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If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides.
…We, however, says Peter (2 Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign. It suffices that through God’s glory we have recognized the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day. Do you think such an exalted Lamb paid merely a small price with a meager sacrifice for our sins? Pray hard for you are quite a sinner.
-Martin Luther
One of my closest friends has been sporting a genuine Rolex watch for several years now that his boss gave him due to his hard work and dedication to his co-workers. Although the thing cost about $3500 new, it doesn’t look a whole lot different than a $35 cheap imitation—the differences are many though—night and day really. For starters, Tony’s Rolex weighs about as much as ten of the knock-offs.
Impostors never can hide forever—with a closer look, a phony can always be identified. And the impostors among us are those too comfortable in their sin or too satisfied in their rightousness to see their need for a Savior. Lest we forget that Jesus is only the Savior for those lost enough to know it and unless God shows someone their spiritual bankruptcy outside of Christ—we can’t say anything to make a lost soul bat an eyelash.
A blogger named Elissa commented on the quote above—Reading Luther always reminds me of how lightly I often take my sin. He pins me, ashamed, when he connects my flippancy with a correspondingly low view of mercy. How odd—but how needful—to pray for the grace to ’sin strongly’. It is not a call to sin more egregiously, but to believe all my sins to be egregious rather than trifling; apart from His illuminating mercy I would not even recognize the strength of my own nature.
I’m on the edge of losing it—
the pain in my gut keeps burning.
I’m ready to tell my story of failure,
I’m no longer smug in my sin.
(Psalm 38:17-18, The Message Bible)
Jesus wasn’t too fond of the folks who failed to see their own sin but were quick as the speed of sound to name the sins of others.
Lord, please help me see my sin and my righteousness as the serious offense it is to you so that I can see and revel in your mercy and your righteousness provided for me—not so I can self-loathe and wallow in despair.
Jesus-followers aren’t imaginary sinners—they are real sinners and forgiven ones to be sure.
When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn’t go off and leave us… He enters into our trouble and saves us.
-Eugene Peterson
Things aren’t always the way we are told they are. I was in church this past Sunday and my pastor was going on about the virtue of honesty. During his message he talked about the most well-known story in terms of honesty possibly in American history. It’s a story involving the patriot, war hero and president, George Washington. The story goes that young George was asked by his father about a tree that had been cut down at the family compound and responded: Father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down this cherry tree.
Well, the story is a big fat lie—seems the most popular story about honesty is nothing more than a sham.
Religion isn’t shy about trying to convince us that in order to get control of our sin problem (we are saved you know—and sinning isn’t what we ought to be doing)—all we must do is somehow kill our desires. It’s no wonder so many of us consider following Jesus more like living in a torture chamber than we do a daily celebration.
21-22 If such is the case, is the law, then, an anti-promise, a negation of God’s will for us? Not at all. Its purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time. (Galatians 3:21-22, The Message Bible)
Just as the law (I’ll add religion) was powerless to save us—so it is unable to give us a lick when it comes to living the Christian life. All the law can do is point us to Jesus—it can’t empower us to follow him in a million life-times. We can thank God for the law in that it painfully shows us our utter inadequacy, but we must not then turn around and attempt to live up to it’s standards in hopes that we ever will ever meet it’s demands. To do so is to undermine the faith we placed in Jesus when we gave up trying to earn God’s favor—as if we ever could have. Jesus bridged that chasm.
The big fat lie of religion is that is powerful enough to rescue us when all it does is hinder us, and in the end, it sucks the very life out of us when we put any stock in it. Jesus—the author of liberty—is the only One we need to put our stock in.
There are some who have no understanding to hear the truth of freedom and insist upon their goodness as means for salvation. These people you must resist, do the very opposite, and offend them boldly lest by their impious views they drag many with them into error. For the sake of liberty of the faith do other things which they regarded as the greatest of sins… use your freedom constantly and consistently in the sight of and despite the tyrants and stubborn so that they may learn that they are impious, that their law and works are of no avail for righteousness, and that they had no right to set them up.
-Martin Luther
Some of you must to be shaking your heads and saying by now—Come on Ken, there has to be some rules, you are giving people the idea that they can live any way they choose and still be a Christian.
I have said nothing of the sort. I will concede—the gospel of grace is abused—but we don’t pull the medicine off the shelves just because some would use it recklessly. What I have said is that we want rules instead of relationship. We like religion over Jesus. We’ll take self-serving outward religious fashion shows over inward and uncomfortable revivals. It’s much more difficult to be genuine than it is to be religious. And it’s much more advantageous when it comes to our fragile and attention-starved egos to follow a man-made code than to follow the Son of the Living God. Let’s face it—we want people to pat us on the back when it comes to our being so religious, so giving, or even so Christlike—we’ll trade the freedom that’s ours for an ata-boy not even thinking a split second about what we are giving up to get the small worthless token.
11-12 The obvious impossibility of carrying out such a moral program should make it plain that no one can sustain a relationship with God that way. The person who lives in right relationship with God does it by embracing what God arranges for him. Doing things for God is the opposite of entering into what God does for you. Habakkuk had it right: “The person who believes God, is set right by God—and that’s the real life.” Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith, but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping, a fact observed in Scripture: “The one who does these things [rule-keeping] continues to live by them.”
13a Christ redeemed us from that self-defeating, cursed life by absorbing it completely into himself. (Galatians 3:11-13a, The Message Bible)
God understands something that we just can’t seem to get through our thick skulls: A heart set free doesn’t need rules any longer. If you want the unadulterated-unfiltered-cold-hard truth—our hearts never needed rules to begin with. Our hearts were plenty lost without any help. Rules or no rules, we were wretched without Jesus.
You see, a heart set free wants to follow Jesus—it doesn’t need seventy-five rules about how to do anything. Rules got us no where before Jesus and I can’t understand what on earth makes us think they will post-Jesus. Seriously—it’s like learning where to get a spectacular gourmet meal and then returning to the place we were paying the same money to get a maggot covered plate of slop—as if we never found the new restaurant. Maddening behavior really.
What possesses us to return to rules and religion when we have Jesus?
Sin will always keep you longer than you wanted to stay, make you pay more than you ever wanted to pay, and take you further than you ever intended to go.
-My friend Blaine Bartel
A few years ago I ran across a story that still moves me every time I read it. The story is re-counted in Steve Brown’s riveting book, A Scandalous Freedom.
Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market. There he noted a young, beautiful African-American woman being auctioned off to the highest offer. He bid on her and won. He could see the anger in the young woman’s eyes and could imagine what she was thinking, ’another white man will buy me, use me, and then discard me’.
As Lincoln walked off with his ‘property’, he turned to the woman and said, ‘You’re free’. ‘Yeah. What does that mean?’ she replied. ‘It means that you’re free.’ ‘Does it mean I can say whatever I want to say?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Lincoln, smiling, ‘it means you can say whatever you want to say.’ ‘Does it mean,’ she asked incredulously, ‘that I can be whatever I want to be?’ ‘Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.’ ‘Does it mean,’ the young woman said hesitantly, ‘that I can go wherever I want to go?’ ‘Yes, it means you are free and you can go wherever you want to go.’
‘Then,’ said the woman with tears welling up in her eyes, ‘I think I’ll go with you.’
Brown continues…
That is what God has done for us. It is what the Christian faith is all about. We have been bought with a price, the price of God’s own Son. We now have a new master, one who, once he paid the price, set us free.
Do you realize that you are free? Jesus never twists our arm—and he never does a hard-sell on us. He simply sets us free and lets us decide what we will do with that freedom. The question each of us must answer is: Will we turn and walk away—or will we, like the slave girl—follow him?
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36, ESV)
Nails were not enough to hold God-and-man nailed and fastened on the Cross, had not love held Him there.
-Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
Not all of us grew up in Sunday School watching teachers slave over flannelgraphs and having them patiently put up with our constant cries for the morning snack. We weren’t very spiritual back then you know—and some of us still aren’t. As I remember, I wasn’t one of the kids pushing the other ones around for the coolest toy to play with, but I can’t say I was perfect either. And don’t call my teachers, they retired after having me as a regular. I responded to a friend today—after jokingly being told I was a mess—that I just need Jesus a little more than most.
And I’m glad.
If you did go to Sunday School you must remember singing the all-time classic Jesus loves me.
One of my favorite stories concerns theological giant Karl Barth (1886-1968)—who many consider the most influential and greatest theologian of the 20th century. Barth’s monumental life-work (Church Dogmatics) consists in excess of 6 million words and was written over a 35 year span—Barth stated that he had made it his work To take all that has been said before and to think it through once more and freshly to articulate it anew as a theology of the grace of God in Jesus Christ.
After a lifetime of studies and teaching Barth was surrounded by a group of students and scholars at a press conference and the deep thinker was asked—Dr. Barth, what is the most profound truth you have learned in your studies? Without hesitation Barth replied—Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
21 keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life. (Jude 1:21, ESV)
My own dad has served me well in reminding me more times than I can remember when life has been anything but easy or I have been almost overwhelmed with the world I find myself entrenched in and sometimes at war with—Don’t forget the love of Jesus, Ken.
The next time you are mired in a mess or weighed down with heavy thoughts you might do well to remember—Jesus loves you too.
Everyone needs compassion
A love that’s never failing
Let mercy fall on me
Everyone needs forgiveness
A kindness of a Savior
The hope of nations
-Lyrics by Hillsong Australia
People don’t long for religion. They don’t desire rules. They don’t hunger for dogma. And they don’t want to be told who to vote for in the Election this fall.
Jesus isn’t merely the hope of America—he remains the hope of mankind. You can have your preferences or even your convictions—although I’d argue we value much too much that which God doesn’t value and value much too little that which he does. It’s all fine and good if I like green and you like blue. Maybe you like loud music and I like it soft. It’s no matter if you prefer sherbet over ice cream. For all it matters you might like liver, spinach, sushi, and sardines.
It doesn’t matter.
People need a Savior and our culture isn’t about to deliver them one. The world hasn’t delivered on it’s hollow sham promises to provide a quasi savior yet and it’s not about to.
No other savior will do. Do you believe that? The Scriptures couldn’t be any clearer. When we will stop trying to convert people to our way of thinking or our way of doing things? If there is room for James Dobson and Bono within the ranks of our members what makes us think this movement that never ceases—despite man’s best efforts to kill it—is about personalities?
It’s never been about my ideas, your ideas, or Barack Obama’s ideas. Truth be told—we have passed out plenty of opinions to date.
22 And have mercy on those who doubt; 23 save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.
24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen. (Jude 1:22-25, ESV)
It’s all about Jesus—and it’s about time we start acting like it.
…my faithful request and admonition is that you join our company and associate with us, who are real, great and hard-boiled sinners. You must not, by no means, make Christ to seem paltry and trifling to us, as though He could be our helper only when we want to be rid of imaginary, nominal and childish sins. No! No! That would not be good for us. He must rather be a Savior and Redeemer from real, great, grievous and damnable transgressions and iniquities, yea, and from the very greatest and most shocking sins; to be brief, from all sins added together in a grand total… Dr. Staupitz [Luther's mentor] comforted me on a certain occasion when I was in the same hospital and suffering the same affliction as you, by addressing me thus; Aha! you want to be a painted [meaning having a good external appearance] sinner, and accordingly, expect to have in Christ a painted savior. You will have to get used to the belief that Christ is a real Savior and you a real sinner. For God is neither jesting nor dealing in imaginary affairs, but He was greatly and most assuredly in earnest when He sent His own Son into the world and sacrificed Him for our sakes.
-Martin Luther, (in a letter to his dear contemporary George Spalatin after learning of counsel Spalatin had given someone which proved to be sinful advice—which Spalatin was then heart-broken over).
The above account reminds me of a story former Presidential (Nixon) aide Chuck Colson shares (who now heads Prison Fellowship—which reaches inmates and their families across the globe in 112 countries with the Gospel of Jesus Christ). Colson re-counts of a man approaching him after he had finished up a speech. The man was considerably offended by Colson’s portrait of each of us as sinners as Colson tells it and decided he’d take Colson to task. Colson heard the man out and responded, “I have more in common with Adolf Hitler than Jesus.”
We need pardon no less than Hitler needed it.
King David understood this—he prayed to the Lord after his adultery covered up by a carefully executed murder:
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. (Psalm 51:1-3, ESV)
If God forgives any of our sins he forgives the worst of them. Jesus wasn’t given up as the peace child on account of our trivial or minor offenses—no—it was for our real offenses. Trivial sin is our idea—each and every sin is serious and grave business with God. If you took your smallest infraction it would have been quite enough to require the payment of God’s very own Son.
In other words—there are no misdemeanors with God—only felonies.
Is the prayer of your heart as David’s was?
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
The effort to repay God, in the ordinary way we pay creditors, would nullify grace and turn it into a business transaction. If we see acts of obedience as installment payments, we make grace into a mortgage… Let us not say that grace creates debts; let us say that grace pays debts.
-John Piper (Future Grace)
Okay—are we done demanding God be fair yet?
John Piper calls it the debtor’s ethic and makes a powerful case for approaching God and his loving-kindness altogether differently than many of us have been taught. One of the traps of feeling like we deserve something so undeserved as forgiveness is the subsequent feelings of being somehow entitled to favorite pet sins as a sort of consolation for our good time—it’s a God will understand mentality which never fails to result in our engaging in a lifestyle or activities that don’t serve God, ourselves, or others well.
When we approach God’s forgiveness or any of the benefits of his grace and mercy with an approach of anything other than a gift—we slip into approaching God as some big cosmic scale up in the sky and we somehow justify our giving him anything less than all of us (or worse yet—a measly 10%). We are his, and everything we have was given to us by him if we remember rightly (aren’t we stewards rather than owners?). We reason that it is plenty for us to give God six of the seven days within our week—I should get at least one day to have my time the reasoning goes. A heart set free by true forgiveness says What mercy God has given me!—is there any sacrifice too great for me to give back to him?
Do you see the distinct difference?
The forgiveness we receive in Christ is a net result of the liberating grace of God. Grace is all gift—no re-payment necessary. And so it is with forgiveness since it is one of the fruits of grace after all.
1 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works: 7 ‘Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; 8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.’ (Romans 4:1-8, ESV)
Do we live in this kind of faith—a belief that we haven’t earned an ounce of the forgiveness that Jesus provided for us through his sinless life and by sacrificing his very life in our place?
Giving back to God is the response of a heart set free—paying him back isn’t.
Like it or not—we are debt free.
Your sins are erased
And they are no more
They’re out on the ocean floor… ~Ocean Floor, Audio Adrenaline
The harsh charges have been read: High Crimes Against Heaven. The incriminating evidence has been plainly and painfully presented against you. The many witnesses have marched forward. The clear argument has passionately been made—the prosecution has spoken. The defense has rested as it never got started—you didn’t have a prayer. The jury has deliberated and rendered a verdict.
Eternal Sentence—with no possibility of parole.
You didn’t stand a snowballs chance in Gehenna.
13And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Colossians 2:13-15, ESV).
Jesus didn’t suffer and die with plans to forgive some of your sins. He didn’t hang on a cross out in the scorching afternoon sun with crusted blood clinging on to every inch of his body in hopes to forgive most of your sins. He didn’t withstand the ultimate humiliation and mockery so that every sin you have ever committed and will ever commit—except for your worst one—would be forgiven.
He paid for all of them.
Your case is closed—never to be re-opened.
This evil is planted in all human hearts by nature: If God were willing to sell His grace, we would accept it more quickly and gladly than when He offers it for nothing. ~Martin Luther
So if forgiveness is free and subsequently can’t be purchased for any price—just who is it that gets the gift of forgiveness? Do the worthy receive forgiveness? Certainly not—there’s none of those. And if there were what would they need forgiveness for? Forgiveness is for sinners. That must mean it’s the unworthy who get forgiven. In many cases it is those most unworthy who get to go free with Jesus after all (a clumsy reading of the New Testament would suffice in making that case). So, yes, the unworthy recieve forgiveness. But does everyone who is unworthy get forgiven? That would mean we all get pardoned. If that is the case, can we all just be extra bad and bank on being forgiven—right? Not hardly.
If you can be squeaky clean and still not be forgiven don’t think for a mili-second that you can be bad to the bone and slide by (let me add that the Bible teaches that we are all “bad” in and of ourselves contrary to what 99% of us think about ourselves). I may be one of a small number re-stating what the Bible says on this but it’s not going to stop me from saying it—God alone is good and any goodness we possess is from him. End of story.
Just because you desperately need forgiveness doesn’t guarantee your receiving it. I may need a new liver but just the fact that I need one doesn’t secure my recieving one. The bible makes it clear that not all come to a saving knowledge of Jesus—not everyone has their sins forgiven. We will be spared the eternal penalty for our sin—because we have been forgiven. Basic I know—but it bears repeating. This all goes back to the fact that we are forgiven and get to go to heaven based on nothing we did (i.e. the thief on the cross with his mountain of sin the size of Mt. Everest being fully forgiven).
It all comes down to getting what we don’t deserve, not who sins less. Not fair! we protest. Re-consider before you jump off that cliff.
8 The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 9 He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. 10 He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. ~Psalm 103:8-12, ESV
Just imagine for one brief moment what you’d get if God were fair. God doesn’t forgive us because he’s fair, he forgives us because he is full of grace. If God were fair we’d all have a one way bus ticket to an eternal lake of fire. The bible teaches that God is just, it doesn’t make a case for his fairness. Are you scratching your head asking questions? That might be a good thing if it’s not dandruff.
We haven’t been forgiven by God because the world owes us or because God is fair or because we deserve it.
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