It is because we are all such sinners that sin continues to muddy up our relationships. While it can certainly happen that believer A can sin so grievously against believer B that their relationship isn’t likely to be healed on this side of the veil, the impact of our sins is rarely that direct. More often than not sin pours sand into our relational gears less through the doings of others, more through our own reactions.
Any Christian worth the name knows that he or she is a sinner. That said, every Christian struggles with owning our sins. We accept the universal guilt of our humanity. We deny our peculiar sin against other humans. We cover up, often with more sins. See David, Bathsheba and Uriah. We likewise misdirect. The more we screech and holler about someone else’s sins the less obvious ours become.
We establish our own personal sin hierarchies where our sins, at least the obvious ones that everyone knows about, are pittances, while the sins of others are most grievous. We show grace to the contentious man, so long as he is contending for our own secondary distinctives. Let a gentle man articulate a subtle doctrine with insufficient nuance, however, and it’s “Off with his head.” Or we think nothing of the man who is not given to hospitality but kick the man who allows himself to be too hospitable to prescription drugs to the curb. We’re so adept at this kind of misdirection that we seek to cancel those for what they didn’t say. To adapt a familiar phrase, my moral outrage has already run across the globe before my own conscience even has its shoes on.
So what do we do? We repent and believe the gospel. We acknowledge that our brother’s minor miscue in understanding an ancient creed isn’t worthy to be compared with the power politics I play on social media. We admit that the gentle man who says God gives us free will, and whose eyes tear up every single time he sings Amazing Grace is closer to the kingdom than the man who can tell you where each of the Westminster divines came down on the order of the decrees but has no joy in God’s grace.
To adapt another familiar phrase, “Why are you clapping? I’m talking about us.” You and me. We have fallen into the very same hole if our response to the shameful reality of sin in the church is “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men.” We repent for our pride, for our dishonesty about our own sins, our failure of showing grace to those under His grace. We also, however, believe. We believe the gospel that says He redeems even wretches like me. Which means He redeems wretches I am just wretched enough to look down my nose at. We don’t just believe the gospel but celebrate it, together.
Thanks