Jesus said, “At a church service, the preacher called people up front, and
two of them came up. One of them was an
employee at Focus on the Family and the other was a heroin addict. The good Christian prayed aloud to himself,
‘Father in heaven, I praise your name because I have been chosen by You to be
holy. I am not a thief, a sinner, an
adulterer or a junkie like this man. I
pray and read the word daily and I tithe all my net income.’ The addict stood away from the altar, bowed
his head and whimpered, ‘God, I’m a screw up—help me, just help me.’ Listen here—the addict left the church with a
relationship with God. The churcie
didn’t. Because God raises up everyone
who lowers himself, and he pushes down everyone who pulls himself up.”
Someone around Jesus reported to him the news about some criminals whom the
police beat up. And he responded to
this, “Do you think that these criminals were worse than anyone else because
they were beat up? On the contrary, if
you don’t repent, you will have as bad happen to you and worse. Or what about the drug house that collapsed
on those who occupied it—do you think that they were worse people than those
who lived around them? Listen to this:
unless you repent, you will all be destroyed in the same way.
“Someone had an apple tree in his backyard, and one day, during apple
season, she came out back and there were no apples! So she spoke to her landscaper, ‘For three
years I’ve been hoping for apples from this tree and I’ve got nothing! It’s useless. Why don’t you dig it out?’ The landscaper replied, ‘Ma’am, if you would
just be patient and forgive it this fault this year so I can care for it. By this time next year, if you find no fruit,
fine, we will dig it out. But if it gives
you apples, then it will be worth it.’ “
“I’m Not A Sinner, I Never Sin”
One day
I was doing my usual Sunday practice, handing out tracts in front of
churches. I wasn’t doing it out of
spite, but just to participate in the process of giving God’s word to those who
were open to receive it. At this church
I had a lady in a fine dress approach me and ask me what I was doing. I told her I was handing out tracts about
obeying Jesus. “Oh, you don’t need to do
that here,” she responded cheerily, “There are no sinners in OUR church.”
If you are a part of a church,
sinners are always the other group. They
are the people not a part of our church, not an upstanding citizen, not a
believer in Jesus. No, we may not be
perfect, we say, but we are forgiven by God.
We are great and God loves us, no matter what.
Most people consider holiness to
be less about one’s ethical responsibility than the social and cultural group
one belongs to. Some theologians say
that if a person has received Jesus, then there is nothing they can do which
would condemn them by God. They are
completely forgiven. But the way the
church acts, most of the time, they consider you to be an upstanding person
before God if you are an upstanding person in the church, living by the basic
standards of the church. Thus, the holy
person is the person who goes to church, prays, spends time with their family,
pays their taxes and votes Republican.
But the basic requirement for
receiving blessing from God, according to Jesus, isn’t a matter of being a part
of the “in” group. Social conformity was
never something that Jesus held to as a high standard. Neither did he tell people to pray a prayer
to receive the Lord, or pay tithes, or attend church. Jesus’ basic—but not only—requirement for
entrance into God’s kingdom is repentance.
Hamart-zophrenia
To be a
disciple of Jesus, and so gain God’s blessing, we must admit that we have, and
continue to do things wrong. To deny
that we sin is to deny our weakness, our humanity. Now, honestly, we don’t many of us think that
we don’t sin at all. We all agree that
we fail in our anger sometimes, or that we covet that which we don’t want to
do. But what we do is divide “white”
sins from “black” sins. As if some sins
were better or worse than others.
Certainly, some sins have greater effect than others—to hate a person
isn’t as bad as killing them. But what
we often do is say that some sins aren’t as bad as others, and inevitably, the
“bad” sins are the ones other people do, while the “not so bad” sins are the
ones that we do.
Jesus, however, makes it clear
that ALL sin is bad, and ALL sin is worthy of separation from God, even
terrible punishment. But the worst sin
is the sin that we are in denial about.
Humanity as a whole, but the church especially is mentally ill when it
comes to sin. We are all experts on
diverting blame and not seeing that which is right in front of us. Even when we think we are awful people, we
are often obsessing on actions that aren’t so bad, while ignoring the worst of
our behavior.
Sin Sanity
Jesus
tells us how we need to think to stop being mentally ill about sin:
- Sin isn’t just something we see in others
We have
a tendency to look at other’s sin, as if everyone else is the problem in the
world. “If only there were no
homosexuals, drug addicts, and liberals,” say the conservatives. “If only there were no cops, thieves, or
judgmental people,” say the street folk.
But in pointing the finger of blame on everyone else, we mistake our own
issues as minor points. Jesus told the
parable of the log and the splinter to let us know that sin is something we
must deal with ourselves, before we can even look at others.
- Sin is a personal problem
A
newspaper once had a contest inviting people to send in brief essays under the
topic “What’s Wrong With The World”. A
famous Christian author, G.K. Chesterton wrote in the most succinct
response: “I am.” This is exactly the kind of attitude Jesus
wants us to have. When we see problems
and issues, we must first recognize our own responsibility and the
responsibility of our own people. Jesus
wants us to constantly deal with our sin and to admit what God admits—that we
have screwed up and in the areas God has said we screwed up, rather than that
of our own imagining.
- Sin is a problem with God
A lot of
people agree that sin is a problem, but it is one better dealt with
ourselves. But this is not true. Should we sin, then it is an issue between us
and God, no one else. Those who do not
believe in God rightly believe that they don’t sin. People who don’t have a relationship with God
can’t screw it up. Only those who care
about God and want to do right before Him sin.
If we “got a friend named Jesus” then we don’t ignore our sin, or deny
it, but we go to Jesus to deal with it.
- If we don’t repent, we die
Jesus is
very clear about this. Yes, others get
punished and treated roughly because of their sin. But we, who claim to be of God, if we sin and
deny it, we will be punished even more severely. To claim to be a good Christian and to not
deal with our sin is to be a hypocrite.
And Jesus was not kind to hypocrites.
Jesus never said that your run of the mill sinner would burn for all
eternity. Nor pagans, nor atheists. But he said again and again that it would be
hypocrites—those who claimed to be upstanding people of God, all the while
denying God with their actions—who would be thrown out and living in flames and
torment for all eternity, crying and gnashing their teeth. (Check it out-- Matthew 5:22; 8:12; 13:41-42;
23:15; 24:48-51; 25:30, 41-46; Luke 13:24-28)
- Break down and cry
Repentance isn’t just a dry
action, but an emotional response. To
repent, we need to regret our sin, no, even to weep over our sin. We need to feel it. James says, “Be miserable and mourn and
weep; let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble
yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:9-10) We must allow ourselves to feel the pain we
have caused God and others, and not just be stoic about it. To weep before the Lord is to receive
forgiveness as long as we are sincere.
- Be Transformed
And
repentance isn’t just a show we put on every time we sin. It is something that we allow God to do to
us. God gives us His spirit, and we
slowly become different people. Paul
said that we are to be “transformed by the renewing of your minds.” (Romans
12:1) This transformation is something
we enact, but it is ultimately something that is done by God on us. God gives us his Spirit, and the more we
respond correctly to His Spirit, the more transformed we are. Soon, we find, we are not who we once were,
but a completely new person, transformed by God’s power and our own humility.
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