Sure I Was Right
1 Corinthians 6:8 - “But you yourselves wrong and defraud, even your own brothers!”
Somewhere out there right now, a husband is in the shower rehearsing his closing argument, utterly certain that this time he has been wronged, lining up the evidence so airtight that his wife will have no choice but to concede. I know that man well, because I’ve been him more times than I can count. I come to Laura with the whole case assembled and the timeline in order. And more often than not, right in the middle of my “brilliant” opening statement, the facts rearrange themselves as I watch, with a sinking feeling, the guilty party turn out to be me. I’m sure I’m not the only husband familiar with such a thing.
Well, pPaul does that very thing to the Corinthians. He asks them first, “Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?,” then he hits them, without warning: but you yourselves wrong and defraud, and you do it to your own brothers. The people so loudly convinced they were the victims were, some of them, the ones doing the damage.
And what’s unnerving is that the surest sign that we cannot see our own fault is often how certain we are that we have none. Self-justification does its best work in the dark, and it’s never darker than when we feel most wronged. The stronger our sense of grievance, the more invisible our own part becomes. We rehearse the offense against us until we’ve worn a groove in it, and somewhere in all that rehearsing, the quiet question, what did I do here, simply never gets asked.
And if we’re honest, we know why. Being the wronged one feels clean. It puts us on the right side, the innocent side, the side that deserves sympathy and owes nothing. Going looking for our own fault threatens all of that. It would mean stepping down off the victim’s platform and admitting we belong in the same dust as the person we came to accuse. But almost anything feels better than that.
This is where the gospel sets us free in a way nothing else can. We don’t have to be right! Our standing with God rests entirely on the blood of Jesus, credited to us as a gift. We have been justified, declared righteous, not because we kept our record clean but because His was clean and He handed it to us. And a person whose righteousness is that secure can afford to go looking for the truth about themselves. We can let our fault surface into the light, because that light has stopped being a courtroom. The verdict over us is already settled, and the verdict is mercy!
So the next time we march toward someone, sure of our innocence and rehearsing the case, it’s worth slowing down to pray a dangerous prayer: Lord, is it possible that I am the one in the wrong here? We are so often the last to know. And the people willing to ask that question are the ones grace has made safe enough to hear the answer.
Today: Choose one recent conflict, ideally one where you still feel sure you were in the right. Walk back through it slowly with God, almost like watching a replay, but this time look only at yourself: your tone, your assumptions, the moment you stopped listening, the thing you said to win rather than to heal. Ask the Spirit plainly to show you the part you have not been able to see. Take whatever next step honesty asks of you, even if that step is an apology you never expected to owe.
Prayer: “Father, I confess that I am quick to feel wronged and slow to suspect myself. Forgive me for the times I’ve ignored my own part in the wreckage. Thank You that I am justified in Christ and declared righteous by His blood. Open my eyes to what I have refused to see, and give me Your humility to own it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
-PK