Several of my real sins, often liberally mixed with unreal sins, are available for your reading pleasure through the help of Google. Sadly, as effective as Google and sundry attack bloggers are, they have missed too many of my sins. Thus I have determined to go public, in the hopes that the furor will die down before I run for President in 2024. Be prepared to be shocked.
1. I was, as a boy, a habitual player of that ghastly game, “Smear the Queer.” This is a game where a group of children all seek to tackle the one child with the football. I not only played this game, but did so brazenly and openly.
2. I wore blackface. Granted, it was for a part in our Christmas play Amahl and the Night Visitors. I was one of the Wise Men. And I was only doing what I was told. I was seven years old at the time. But I should have known better.
3. I love eating dim sum. You probably don’t know what that is. Good for you. I am left to confess the shame of my cultural appropriation. In my defense, I can’t stand tacos, so I have that going for me.
4. I have eaten meat. And while we’re being honest, I will likely do it again. Most of the time I don’t even try to resist, nor do I feel bad about it.
5. Several of my favorite football players when I was a boy played for the Washington NFL team. I didn’t even have the sense to be embarrassed for cheering those men on. The shame makes my face turn red.
6. I still embrace the same view of marriage that that wicked, regressive, patriarchal monster Hillary Clinton held twenty years ago.
7. I love Chik-Fil-A’s sandwiches, and even more, their fries.
8. I once called a visually challenged friend, in a fit of rage, “Four eyes.”
9. Up until I was seven or eight years old I didn’t believe in the holocaust. Granted, it was only because I had never heard of it. But still, I should have known.
10. I had a time in my life when I was under the spell of homophobia, when my mother warned me, a little boy, about strange men in bathrooms.
Look away from me. I’m hideous.
Jesus, we ought to remember, was betrayed twice by His disciples. While the betrayal of Judas carried Jesus inexorably toward His passion, the betrayal of Peter was of the same dark hue. Both pushed Jesus away as the other, both left Him to the accusations of others. And, it should not be forgotten, both responded to their betrayal of our Lord with sorrow. Two duplicitous, disloyal cowards. Two grievous sins. Two hearts weighed down with despair. But there the paths diverge.
Judas, in his anguish, took his own life. Peter, in his anguish, turned to the One he had betrayed, to the One who gives life. Judas’ sorrow led him further from his only hope. Peter’s sorrow led him toward his only hope. Which, in the end, is how we tell the difference between the accusations of the devil and the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Godly sorrow drives us into the arms of Christ.
The irony is that godly repentance can sometimes tempt others to doubt the genuineness of our repentance. We make the mistake of thinking that the sign of the authenticity of one’s repentance is to continue in despair. But when we come to Christ in our repentance we remember the joy of our salvation. We enter into the forgiveness He has won for us. We move from mourning to dancing. Wearing a long face is all too easy. It looks pious on us. But the impiety is the implicit unbelief in the power of the gospel.
Jesus came to save sinners, of which I am the chief. Now I can respond to this truth in one of two ways. I can zero in on the conclusion in such a way as to deny the beginning. I am a sinner, the very chief of sinners. But that makes me the very object of Christ’s saving work. My joy is not that I am a sinner, but that I am forgiven. To require that I carry with me a hangdog expression, that I walk through my days like a dejected Charlie Brown is to deny that Jesus saved me, that He has covered my sins, even the ones others, including the devil, love to throw up in my face.
When the devil accuses his goal is less to get us to recognize our sin (what good could that do him?) but rather to encourage us to doubt His grace. He shows us our sins and asks, “How could God possibly love you when you do these things, when you are this thing?” The right answer isn’t, “I’m better than you say” but “How could God? Because Jesus suffered the wrath of God due for my sins. My Father not only forgives me, but loves me. He not only loves me but has adopted me. And He has promised that He will never let me go.” When the Spirit convicts His goal is to get us to recognize our sin precisely so we will better grasp His grace. He invites us to come to the Father for forgiveness and peace. The devil leads us into the valley of darkness, the Spirit leads us into the mountain of light, and grace.
I’m not the man I used to be. Neither am I the man I will one day be. And yet, I am the man I used to be, and will forever be that man. The passage of time experienced by us is a great mystery, an entering into the mystery of being and becoming. We have, all of us, a continuity of consciousness. My memories are mine, though they sometimes star a me with a full head of hair and a 32 inch waist. I don’t have those two things anymore, but somehow I’m the same guy as the one who did have them.
Continuity and discontinuity are part and parcel of where not only we are headed, but the whole of the universe. The resurrection promises not that our old bodies will be banished to history’s ash heap when we get sparkly new ones. No, the promise is that our bodies, these bodies will be raised again, only now, raised incorruptible. The same is true of our planet. It will not be decimated, with a fresh new earth waiting in the wings. Instead, like us, it will be remade, renewed, redeemed, reborn.
Can you imagine a world that is utterly untouched by the ravages of sin? Not according to the Word of God. It tells us that eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the mind of man the things which God had prepared for those who love Him (I Corinthians 2: 9). Still harder for me is to imagine me without sin. The wonder of it all is not just that I will be without sin, but that I will be me. I will be, in fact, more me than I have ever been. Real me, true me, me the way I was meant to be. If you are in Christ, the same promise is true of you.
Each Sunday morning I am blessed to teach at the church I belong to, Pine Hills Church in Fort Wayne a class titled “Discovering Jesus.” My job is to speak to the assembled about the person and work of Jesus. I’m grateful for the opportunity to teach on such lofty matters. My goal, however, is that each of us would walk away not just knowing more but loving more, trusting more, rejoicing more. I want us to all be bowled over by the glorious truth that we are the children of God. When we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, I want us to be knocked down a second time to consider the next promise, that we will be like Him (I John 3:1-3).
Long trips can prove wearisome. We often feel like we’ll never arrive. Our new selves seem so distant that we can’t imagine it will still be us when we get there. But it will. He has promised. He has assured us that having begun a good work in us, that He will carry it through to the day of Christ Jesus. I’m not the man I used to be. Neither am I the man I will one day be. And yet the man I once was, and the man I will be, that’s me. Better still, it’s Him. Then I will be, for the first time ever, fully me.
It’s not always easy to grasp the relationship between the Old and New Testaments. The temptation among those who take a more covenantal approach is to de-emphasize the differences. My dispensational friends are wont to drive a wedge between the Old and New Testaments. My covenantal friends are wont to tear out the pages that separate them. Make the first mistake and you denigrate the work of God prior to the advent of Christ, and reduce your Bible by more than half. Make the second mistake and you denigrate the greatness of the work of Christ.
The solution, of course, is to agree with all the Bible, which affirms both that God was at work well prior to the announcement to Zacharias, and that John, along with Jesus, came with a radical message. The difference- the kingdom of God was at hand. John the Forerunner certainly knew that things had changed. For centuries up to that point baptism was a ritual by which those who entered into the people of God from outside Abraham’s descendents came in. Now, however, John was proclaiming that even the Jews must be baptized. Why? Because the kingdom was hand. The ax was being laid to the root of the tree. The winnowing fan was in hand.
Jesus, in turn, preached the same. The first account we have of Jesus preaching recounts how He read this promise of a new age to come- “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19.) Reading the promise wasn’t the great watershed however, but what He said after, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (verse 21).
In the old covenant people came to have peace with God the same way we have peace with God. That is, they trusted in the future work of Christ that was to come. They, not knowing exactly how God would bring it to pass, cried out, “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” In our context it is the same faith in the same object. We have peace with God by trusting in the once for all finished work of Christ. It is, of course, a great and glorious change in the new covenant that this event has come to pass in space and time. It is likewise a great thing that in the new covenant we have so much more understanding and revelation of the how by which God redeems us. I can’t imagine how much more difficult it must have been to live in a world of types and shadows. Which means we must give thanks for living in light of light.
There is, of course, yet another great change- the giving of the Spirit in power to all those who have been blessed to believe. That power, and its purpose, however, relates deeply to the great change. With the fall of man in the garden, what God had designed was swept into chaos and decay. The perfect world, which just days before God Himself has declared “Good,” and the stewards over the creation, were now corrupted. Sin opened a Pandora’s box of entropy- physical, spiritual, cosmological. For all the grace of God in the Old Covenant- the covering of Adam and Eve, the deliverance of Noah and family, the calling of Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, the rescuing of His people from the boot of Pharaoh, the judges, the godly kings, every moment of grace was given in a context of fits and starts, each designed to fall short, and to point to what was to come.
The kingdom we now seek is His kingdom, which shall have no end. We need have no fear that our King has feet of clay. We need not despair that His strong right arm will come up short of the task. When Jesus walked out of His tomb as the first born of the new creation, that downward spiral came to an end. His resurrection did not merely signal a counter-attack. It was not just the establishment of a beachhead. It was not just a signal success in a war whose outcome is still up in the air. It was victory. To be sure we have much yet to mop up. He is still bringing all things under subjection. But in principle, we are of good cheer, for He has already overcome the world. Seek this kingdom, because it has come. Seek this kingdom because it is covering the world as the water covers the sea. He is risen. That changes everything.
Quick- who was the villain in the classic story of the emperor’s new clothes? It’s not such an easy question. You could argue that all this folly could be set at the vain unshod feet of the emperor himself. You could certainly make the case that the tailors are the root of the problem, that their brazen con is the root of it all. You could, in turn, point your finger at all those citizens who went along for the ride, who desperately feared that others would think them unwise if they didn’t get on board with the ruse. Truth be told, in this story everyone but the little boy has much to be ashamed of. I would add one other group to the villain list however- all those who, having read the story, learn nothing from it.
We may think this story has nothing to teach us. We, after all, don’t have emperors, just presidents, and they, for no more than eight years each. We know there’s no such thing as magic clothes. We know that how we react to the clothes of others says nothing at all about our own wisdom or folly. Except, of course, that we think just the opposite. How we react to the clothes of others exposes our nakedness.
We live in a world where boys heed the counsel of others who tell them that they are girls, and that any who refuse to recognize such, whether by choosing the wrong pronoun, or by refusing to allow them to compete against girls in sports are fools of the first degree. We live in a world where the world, like the citizens of the mythical empire in the story, fall all over themselves affirming the gender “decisions” of the petulant and deeply troubled. They do it for exactly the same reason as the emperor’s sycophants- to secure reputation and standing with those in power.
Our calling is perfectly clear- we are to exhibit the courage of the little boy who couldn’t be fooled by pettifoggery by not being fooled by petticoats. We need to practice sufficient Christian clear-mindedness and compassion for fools to refuse to call girls boys and boys girls. To do otherwise is to call evil good and good evil.
We will have such courage and compassion insofar as we believe, from head to toe, that we are dressed in the true Emperor’s clothes, that we have no need for the approval of the world because we wear the righteousness of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We are prepared, with Him, to be considered fools by fools, that we might show forth the wisdom of Wisdom. I pray that I will be afraid not of being thought a fool, but instead be afraid of foolish thought. I pray that God would bless me with the courage, the horse sense, and the deep indifference to the opinions of others that that little boy was blessed with. Boys are boys. Girls are girls. And those who can’t, or won’t, tell the difference, are fools.
