I often feel unqualified to write about the good news of Jesus and His sacrifice for our sins. I suppose that there are several reasons for this. Chief among them is that I have a hard time holding onto the awesome truths of the gospel; I feel if I am to profess the truths of God’s unfathomable goodness, then I need to be totally confident in that which I write about or teach.
Recently I revisited an article I wrote about a month ago called Victims of Grace, and as I read it I thought, ‘Wow, I sure sound like an expert on the grace of God!’ Then a few moments passed by, and I thought “Crap! I really do sound like an expert. But I am so not!” My wife was standing next to me and I told her about my revelation. She assured me that I knew the truth it was just hard for me to live it because I am human. Nice isn’t it, to have a wife who is both brilliant and beautiful to remind me of these things?
I forget that I am a human sometimes. I forget even more often that God doesn’t expect me to be anything else. I could be alone in these temporary bouts of amnesia, but I sort of doubt it. I think often times people come to faith in Jesus Christ and receive His free gift of forgiveness and eternal life, and then get sidetracked from it. It seems like once we are saved, we think that we should automatically be morally perfect. We then get hard to work on a religious expectations check list that we must strictly adhere to daily to attain this moral perfection, this instead of living by God’s pure un-adulterated grace.
Speaking of making lists, maybe yours looks like mine:
1. Spend more time reading the bible than doing anything else
2. Pray every spare minute that I get. No free time.
3. Pray for every single person I meet
4. Never get impatient. Impatience is for the weak.
5. NEVER doubt God
6. Never spend money on yourself
7. Never wrestle with what it means to be a Christian
8. Never forget to do the dishes for you wife.
9. Watch only G rated movies
10. Listen only to music by DC Talk and Michael W. Smith
11. Never take fun time for yourself. Ministry is life.
12. Never struggle with lust
13. Love people perfectly. Always.
14. Obey the laws of the land perfectly.
15. Never fail God.
16. Never doubt His love.
17. Never speed.
Let’s just say that if God held me to same standard I hold myself to, I would be a lost cause. Lists like these are not totally unproductive however. They can serve a great purpose: to show you how much you fail at keeping any standards.
On Mount Sinai God gave the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel. These commandments were a glimpse into the perfect morality of God. They showed His standards for the people Israel, and ultimately His standard of perfection for all mankind. They were His “check-list” for humanity. Because they were such, these commandments did another thing: they revealed failure. They revealed the sin of the chosen Jews. They also ultimately reveal the sin of the entire world. Think about this for a minute as we consider two of these commandments:
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
While most of us have not literally murdered someone, we have done so indirectly. Jesus taught that hatred for another person was the same as murder in God’s eyes (Matthew 5:21). Likewise, He taught that lusting after an individual was identical to committing adultery (Matthew 5:28). So, because I have both hated and lusted, I have broken two of the ten standards on God’s check list, thus proving myself to be a sinner. This was and is the whole purpose of the Law. It offers a glimpse at God’s perfect morality, shows us how ridiculously far short we fall, and then leads us to receive God’s free gift of forgiveness in Jesus. As Galatians 3 says, the law was added because of transgressions. It was added to show sin so that when Jesus came, we would let Him save us through faith. Both the Ten Commandments and the sacrificial system (animal sacrifices to bring forgiveness) ultimately pointed to Jesus. The Law screams “GOD IS PERFECT. You are not. Let HIM save you.” The bottom line is that God’s standard for us has been forever met in Christ. Period. God’s check list for us is perfectly and totally completed and nothing can say otherwise. So why on Earth would we create our own standards to hold ourselves to? Are we God that we can say what moral perfection is and what it is not?
Let me close with some confessions. I am a Christian. I love God very much. I love writing about Him. I love teaching His word. I love the grace that He has for me in Jesus Christ. I am also unfaithful to Him, a doubter of the first degree; a hater; an adulterer; an idolater; a murderer. But these actions are not my identity. No, the Blood of Christ says otherwise. I am a beloved Son who has been forever reunited with His Creator through the all sufficient blood of Jesus.
We don’t need to have a list of rules to live for God. We just need God. We need God’s acceptance of us through faith in Jesus. We need His Spirit to come make His home in us so that we can have the intimacy that we lost so long ago.
The only moral check-list that served a purpose was God’s. It took the very beast of sin that separated us from Him in the beginning of time, and used it to bring us to the cross. Our sins no longer need bring us shame. This is why Christ came. We have only room for celebration in our brief lives on Earth, and our forever lives thereafter.
This is the good news. This is the great news. This is the excellent news. This is the stupendous news.
God loves you and wants you. Believe it.
“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners--of whom I am the worst.” (1 Timothy 1:15)
