"Righteous and at the same time a sinner"
-Martin Luther
I am a Peccator, no question about it. And, yet, I am also justified (as we all are) by Christ; all I have to do is receive His grace with a repentant heart -- no upfront work demanded of me as the price for my justification. Jesus has taken my sins upon Himself and born the entire weight of the punishment.
This weekend I was wondering why it is so hard for me to accept that these two things -- my state as a sinner and my state of justification, can exist side by side.
I have come up with three related explanations for my struggle:
1) my non-involvement in my salvation
2) the consequent implications for my claims to righteousness
3) my struggle with good works
Non-Involvement
"An even more significant barrier to the apprehension of Christianity, however, is the threat to one’s own self-righteousness" -F.Allison
It is obvious that I did nothing to save myself. Jesus acts as though I have been running up debts on my credit card non-stop and yet He has been covering the bill and imputing to me a perfect FICO score. What is more than this, however, I realize that not only are my sins the reason Jesus had to suffer, but also my pride still condemns Him. There is little doubt that I would have been one of the culpable parties that nailed our Savior to the cross -- most likely a Pharisee declaring my own perfection before the law while missing the entire message of grace.
My pride simply DEMANDS a claim to innocence and asserts my ability to save myself. Those are the terms it wants for salvation so I can still be righteous. Grace demands I forfeit both these claims.
Consequences for Self-Righteousness
The grace of Jesus impacts the self-righteousness in my heart in two distinct ways. The first, as I have just described, is admission of my own culpability in His condemnation. I can't truly receive the Gospel if I am not prepared to accept this truth.
The second is the admission grace demands of my inability to fulfill God's law. In short, even in my absolute best and finest moments, I fall so short of the what God asks that I have to give up all hope of "doing my best" as justification for myself -- it will never be good enough. I am not alone in this. As F. Allison observes about the "good" people we all know in our lives (I normally, obnoxiously, include myself in this category):
"In the face of the lofty, uncompromising, and absolute demands of the law (e.g. the Sermon on the mount) he too, is disclosed as poor, even bankrupt. He now has no self-righteousness to clog his ears to the good news" -F.A.
Jesus's message of grace removes the pedestal of my own goodness. More than that, it DESTROYS all hope of fulfilling the law in this life. God's justice demands a perfect score -- there is no grading on a curve, no "well, I am better than that guy." God requires perfection, nothing less. There is NO ONE, except Jesus, who has ever had a hope of earning their salvation. I am doomed to fail before even trying. Again, my pride fights this idea at every turn. Admitting guilt is one thing, admitting my inability is another altogether...
Struggling with good works
"Repent and believe the good news." Mark 1:15
We are justified through Christ. This is the good news. Despite our sinful state, He imputes His righteousness to us. There are moments when I can begin to understand this message and receive its transforming impact on my heart, but then there is another problem -- my struggle with good works.
So I am a Christian... I am supposed to go to church, go to bible study, give money away and pray for everyone right? I am supposed to feed and clothe the homeless, take care of widows and orphans... Do all those good works.
See, for me, even when receiving the message of God's grace, my self-awareness and my pride demand MEASUREMENT. I have got to count things -- the amount of money given away, the number of lives impacted, the people reading my blog, whatever it is, I love to count. If I can count it, then I can measure it; I can improve on my deeds and I can judge myself against others. It is just so natural and innocent seeming... The desire to measure my progress through my good works. My pride just refuses to give up the idea that I can't at least contribute something to my salvation.
But, of course, the moment I start measuring, I am not serving God's glory -- I am serving my own. I am looking for a way to repair my self-image, shattered by the gospel, through a path other than Jesus. It is as though my ego says "Yes, yes, I know I am sinful and inadequate before God, but... I mean LOOK at all those boxes I just packed for Hope for NY. Look at all that money I just tithed... You can't tell me that doesn't count for something."
This phenomenon is a bit like the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle of good works (or the fruits of the spirit). For those who forgot their physics (this includes me, I had to use Wikipedia), the Heisenberg uncertainty principle "states a fundamental limit on the accuracy with which certain pairs of physical properties, such as the position and momentum of a particle, can be simultaneously known. In other words, the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be controlled, determined, or known." This somewhat counterintuitive principle demonstrates how the act of measuring itself can corrupt the results of the experiment.
I believe I now understand why Jesus said:
"But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing," Matt 6:3
Jesus understood, long before Werner Heisenberg in 1927, that my pride's desire to measure itself through works would corrupt the results of my salvation.
My only hope, as always, rests in Him. I need to give up and accept that I am a sinner. Accept the dual condemnation of sinfulness and inadequacy... I need to have faith in the Holy Spirit's fruit. Let the gospel take root in my heart... Trust that God's promises are real and renounce my righteousness and my efforts to become righteous. The good works will flow naturally as a product of my heart's gratitude.
This ideal, of course, will never happen, God knows it can't... which is why I will always be a sinner in need of confession, repentance and forgiveness through grace. Yet in this cycle, I find that my need for Him grows stronger... in this cycle rests the hope and the glory to which we are all called. Simil Justus et Peccator.
CPP
No comments:
Post a Comment