We are all such moral monsters that we find it rather easy to other-ize other moral monsters. That is, because our sin blinds us to our sin, while making the sins of others bright as a thousand blazing suns, we see ourselves, and perhaps our friends and family on one side of a great moral divide, with Hitler, Jezebel and whoever is annoying us at the moment on the other. Which is one of the benefits of a vigorous practice of the RC Sproul Jr. Principle of Hermeneutics. It helps us learn to recognize ourselves in the grotesque moral darkness of others.
Consider Lot. Not one of our favorite characters in the Bible. We credit him with seeking to rescue the angels from the deviant sexual appetites of his neighbors. But then, he seems to offer up his daughters in their stead. Not a man we want to emulate. But he is the kind of man that shows us the kind of men we really are. Some years ago I remember driving by a forlorn group of teens whose carwash fundraiser was clearly a dud. They were raising money for a mission trip. Just down the road, however, was another carwash fundraiser, this one for the marching band of the local high school. Two worthy causes, one could argue. So why was the second one over-run with customers while the other had tumbleweeds blowing through? The latter advertised itself as a “Bikini Car Wash.” That’s right. The local high school and the parents approvingly sent out their underage girls to raise money through titillation. And the local community drove in in droves.
Consider the Nazis. There’s a culture so debased, so vile that they are the very poster child of evil. The principle reason for this? Because the Nazis systematically put to death roughly 6 million men, women and children for the crime of being Jewish. We, as Americans, may have our embarrassing moments, but at least we’re not like those Nazis. Except we are, only worse. Over the past 46 years we have seen mothers and fathers murder their own unborn children over 60,000,000 times, all for the crime of being unborn. And lest you want to other-ize all these on the basis that these mothers and fathers must be unbelievers, statistics suggest that 12,000,000 of those babies were the children of professing evangelical believers.
No, we’re not on one side of a great moral divide, with monsters on the other side. We are all the monsters. We are all on the same side. That doesn’t mean, of course, that all men are equally as bad as other men. It does mean that what separates the more wickedness from less wickedness is not found in us, but in the grace of God. If I’m less of a monster than Hitler, it’s not because of me. Which means that when I witness acts of moral degradation the moral response isn’t to look down my nose at those notorious sinners who are so beneath me, but to praise and thank the living God who is so above me. And to plead that He would not let me go, lest I should fall and do likewise.
One of the weaknesses that may come from communicating via social media is that we not only speak in short hand, but react in short hand. That is, our answers haven’t the time or characters to be nuanced, and so neither is the thought that goes into them. Our minds are less a well-ordered shelf of careful books, more a stack of broad-brushed memes.
I have sensed this of late due to the responses I have received in making affirmations along two related but different paths. Persuaded I need to enter more deeply into this reality, I have been posting about my own sin. I once tweeted this:- I hold this truth to be self evident, that I, like all men, think myself the equal of God. And so I declare my dependence on His grace. I received much the same push back I receive every time I refer to myself as a sinner. Seems that’s a no-no. Now it may well be that the word “sinner” is only used in the New Testament to describe those outside the faith. Such does not mean, however, that it cannot legitimately also be used this way- Sinner, n, 1. One who sins. It may be important that we remember that we are redeemed, forgiven, but it is likewise important to remember that we need to be redeemed and forgiven. It may be important to remember all that we are in Christ, but it is important as well to remember what we are in ourselves.
In like manner I have found myself dangling over a pit of indignation every time I say something positive about the law of God. I recently tweeted this- The Christian life is not choosing grace over law. It is instead exhibiting grace by law. Apparently there is an app that sets off alarms in the homes and minds of some folks any time the law is spoken of in a positive manner. I have been scolded, chastened, insulted, everything short of being called a sinner or a law-breaker for speaking well of the law. You know, like David, Jesus, James and Paul did. Of course our obedience won’t earn God’s favor. Of course we have nothing to offer. Of course circumcision will avail nothing. But friends, we are in trouble with God because we have broken His law. We don’t do what He wants us to do. And when we are redeemed, one of the things we are redeemed to is obedience. Obedience to what you ask? His law. We can dicker over whether He commands us to do this or that. But surely we should be able to agree that whatever He commands, that we must do.
It is a great thing to rejoice in our standing as saints before the throne of God. It is a joyful thing to know that God’s peace with us is not dependent on nor grounded in our obedience to His law. It is, however, a bad thing to forget that though we are in Christ, sin has not yet been completely eradicated from our lives. It is a bad thing to forget that sin is a failure to do what God commands, or to do what He forbids. Let us, as He forgets our sin, forget its curse. But let us confess its presence. And let’s not, due to our truncated means of discourse, embrace a truncated theology.
It’s a quibble that reaches the level of pedantic. Rightly affirming the import of the question, it nevertheless gets it backwards. You have heard it said, “The most important question you will ever face is, ‘What are you going to do with Jesus?’” It is certainly an important question. It may even be the most important one you will face. But it is not the most important question that will face you. As important as this question is, more important still is this one, “What is Jesus going to do with you?”
My point, as pedantic as it may be, is not to dredge up once again old arguments about predestination and free will. Rather it is to remember that no one goes to hell for rejecting Jesus. Instead they go to hell for their sins. It is true that all those who reject Jesus finally go to hell. It is true that none who embrace Him go to hell. Those, however, who have never heard of Jesus? They too will spend eternity in hell. Such is God’s ordained punishment for sin. All sin. Any sin. They will not be punished because of what they “did with Jesus” because they didn’t do anything with Jesus. They didn’t reject Him; they never heard of Him.
The quibble exists to remind us that while knowing Jesus is our only hope, ignorance about Jesus is not our principle problem, sin is. The quibble exists to remind us of what our due is. It exists to remind us that Jesus didn’t have to come. He didn’t have to die for us. We were already guilty, under the judgment of God.
The quibble exists also to remind us that it is Jesus who does the judging. He is seated at the right hand of the Father. What He does with those who reject Him, and what He does with those who never heard of Him is judge them, justly. What He does with those who embrace Him, through no merit of their own, but through His electing grace, is welcome them to His reward. The difference, because we are all sinners and all stand guilty in ourselves, is in what He does with us. It reminds us that in our fallen state we know there is a God, that we stand guilty before Him. And we suppress that truth in unrighteousness. Sadly, even having been born again, adopted, indwelt, we find it easy to continue in that same sin, to minimize our sinfulness, to suppress the reality of our own inherent guilt. As we push down the truth of our sinfulness, the Word pushes it back up. It is a mirror, showing us what we are.
What is Jesus going to do with me? Forgive me. For He, the judge of all the earth, already took my just punishment. Embrace me, for He came to earth to rescue and redeem me. Welcome me into His kingdom, inviting me to reign with Him, sitting with Him in the heavenly places. What am I going to do with Jesus? Praise Him, thank Him, worship Him, from here to eternity.
There are, when we disagree, almost always two disagreements. Most of the time the smaller disagreement is the bigger one. Consider election. There are some in the church who believe that God chooses whom will believe His gospel. There are others who believe God sees beforehand whom will believe. This, on the surface, seems to be the root of the loss of peace between these two brothers. The second disagreement, however, is over this question- just how important an issue is this? Though there are surely exceptions, by and large those who don’t believe in election are not known for zealously, aggressively not believing in election. Most don’t meet a new Christian and seek to steer the conversation to election. Those of us who do believe in election, on the other hand, likewise believe it to be an issue of great importance. Did we not so believe, were we able to believe in it alone, in the quiet of our own minds, the way non-election believers don’t believe in election alone and in the quiet of their own minds, we might be able to get along better with others.
When therefore, we seek to rightly draw lines the issue is almost never the issue. The challenge is in knowing not just what’s right and what’s wrong, but what is how important. Each of us thinks we’ve mastered this art, and can’t understand why others don’t just get in line. Intellectually speaking we are driving down the highway frustrated at those pokey drivers who slow us down and irritated at those crazy drivers that whiz by us. Those who are more forgiving of this error than we are we consider to be latitudinarian, slippery while those who are less forgiving of that other error than we are we consider to be judgmental and lacking in grace. We end up thinking that the real problem with the church is that everyone isn’t like me.
That we disagree on where to draw lines, however, doesn’t mean there are no correct answers. It simply means that we have a hard time agreeing on the answers. We disagree about when Jesus is coming back, which says nothing at all about the glorious truth that He is coming back. He knows when He is coming back, and that is the most important thing.
Our calling is to get our priorities in line with the one man who always had them right, Jesus. Let He who is without sin cast our vision. When we begin to look at things through His eyes, honestly, without recasting Him in our own image, we find not just the right answers, but the right priorities. We find that instead of arguing over tithing we ought actually to be tithing our mint and our cumin. But we must also never lose sight of the weightier matters of the law, like justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23).
We learn here also this important truth- that this truth is more important than that truth doesn’t mean that that truth is unimportant. Jesus didn’t say, “Why are you tithing your mint instead of pursuing justice? Why are you carefully weighing out your cumin instead of showing mercy?” Instead He said, “These things you ought to have done.” Being right about the more important things no more excuses being wrong about the less important things than not being guilty of murder proves that you are not a tax-cheat. Majoring on the minors, shouting where God has whispered, those are bad things. Neglecting minors or being silent where God has whispered, those are bad things too.
Our priorities on what the truly important issues are tend to be determined by what is important to us, rather than what is important to Jesus. Which is why Jesus warned us. In the Sermon on the Mount He rightly exposed our selfish ways, noting that we fret and worry about what we will eat and what we will drink. He points out that such worries ought only to describe those outside the kingdom. We have a different set of priorities. We are to be about the business of pursuing His Kingdom. Which means, of course, that we need to be about the King’s business. We have no business of our own. We have been purchased by the King. His agenda is to be ours, His goals ours. How often, I wonder, do we draw lines not because we are called to but because we are setting up the boundaries of our own little fiefdom? Having drawn our lines in the sand we next build our sand castles, forgetting that the wind and the waves only obey Him.
Our folly in not pursuing the Kingdom then drives us to pursue the one solution, His righteousness. We stand firm when we ought to bend, we roll over when we ought to stand. Not Jesus. He alone stands, righteous before His Father. And He bends down to lift us up, that we might stand in His arms. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you- gratitude, peace, courage, grace, and the wisdom to know and to love as He knows and loves. Who could ask for more?
Salvation, it should go without saying, is astonishing. One minute we are looking at an eternity of just torment for our rebellion against the living God, the next we are running to our loving heavenly Father who has not only forgiven us, but adopted us, who has not only declared us just, but sent His Spirit to dwell in us, leading us into becoming what we have already been declared to be. And the future we now face is joy forevermore. Astonishing.
What should not surprise us, however, is not just that we continue, while still living, to struggle with sin, but that the sins we struggle with are often those that beset us before we were given the gift of faith. While we drag the carcass of our old man along behind us, he’s still the same guy. The sins we battle look familiar to us because they are familiar to us.
One besetting sin you and I both struggle with is ingratitude. How do I know that about you? Because it’s true of all of us. Paul, in , is establishing the biblical truth that apart from Jesus, all men are sinners. All men, in our natural state, suppress the truth in unrighteousness. But right on the heels of this wicked suppression of the truth Paul tells us, “Neither were they grateful” (1:21). That’s all of us, and that’s something we still struggle, despite the outpouring of God’s grace.
We ought to be able to see ourselves, our lives and our walks in the journey of God’s people to the Promised Land. We’ve been redeemed and rescued. Sin no longer rules over us. He has called us out, loves us, brought us into His family. And He has promised us that we would dwell in paradise. If, however, we are able to see that obvious parallel, we ought also be able to see this obvious parallel- like the children of Israel on their way to the Promised Land, we incessantly grumble and complain against the very God who rescued us. We look back longingly at the leeks and garlic of our old lives. We grow bitter against those God has placed in authority over us. We are dissatisfied with His miraculous provision of all that we need. Neither are we grateful.
The solution is both simple and difficult. We are to give thanks. We are, to use the language of , to feast upon His faithfulness. We are to delight ourselves in Him. He is our exceedingly great reward. Our eyes have grown dim, but His glory is from everlasting to everlasting. Our tongues have grown weary with our laments, so let us employ them in singing His praise. Our ears have grown dull, so let us attend to the music of the spheres, the dance of the stars that shines His glory. Let us remember who we were. Let us remember where He found us. Let us remember where He is taking us. And then we will remember where He has us, safe in the scarred hands of His beloved Son.
