My dear readers,

Who is the Guardian of your Life?

Proverbs 13:6: “Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way: but wickedness overthroweth the sinner.”

All of us need a good guardian in life’s pathway. Life is fraught with many problems in this sin-sick world. Evil and wickedness abound. Every corner we turn in life contains many pathways clamouring for attention to walk therein. Many of these pathways appeal powerfully to man’s lusts of the flesh and eyes, and the pride in life. From the moment we enter our school system, to working life till we die, we are bombarded by innumerable voices shouting into our ears to follow them. If we listen and obey these voices, and after realizing that it has been an empty, fruitless life, there will be consequences that make it hard to stop and almost impossible to turn around, or even to take a new direction.

We know that there is only one right or best way to live. The rest are deceptively attractive. The closer the paths are to the right way, the harder it is to discern. Like it or not, a choice must be made so that life can continue. Not choosing is also a choice in itself. Fence-sitters usually opt for this “safest” choice, i.e. not choosing. They fail to realize the biblical adage on decision-making given to all professing believers by Christ in Matthew 12:30: “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad.” Where the causes for Christ are concerned, fence-sitters are in fact against Christ. But they bear the name of Christ as Christians. Every choice they make will reflect on Christ.

We need to make the right choice. Having a guardian over our lives helps us make the right choice.

We have only one life to live. Therefore, we must choose our guardian wisely. Proverbs 13:6 proposes two guardians with opposing consequences.

Make your choice wisely.

The guardian named righteousness – “Righteousness keepeth him that is upright in the way” (Prov 13:6a). This is God’s proposal to all who are upright in heart. No man can be righteous on his own. All are born in sin. From the beginning of his existence inside his mother’s womb, man can never make himself righteous. He is conceived in sin. God has to make him righteous. Thus, God sent Jesus Christ to die for man’s sins. All that man has to do to be saved from his sins, and be made righteous by God, is to believe in Jesus Christ according to the Holy Scriptures. The result is that a believer is made upright in heart and life instantaneously by God. God will immediately impute him with Christ’s righteousness. He is righteous in God’s eyes forever, as if he has never sinned before in his life. The righteousness that God imputes will never leave him because Christ’s death and resurrection will not be rejected or diminished in God's eyes forever. Therefore, only believers can choose righteousness as their guardian in life.

The basis for making righteous choices is the Word of God. The believer must first study the Bible with the correct understanding. A wrong understanding of God’s Word will do more harm than good. The believer may think he is obeying God’s Word and that he is living a life pleasing to God. But if he misunderstood the Bible, he would have sinned against God by his wrongful obedience. Righteousness was not his guardian. Error was. He has sinned.

The next step is to apply the correct teaching to the right situation in life. He must avoid situational ethics at all costs. This is the death blow in decision-making, especially when made by professing believers. They use Christ’s name to mask their philosophy of situational ethics. The ones who commit this dastard act of travesty are usually despotic leaders who are given absolute powers. Their followers mindlessly follow, believing that the decisions made are biblical when in fact they are the carnal decisions of a carnal leader. There have been many who used the Bible to justify their own opinions and ideas and deceived the gullible into following them rather than Christ!

Every believer must not allow himself to be deceived, for Christ’s work and witness in his life is at stake. Let righteousness be the basis for every decision made. All decisions made according to the correct understanding of God’s Word and applied correctly will always be right in God’s eyes, even though it may not seem right in man’s eyes at times. The believer must hold on to those decisions and obey it.

Since every believer must make choices, they must make all of them, or as many of them as possible, correctly according to the Holy Scriptures. By their choices, their witness for Christ will be holy as He is holy.

The guardian named wickedness – Wickedness is a despotic guardian. Proverbs 13:6b says that “wickedness overthroweth the sinner.” The wickedness committed by sinners in the world destroys lives and businesses. Families are made destitute because of wicked business practices committed by evil men. The unscrupulous dealings of powerful people have sunk many supposedly “unsinkable” centuries-old businesses. Wickedness does not appear as wickedness but masks herself as something delightful and beneficial for the victim.

There is nothing more wicked than the destruction of lives and God's work committed in the name of Christ. The wicked are also found within Christianity. These could be leaders in churches and parachurch ministries, including preachers, teachers, seminary and Bible College professors, who are supposed to be defenders of God’s work and God’s people but have become the greatest enemies of God and Christ. God warns that these men will slither their way into churches and become leaders to draw men unto themselves by their perverse teachings and actions (cf. Acts 20:30). Therefore, if man enamours you, especially your leaders, because you think that they are the ones who made you to be who you are, you are in danger of employing “wickedness” as your guardian.

One of the ways of wickedness is to misinterpret the Bible. Erroneous interpretations of the Bible have doomed many to false salvation and carnal living, resulting in delusion. Their lives point others to a false Christ.

Another way wickedness can deceive us is by interpreting the Bible correctly but misapplying it. Wrongful application of God's truth undermines the potency of the Bible, leading to carnal living dressed in holy garments. Arguably, the most deadly of all wickedness is to cloak man’s opinion by citing a Bible text, hoping that the hearers will be duped or not check the Holy Scriptures to verify whether that teaching is of man or God. In this deceptively subtle manner, the preacher will slowly but surely make the hearers into his image rather than Christ’s. He will use the phrase “I tell you so” and “I” is frequently used instead of “thus saith the Lord”.

Wickedness will destroy lives. It may seem for a while that the life of its victim is protected. But in time, the true falsehood of wickedness will be revealed. By then, its victims’ lives will have been badly stumbled or ruined. The name of Christ will be dragged down the mud.

Who is your guardian?