Nobody’s Fault but Mine

In 1928, blues singer Blind Willie Johnson recorded a song called “Nobody’s Fault but Mine” (which was later covered by Led Zeppelin, but that’s a different subject altogether). The intro and refrain go like this:

It's nobody's fault but mine

Nobody's fault but mine

If I don't read it, my soul will be lost

I have a Bible in my home

I have a Bible in my home

If I don't read it, my soul will be lost

Nowadays, it seems like people want the opposite to be true. Someone today might retort with:

Blame my upbringing, blame my parents,

blame my environment,

blame something that happened hundreds of years ago,

 blame the sun, the moon, the stars, and everything in between,

but don’t you dare blame me.

When I stand before the Holy Creator of all things, though, I won’t be able to point my finger at anyone else but me. God is just, and He must judge, and therefore, when I stand before Him, I will be accountable to my sin, and my sin alone. Do you see what the Enemy of our souls has deceived us into believing? “Blame everyone else BUT you! It’s not your fault!” He has blinded us and weakened us into believing that we’re blameless victims of a God who creates arbitrary rules so that He can punish us. Satan has convinced us that rebellion is just and right, and that WE are the measure of all things. But we have forgotten that God does NOTHING arbitrarily. The Law is for our good, that we might live freely in His presence without harming others or ourselves.

When we take our eyes off of Jesus, we look only at and to ourselves. When we look at and to ourselves, we consider how bad everyone else is, and come up with our OWN arbitrary standards, saying things like “At least I’m not as bad as that guy!” When I look at Jesus, I can see how I don’t measure up, I see my failures, my sin, and my shame, but I also see His goodness! He willingly offered Himself to God’s justice in my place. He paid the debt of sin that I owe to God with His life. He willingly stepped in to my place, that I might be with Him forever. When I look to Jesus, the Cross and the Empty Tomb, I see that it is nobody’s fault but mine. So, I surrender to Him, and I find joy and peace and security in Him alone.

Romans 7

Or do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.

Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God. For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.