Too Weak to Stand?

“He bitterly regretted his foolishness, and reproached himself for weakness of will; for he now perceived that in putting on the Ring he obeyed not his own desire but the commanding wish of his enemies. He wondered if he would remain maimed for life, and how they would now manage to continue their journey. He felt too weak to stand.”

With these words from The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien characterizes Frodo Baggins as extremely regretful after using the Ring of Power, an evil artifact that had come into his possession, which his wisest friends had instructed him not to use. For even though the Ring could turn its wearer invisible, and Frodo had been in great need when he’d used it, it’s use opened him up to the device’s insidious will.

What stuck with me about this passage was how similar Frodo’s regret over using the Ring is to a Christian’s regret when he commits sin. We know that to pursue the temptation to sin is foolish; we also know that often we pursue sin because of our own weak will. Through Christ we are freed from slavery to sin; we are blessed with “free will,” the ability to pursue that which our hearts most desire. Apart from Christ, our heart’s only desire is for sin; in Christ, we are awakened to a life of righteousness that is not our own, but ours through Him. So it is that when we pursue our temptation to sin, we are not obeying our desire to do rightly and honor our Lord; we are turning away from our Savior’s Holy Spirit within us and opening ourselves up to the will of our enemy.

And so often, once the fleeting pleasure of our sin has dried up, we are left feeling foolish and weak. Sometimes, we even feel as if we’ve been harmed, perhaps even permanently. We often wonder how we can continue thinking of ourselves as Christians in light of the knowledge of the depth of our own sinfulness. We wonder if Christ will indeed continue to lead us on toward Heaven in light of how we’ve offended Him.

The event described in the passage above was not the last in Frodo Baggins’ quest to destroy the Ring and free himself and indeed all the people of Middle-Earth from its evil power. Our regret over our own sin is not the end of our journey either. Jesus came and died for us in order for us to be able to continue our journey, not on our own merits, but on His. God does not see us in light of our inability to meet His perfect standards; He sees us in light of the perfect ability of His Son to meet those same standards and His sacrifice for us. We are not maimed by our own sinfulness, because Christ was maimed for us. We are not “too weak to stand” because we do not stand on our own; we stand on the sufficiency of Christ.

The Fellowship of the Ring is only the first book in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frodo Baggins had far to go before he saw his enemy thrown down. The victory over evil in Middle-Earth was yet to come. Our enemy has been thrown down already. The victory over evil on God’s Earth has been won for us by our Savior, Jesus Christ.