Once in college I met a fellow student while we listened to a pit preacher standing in the middle of campus scream at everyone, telling them all that they were going to hell. The pit preacher said he hadn't sinned in several years, not since he became a Christian.
The student I happened to be standing next to also said that she hadn't sinned in several years. I was part intrigued, part annoyed.
We entered into a conversation about how this could be true. She had the Spirit, she said, she knew the Scriptures, she just didn't sin any more.
I got even more annoyed.
"What about the fact that pride taints just about everything that most of us do? Or other ways that our motives get all screwed up? Or what about sins of omission? How about the sick person you don't care about or the racism that's going on in our culture that we don't take on?"
"No, no, no," she said, "It doesn't work like that. You're making the standard too high. "
And that, of course, was the only way she could really do this: by lowering the bar as much as possible so that she could clear it. That is actually how it does "work." She just had been sold a bill of goods...and she bought it.
This is actually similar to what is left of pop-culture Christianity in our country. Just be nice to people and God will take care of you, not judge you too harshly for anything as long as you try to do good things.
Last week a student asked me if he thought we could go a day without sinning. No, no, and no again.
Not a day, not an hour, not a minute goes by that sin is not at work in our heart, mind, soul. We need grace, forgiveness, repentance, healing, the gospel to be actively at work in us every second of every hour of every day of our lives.
There is sin at work in me right now that I'm not even aware of because Jesus has not yet revealed it to me. I'll discover it five, ten years from now when Jesus is ready to show me and he knows that I'm ready to repent of it. In the mean time I trust in him, not my own performance, to make me whole and holy.
Of course there is growth, and yes there is transformation. God is committed to finishing that work in me every day of my life.
I will not enter into the kingdom of heaven until I am perfected. All of my sin must be burned off, once and for all. None of it will be allowed to take up residence with me in the new heaven and new earth. No little pet sins allowed, nothing gets winked at, no knowing nods. All of it must be burned off so that the real me might flower. One day, I will actually be perfect.
But the work will not ever be done this side of the final redemption of all things when God makes his grand and final pronouncement: "Behold, I am making all things new!" Only then will we be free of this sin-cancer that shreds our souls, minds, imaginations, relationships, motives, hopes, and dreams.
Until then, we have to take the first step that any addict has to take: admit the problem. Apart from that, there can be no healing
1 comment:
Good thoughts, Alex. Makes me think about how the great saints all thought they were the worst of sinners. I suppose the closer you get to Christ, the more you realize how far short we all fall.
Also makes me think of going through the Sermon on the Mount in my high school Sunday school class. The format of each lesson was to read a section and follow it with, "Now it SOUNDS like Jesus is saying to turn the other cheek. He doesn't REALLY mean that..." The lesson of the Sermon on the Mount, as it turned out, was for all of us to live like the best of us might be living on our better days.
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