For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. | 2 Corinthians 5:21
One of the points that I made in the sermon Sunday bears repeating (not because it is anything I came up with, but because it is something that we often get wrong):
Part of being an ambassador for Christ is properly representing the role that we play in redemption:
- we are the sinners that make His death necessary.
- We are people who have been rescued from death and given life.
- We are creatures, who have been created and sustained by our creator.
One of the biggest mistakes that Christians make when they think of representing Christ is they point to their good works and say: see, just like Christ. The watching world looks at our efforts and are not impressed. They aren’t supposed to be impressed by us. We are hypocrites. We are prideful. We are all of the things that God says are an abomination to Him.
BUT, we are also loved. Redeemed. That is the story we must tell. That is the message of reconciliation.
The story of God’s grace does not begin with I, me, or we. It begins and ends with Him. This entire world was created to display the grace of God. It (and everything in it, including ALL people) exist to bring glory and honor to the Creator. The message of reconciliation is about how we fail to live this out; how this alienates us from God and makes us enemies of Him. It is also the story of how Jesus Christ embodies hope and takes on the punishment that we deserve so that we can be the righteousness of God. All of the morality and right living is our act of worship to He who has gifted us faith and salvation.
In this story, we are weak, sinful, and saved. But there is a way of telling this story that elevates our position and gives us reason to boast. It points to our righteousness as the reason why God saves us. When morality gets placed before God’s work of reconciling, it puts our witness on very fragile ground.
I was reminded of this when I read an article after service titled, How Hypocrisy drives Unbelief . The point of the article was not that Christians have to find a way to be less hypocritical, but that hypocrisy is especially damaging when the weight of faith is on morality. It said it this way:
This all leads me to the complex relationship between theology, morality, and hypocrisy—and to how hypocrisy is particularly damaging when Christians are clearer about their moral stands than they are about even the identity of Jesus. When religion is primarily experienced as a moral code, moral failure undermines the faith itself.
Very simply: a faith that is built on our weak shoulders will only ever be as good as we can be. When we sin and fall short (which we do continually), our faith will be undermined and our witness shattered. Hypocrisy is not the problem, it is the false idea that we can be good.
The gospel doesn’t pretend that we are any better than we are. Instead, it declares us entirely undeserving of the love of God. This is what makes grace so amazing: it saves a wretch like me. In this, our hypocrisy only makes the gift of grace more generous, as we are freed from the burden of proving ourselves ‘good enough.’ We fail the morality test, but God’s grace is sufficient. This is what we should be pointing others to. The article says it this way:
At the same time, we’re hopeful. We know the answer to the tax collector’s cry, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” Grace overflows. That’s why it matters so much to know exactly who Jesus is. That knowledge strips us of pretense. It strips us of pride. It allows us to see ourselves as we truly are. But it also allows us to see an even greater truth: who He is, the God who loved us enough to die for our sin.
The lesson is consistent. Time and again, when our commitment to morality collides with our self-interest, then our self-interest wins. A religion of morality devolves to a religion of self. It’s powerless against our pride. But when a commitment to self collides with Jesus, then it’s our pride that’s powerless. We know exactly where our hope lies.
Even as we struggle to do right in response to the gift of grace, we fall short. We can rest in the fact that we are not good, but we are God’s. And this is the story that we should tell and re-tell.