of the saints.

Consider the following: If an innocent man could choose a piece of fruit over the infinitely valuable God (Gen. 3:6); if the most righteous man of his day could get so drunk that he passed out naked before his sons in his tent (9:21); if the most faithful man of his day could father a child with his wife’s handmaiden (16:1–4) and twice hand his wife over to other men (12:11–15; 20:1–2); if the mother of promise could laugh at the words of the God of promise and then lie to Him about doing so (18:9–15); if “righteous Lot” could greedily pick the most materialistic and sexually depraved place for himself and his family to live (13:8–13), and could hand his daughters over to the sexually perverse men of the city (19:4–8); if the son of promise could show partiality to his oldest son because he liked his hunting skills (25:28), and he, too, could hand his wife over to another man (26:6–11); and if the namesake of Israel could swindle his brother for a birthright (25:29–34), then so could I.

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