Are we victims? Are we responsible? Who is responsible? Counseling Solutions

Are we victims? Are we responsible? Who is responsible?

Posted: 17 Oct 2011 09:05 PM PDT

Dear Rick – I have been counseling an unrepentant person for the past six months.

My question to you is how do you balance his lack of repentance with my call to help him to change?

Since God grants repentance, is this person a victim–a person who can’t do anything until God moves him to change?

Of course I don’t believe that, but I’m wondering what role we both play in the process of change as we “wait” on the Lord to do the work in his heart.

Should I be patient with him and not expect too much until repentance happens, the victim mentality?

Should I kindly motivate him toward change, the discipline/leverage mentality? Or maybe I should choose some balance between the two? What do you think? – Thank you!

This is a smart question that has many different layers.^[1] The gift of repentance text he is referring to is here:

God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. – 2 Timothy 2:25-26 (ESV)

The gift of repentance

While some argue whether there is a “gift of repentance,” there is really nothing to argue about. If we repent, it is God who worked in our hearts to bring us to that place of repentance.

It is similar to our salvation. Both God and man play a role in our salvation. Yes, it is a cooperative effort, but you have to determine who began the process of change and who gets the glory for it.

Did you believe and then God made you alive?
Or, did God make you alive so you could believe?

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…but God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. – Ephesians 2:1-5 (ESV)

This is not theological hairsplitting. For me, it’s a matter of starting points: who started or began the process of your salvation? Was it you? Was it God? It could not have been both of you, at the same time. Who was the initiator of your salvation?

Who started or began the process of your repentance, each time you repented, whether it was the time you first believed God or each time you repented after you first believed God?

These are crucial questions. I think the Scriptures are clear that though both God and man have a cooperating responsibility in repentance, whether it is in salvation or sanctification, God is the initiator.

How you answer the question of “initiation” will also affect how you think about God, respond to God, worship God, and give glory to God.

If you or I changed, by being born again or repenting of any sin after we were born again, it was a gift of His mercy and grace that brought us to that place of change.

You are not a victim

Therefore, you are saying that if I cannot change until God grants repentance, then I am a victim of my sin and there is nothing that I can do until God rouses my heart toward him?

No, absolutely not. I am not saying that. You are not a victim. A victim cannot make choices to change their circumstances. And you, my friend, are making choices.

A victim is helpless, completely dependent on another. You are not a victim if you mean by the term that you are not responsible for your actions.

Though Adam did try to play the victim card, it was morally wrong for him to do so (Genesis 3:12). He was not a victim of his wife’s manipulations. He made a deliberate choice to sin when his wife offered him the forbidden fruit.

We are not robots or machines who are incapable of making moral choices. We are humans, who live in relationships and we make choices, good and bad, within the contexts of those relationships.

Similarly, if you want a relationship with God, it is incumbent upon you to choose how you’re going to respond to Him. None of us will be able to say, “I did not know. I had no choice.”

We are made in the image of God, with the ability to know that God exists, and our consciences bear witness to the realities of God. (See Genesis 9:6; James 3:9; Romans 1:20, Romans 2:14-15.)

You are a victim

Sin happens two ways:

We choose to sin, as noted above.
We are sinned against.

In one sense we all have been victimized, if you want to use that word. We all have been sinned against. The Bible is very clear that because of Adam’s sin, we all were made sinners.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. – Romans 5:12 (ESV)

If Adam had not sinned in Genesis 3:6, it stands to reason that we would not have been born in sin. But he did choose to sin and we are born in sin. In that sense we are victims of Adam’s sin.

Additionally, because “all have sinned,” it is impossible for us to live in this world and not sin against each other (Romans 3:23). We have not only been sinned against by Adam, but we have been sinned against by each other.

Self-righteous tip of the day: Let’s not get too high and mighty. We all have sinned. I really can’t grumble about what has been done to me in light of the fact that I do similar things to others.

Furthermore, it’s not helpful to “degree our sin” as though “their sin is worse than my sin.” In a very real and honest way, it does not matter. We all are guilty before God.

It’s kinda selfish, self-righteous, and immature to say, “Lord, their sin is worse than my sin.” If you can say that out loud and not feel a tweak in your conscience, then you’re not in a good place in your soul.

I can go through a sordid laundry list of things that have been done to me, but when I imagine myself standing before the blood stained Savior, what was done to me pales in comparison to what I did to Him.

How about you?

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. – James 2:10 (ESV)

Negative shaping influences

I think I first heard the term “shaping influences” from Tedd Tripp, but I’m not sure. The accumulative effect of years of reading has crowded my mind when it comes to remembering who said what.

Nevertheless, it is a good term. We all have been shaped by others, including the sins of others. Without a doubt, we have been shaped by the fall of Adam.

The noetic effect of sin has been complete. Total depravity has also been pervasive. We are broken, skewed, altered, and shaped toward incomprehensible badness.

Though I used the word victim above, I do not care for the term, because it has been uploaded too many times with the connotations of our culture.

They use the term in such a way to relieve a person of their responsibility to respond responsibly to the bad things that come into their lives. I don’t believe that. The Bible does not support this notion.

Yes, we have been “victimized.” Don’t spend time debating the word, just be sure to upload it with a biblical definition. Let me illustrate:

My daddy was a drunkard. He drank himself to death by the time he was forty-two. I was nineteen when they came to haul his lifeless body away.

I felt little sadness as I stared at the sheet and the gurney as he was rolled out the back door and taken to the mortuary. His physical and verbal abuse was seemingly relentless.

Mercifully, my heavenly Father replaced what my dad did with His Gospel. My heart found grace and peace where turmoil used to churn.

I was a victim to my daddy’s brutalities. I was shaped by the sin of Adam and the sin of my father, but I am also a responsible and free moral agent who had and has the opportunity to choose right or wrong.

Positive shaping influences

Though everybody is a victim to some degree, nobody will be able to play the “victim card.” We all will stand before God, completely responsible for the choices we make.

The other part of the question from my friend above was about the tension or balance between allowing a person to live in his sinful choice to not repent versus the use of some kind of discipline or leverage to move him toward repentance.

This brings up an interesting talking point: we all have a responsibility before God to be used by God in the process of repentance.

Amazingly, God enjoys and prefers us to be part of the repentance that He brings into the lives of people.

…how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? … As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" … So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. – Romans 10:14-17 (ESV)

There are always at least three people in a discipleship (or counseling) context:

The Spirit of God is the One who brings change, if change is going to take place. He is the Discipler!
The discipler is the one God uses as His “agent” or vessel to bring His Word to bear in a person.
The one being discipled will have to make the choice regarding how he is going to respond to God.

Our job is to be a positive shaping influence in the person we are helping to change. We do this by yielding ourselves to the Spirit of God and His Word.

We want to be channels or vessels of mercy that God works through as He seeks to penetrate the heart of the one who needs to change.

Ministers of reconciliation

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. – 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 (ESV)

Our hope is that others will return the favor to us. When our time surely comes when there is a need to change, that somebody would love us enough to bring God’s care to us through their words and actions.

Not to do this is to miss the whole point of the Gospel. Not to bring God’s Word to bear on a person who needs to hear it is high treason. It is one of the most unloving things a Christian could ever do.

Treason is an act of betrayal. If we don’t bring God’s loving care to others, then we are betraying the death of Christ on the cross, who died for the very purpose of changing lives. …and God enlists you and me in that process of change.

We are ministers of reconciliation.

Granting repentance is a co-operative effort

The way God grants repentance is many times through a “triangulated effort.” It’s you. It’s me. It’s Him. It’s us. It’s a masterpiece. The organic body of Christ working together for the glory of God.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. – Galatians 6:1-2 (ESV)

"If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. – Matthew 18:15-16 (ESV)

I’ll not mention the other ”one anothers” in the NT that speak to our responsibility to cooperate with God and others in the process of change. You can find that list HERE.

I am a victim.
I am responsible.
We are responsible …to help each other to change.

^[1] The questioner is a member of our Membership Site. We get many emails each day, asking all kinds of questions. Though we would love to answer them all, we simply cannot keep up. Our practice is to provide quick and thorough feedback to those who support our ministry through any of our programs, e.g. Distance Education, Membership Site. This article is my response to a member’s question. ↩