Here's why I stood beneath such a clear blue waterfall of grace:
because I'm so caked with sin.
Sometimes I forget the simple fact that I am a sinner. I somehow start to think that being a Christian or loving God means that I shouldn't be sinning anymore. I feel that every time I sin it is invalidating my identity in Christ. It scares me to think that I am not really saved, because I want to be safe! I don't want to fear the danger of being forever separated by God because God is love....can you imagine never again being loved for eternity? So to be saved is to be loved forever. And when I sin I feel the shame in me for choosing to do the wrong thing. So sin becomes the standard of my standing. Put another way, the external actions produced by me become what define my valid standing before God. If I sin, I feel invalid, and if I don't sin, I feel more valid.
Here's where the waterfall analogy comes in. Sin has nothing to do with my validity in Christ except to be the reason He had to die. That is sin's ONLY relevancy for me as a believer.
So all those times when I thought that sin meant this or that (sin meant I'm falling away, sin meant I'm not a true child of God, sin means I'm choosing death, etc) those were somehow twisted half truths that were meant to scare me.
But when sin's only relevancy for me is that it is why Jesus had to die, there is no questioning my place and my being safe in God's love.
If we forget the foundation we forget everything! The fruit is not what makes the tree good, but the tree is what makes the fruit good. In other words, my actions (the fruit which are sometimes sinful) are not what make me a saved person, but I am a saved person because my foundation (the tree) is Jesus. It is so easy to focus on the fruit and forget the tree. I am saved because I believe in Jesus not because I'm a "good" person. The reality of my personhood, or what's in my heart (abundant sin) is what I am saved from. It is there, and I see it everyday, because I have a heart full of evil--which is why Jesus died.
Luke 6:45 says,
A good man produces good
out of the good storeroom of his heart.
An evil man produces evil
out of the evil storeroom,
for his mouth speaks
from the overflow of the heart.
With this it means that good must naturally flow.
If goodness does not naturally flow from you, or you find it hard to do the right thing (as I do) that is because you are not a good person! Does that mean I am not a child of God, since God can only be the Father of perfectly righteous children since He is perfect? Well yes, it does if you don't include the gospel.
Thanks be to Jesus who took away the law that produced sins (because the law showed us that we were breaking it! When we break God's law we are defying God! Anyone who defies God deserves to be thrown out of His kingdom. Why would God want to be a King of foolish deviants? His kingdom would be divided then, and it would strip Him of His title and power as King....then His kingdom would be no different than the kingdoms on earth that exploit the poor and abuse power. My point is God is perfect, and His kingdom is in perfect order and produces only an abundance of goodness, love, joy and peace, why? Because He doesn't allow deviants to stay, everyone in His kingdom is perfectly satisfied in Him).
That was a needed tangent.
"For the law brings wrath, but where there is no law there is no transgression. That is why it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace"
(Romans 4:15)
So where is there no law then? Because it's true, if there is no law then there is no breaking it or defying something that is not there. If there is no traffic light and I continue driving on a street, have I broken the law of traffic lights? No, because there needs to be a traffic light in order for me to break it by running a red light or stopping at a green one.
So in the case of breaking God's law and commuting sins, what does it mean that there is no law for believers? It means that Jesus removed all the traffic lights. How? If a traffic light were removed it is because it is no longer necessary. Jesus removed the law from us because it was no longer necessary. How is it no longer necessary? When a traffic light is removed because it is no longer necessary it is because something is now better, making its removal possible. So then Jesus was able to remove the law from us because something better was now operating. What is that "something better" because it was powerful enough to remove God's Law from us! I mean that's crazy. What's more powerful than God's Law?! Who would dare to remove what God placed there...the answer is NO ONE could do such an act except God Himself.
Jesus, by being made into man, leaving His perfect condition of divinity, came down to the earth and fulfilled the law--He abolished the law in Himself because He is perfect and a perfect being never breaks the law, so the law was now useless because two positives just make a positive. A negative (sinner) and a positive (God's perfect law) make a negative because of sin, and a negative and a negative also make a negative because two wrongs make a bigger wrong! So only a positive and a positive would make a single positive. Jesus was positively perfect, and when He came as a man entering a world under the perfect Law, he became the "something better."
We have the Law or we have Jesus.
So we all understand that the Law is impossible for us to follow in order to be saved because no one is perfect! So then how does it work with Jesus? How is it that we are saved by Jesus?
Jesus never broke a single one of God's law on earth, as a man, because He never defied God. However, having never broken God's perfect law he then died a sinless perfect man...he met with death not as a sinner but as perfect. He basically chose to die, which is the punishment of sin set up by God's Law.
Death is the result of sin.
If you don't sin you don't die.
But Jesus never sinned so why did He die?
Good question.
Why did Jesus die if He never sinned?
It's crazy when you think about it. And I have no answer except that which is found in the bible. Because from all that thinking ...never once did it seem like God had to die or was forced to die, it seems like Jesus just chose to die.
Because "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him will not die, but have everlasting life." (John 3:16).
To answer that question, why did Jesus die...that is the one and only time we look at our sins. Or in other words, when you and I sin tonight, that is the only thing we should think about in return.
Tonight I will sin. You will sin. No exceptions. When that happens what are you going to do? What is your orientation going to be in that moment? Maybe like me, you will feel bad and torn and frustrated about it. I usually feel depraved and crazy inside. I think "what's wrong with me?!" Or "why can't I change?!" Until the gospel of truth hits my heart like a bat swung at my piñata heart by the strong hands of the Holy Spirit. And all the little candies fall to the floor. Delightful candies. Because that's what the gospel is, it's good.
So then I repent, claim the glorious provisions of the cross and hate my sin but reach out to Jesus for new portions of hope because I am hating what is no longer relevant to me.
What is relevant now is that I have the Holy Spirit to help enable me to overcome the sin deeply rooted in my heart tomorrow or the next moment. And the sin I commit tonight and the next day and the next day will all be a reminder for why Jesus had to die and nothing more. Because I believe Jesus took away the Law from me which means there are no traffic lights to warn me that I am speeding. There is no Law is warm me that I am sinning.
My real struggle is to increase my faith rather than struggling externally to change my sinful behaviors. The Pharisees were so bent on what they did and how they acted holy, looking clean on the outside but on the inside they were dirty. They were dirty on the inside not because they were Pharisees but because they were human. Every human is dirty because every human without Jesus is under God's Law. The moment you choose Jesus is the very same moment that the Law is removed from you, making you no longer dirty. Not that you did something to be clean, you didn't act better or change a behavior, but Jesus removed the Law because He is perfect.
People under the Law, such as the Pharisees, will struggle to do, do, do, but Jesus said to believe, believe, believe!
It is not by what we do that we are saved, but it is by what He did that we are saved...meaning what we do is no longer relevant to our being saved. What we do is only a reminder for why He had to do what He did, and how we get the free gift of His sacrifice.
I mean is that not a glorious waterfall or what? I'm absolutely clean. Not because I didn't sin yesterday or today or even tomorrow. I will sin because sin runs rampant in this body of mine, but thanks be to Jesus who declares me clean to God so that I enter into His Kingdom. By faith, Abraham believed and it was counted to him as righteousness. It doesn't say, by doing Abraham earned his blessing.
“And to the one who
does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly,
his faith is counted as righteousness,
just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:
"Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;
blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
“He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead..." (Romans 4:19)
That's me! That's what sin feels like....death. But when I sin I will not weaken in my faith: that Christ has redeemed me from death. I am no longer under sin but under the freedom of the Spirit.
You might wonder:
1. How does Jesus declare me clean? Like what happened when He met with death even though He was without sin?
He was able to meet with death only by taking on our sins, that's where your and my sins go...to Jesus everytime, and then Jesus dumped them off for good at Death, slapped Death in the face in a battle He won, and opened the door to the Kingdom of God for everyone who would hear His voice and follow Him into it. We believe this Jesus. There is Death and there is Jesus. He is the only way, truth and life to the Kingdom of God for eternity. All other ways lead to Death.
2. What does it mean to put off the deeds of the flesh or to not gratify the desires of the flesh then, as found in Romans 8:13, Colossians 3:5, and Galatians 5:16?
In short, once you realize that the desires of your flesh and sins lead you to Death, I mean it kind of naturally happens that you don't want to keep heading in that direction. Of course I will still sin, because I'm in desperate need of convincing that Death is the only other option besides Jesus, but that is why I have the Holy Spirit in me. He is putting to death the deeds of the flesh by making me always cast them onto Jesus who cast them into oblivion and I walk away without a scratch.
These are good questions to consider and wrestle with. Fight for freedom. Because who the Son sets free is free indeed, I don't care what sin might tell me or what others might tell me, but I keep my eyes on Jesus, the only one who makes it possible for all the traffic lights to be removed.
Yes.
Stand with me under the waterfall of clear blue refreshing grace fellow sinner.
Jmegrey
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