Take the plunge

211 take the plungeA famous parable of Jesus: Two people go to the temple to pray. One is a Pharisee, the other a tax collector (Luke 18,9.14). Today, two thousand years after Jesus told that parable, we might be tempted to nod knowingly and say, "Yeah, the Pharisees, the epitome of self-righteousness and hypocrisy!" Fine...but let's put that assessment aside and try to imagine how the parable affected Jesus' listeners. Firstly, the Pharisees were not seen as the bigoted hypocrites that we, Christians with 2000 years of church history, like to think of them as. Rather, the Pharisees were the devout, zealous, devout religious minority of Jews who bravely defied the rising tide of liberalism, compromise, and syncretism in the Roman world with its pagan Greek culture. They called the people to return to the law and pledged faith in obedience.

When the Pharisee prays in the parable: "I thank you, God, that I am not like other people", then this is not hubris, not empty boasting. It was true. His respect for the law was impeccable; he and the Pharisaic minority had taken up the cause of loyalty to the law in a world where the law was rapidly declining. He wasn't like other people, and he doesn't even take credit for that—he thanks God it's like that.

On the other hand: Customs officers, the tax collectors in Palestine, had the worst possible reputation - they were Jews who collected taxes from their own people for the Roman occupying power and who often enriched themselves in an unscrupulous way (compare Matthew 5,46). So the distribution of roles will have been immediately clear for Jesus' listeners: the Pharisee, the man of God, as the "good guy" and the publican, the archetypal villain, as the "bad guy".

As always, Jesus makes a very unexpected statement in his parable: what we are or what we have up to do has no positive or negative effect on God; he forgives everyone, even the worst sinner. All we have to do is trust him. And just as shocking: Whoever believes he is more righteous than others (even if he may have solid evidence of it) is still in his sins, not because God has not forgiven him, but because he will not receive what he does not need to have believes.

Good news for sinners: The gospel is for sinners, not the righteous. The righteous do not grasp the true gospel of the gospel because they believe they do not need that kind of gospel. The gospel appears to the righteous as the good news that God is on His side. His trust in God is great because he knows that he lives more godly than the obvious sinners in the world around him. With a sharp tongue he condemns the awfulness of the sins of others and is glad to be close to God and not to live like the adulterers, murderers and thieves he sees on the street and in the news. For the righteous, the gospel is a fanfare against the sinners of the world, a flaming admonition that the sinner should cease to sin and live as he, the righteous, lives.

But that is not the gospel. The gospel is good news for sinners. It explains that God has already forgiven their sins and given them a new life in Jesus Christ. It is a message that will make sinners weary of the cruel tyranny of sin sit up and take notice. It means that God, the God of righteousness, who they thought was against them (because he has every reason to be), is actually for them and even loves them. It means that God does not attribute their sins to them, but that the sins have already been atoned for through Jesus Christ, the sinners have already been freed from the stranglehold of sin. It means that they no longer have to live in fear, doubt and distress of conscience for a single day. It means that they can build on the fact that God in Jesus Christ is all that He has promised for them - forgiver, redeemer, savior, advocate, protector, friend.

More than religion

Jesus Christ is not just one religious figure among many. He is no blue-eyed weakling with noble but ultimately unworldly ideas about the power of human kindness. He is also not one of many moral teachers who called on people to “strive hard”, to moral refinement and more social responsibility. No, when we speak of Jesus Christ we speak of the eternal source of all things (Hebrews 1,2-3), and more than that: He is also the Redeemer, the Purifier, the World Reconciler, who through his death and resurrection has reconciled the whole deranged universe with God again (Colossians 1,20). Jesus Christ is the one who created everything that exists, who bears everything that exists in every moment and who has taken on all sins in order to redeem everything that exists - including you and me. He came to us as one of us to make us what He made us to be.

Jesus is not just one religious figure among many and the gospel is not just one holy book among many. The gospel is not a new and improved set of rules, formulas, and guidelines intended to make good weather for us with an irritable, ill-tempered Higher Being; it is the end of religion. "Religion" is bad news: it tells us that the gods (or God) are terribly angry with us and can only be appeased by meticulously following the rules over and over again and then smile at us again. But the gospel is not "religion": It is God's very own good news to mankind. It declares all sin forgiven and every man, woman and child a friend of God. It makes an incredibly great, unconditional offer of reconciliation unconditionally to anyone who is wise enough to believe and accept it (1. John 2,2).

"But nothing in life is free," you say. Yes, in this case there is something for free. It is the greatest gift imaginable, and it lasts forever. To obtain it, only one thing is necessary: ​​to trust the giver.

God hates sin - not us

God hates sin for one reason only - because it destroys us and everything around us. You see, God does not mean to destroy us because we are sinners; He intends to save us from the sin that destroys us. And the best part is - he has already done it. He already did it in Jesus Christ.

Sin is evil because it cuts us off from God. It makes people fearful of God. It keeps us from seeing reality for what it is. It poisons our joys, upsets our priorities, and turns serenity, peace, and contentment into chaos, fear, and fear. It makes us despair of life, even and especially when we believe we want and need what we actually achieve and possess. God hates sin because it destroys us - but He doesn't hate us. He loves us. That is why he did something against sin. What he did: He forgave them - he took away the sins of the world (John 1,29) - and he did it through Jesus Christ (1. Timothy 2,6). Our status as sinner does not mean that God gives us the cold shoulder, as is often taught; it has the consequence that we, as sinners, have turned away from God, have become estranged from him. But without him we are nothing - our whole being, everything that defines us, depends on him. Sin works like a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it forces us to turn our backs on God out of fear and mistrust, to reject his love; on the other hand, it leaves us hungry for precisely this love. (Parents of adolescents will empathize with this particularly well.)

Sin is eradicated in Christ

Perhaps as a child you were given the idea by the adults around you that God sits enthroned above us as a severe judge, weighing our every action, ready to punish us if we don't do everything percent right, and us that To open heaven's gate, we should be able to do it. However, the gospel gives us the good news that God is not a strict judge at all: We have to orientate ourselves entirely on the image of Jesus. Jesus – the Bible tells us – is the perfect image of God in human eyes (“likeness of his nature”, Hebrews 1,3). In him God has "deigned" to come to us as one of us to show us exactly who he is, how he acts, with whom he associates and why; in him we recognize God, he IS God, and the office of judge is placed in his hands.
 
Yes, God made Jesus the judge of the whole world, but he is anything but a strict judge. He forgives sinners; he "judges," ie, does not condemn them (John 3,17). They are only damned if they refuse to seek forgiveness from him (v. 18). This judge pays the punishments of his defendants out of his own pocket (1. John 2,1-2), declares everyone's guilt extinguished forever (Colossians 1,19-20) and then invites the whole world to the greatest celebration in world history. We could now sit endlessly debating belief and disbelief and who is included and who is excluded from his grace; or we can leave it all to him (it is in good hands there), we can jump up and sprint to his celebration, and along the way spread the good news to everyone and pray for everyone who crosses our path.

Justice from God

The gospel, the good news, tells us: You already belong to Christ - accept it. Rejoice over it. Entrust your life to him. Enjoy his peace. Let your eyes open for the beauty, the love, the peace, the joy in the world that can only be seen by those who rest in Christ's love. In Christ, we have the freedom to confront our sinfulness and admit it to us. Because we trust him, we can confess our sins fearlessly and load them on his shoulders. He is on our side.
 
“Come to me,” says Jesus, “all you who labor and are heavy laden; I want to refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am meek and humble of heart; so you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11,28-30).
 
When we rest in Christ, we refrain from measuring righteousness; We can now confess our sins to him very bluntly and honestly. In Jesus' parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18,9-14) it is the sinful tax collector who unreservedly admits his sinfulness and wants God's grace who is justified. The Pharisee - committed to righteousness from the outset, almost exactly keeping records of his holy successes - has no eye for his sinfulness and his corresponding acute need for forgiveness and grace; therefore he does not reach out and receive the righteousness that comes only from God (Romans 1,17; 3,21; Philippians 3,9). His very "pious life by the book" obscures his view of how deeply he is in need of God's grace.

Honest assessment

In the midst of our deepest sinfulness and ungodliness, Christ comes to us with grace (Romans 5,6 and 8). Right here, in our blackest injustice, the sun of righteousness rises for us with salvation under its wings (Mal 3,20). Only when we see ourselves as we are in our true need, like the usurer and tax collector in the parable, only when our daily prayer can be "God, be merciful to me a sinner", only then can we breathe a sigh of relief in the warmth of Jesus' healing embrace.
 
There is nothing we have to prove to God. He knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our sinfulness, he knows our need of mercy. He has already done everything we needed to do to ensure our eternal friendship with him. We can rest in his love. We can trust his word of forgiveness. We do not have to be perfect; we just have to believe in him and trust him. God wants us to be his friends, not his electronic toys or his tin soldiers. He seeks love, not cadaver obedience and programmed hedonism.

Faith, not works

Good relationships are based on trust, resilient bonds, loyalty and, above all, love. Pure obedience is not enough as a foundation (Romans 3,28; 4,1-8th). Obedience has its place, but - we should know - it is one of the consequences of the relationship, not one of its causes. If one bases one's relationship with God solely on obedience, one falls either into stifling arrogance like the Pharisee in the parable or into fear and frustration, depending on how honest one is when reading one's degree of perfection on the perfection scale.
 
CS Lewis writes in Christianity Par excellence that there is no point in saying you trust someone if you don't take his advice. Say: Whoever trusts Christ will also listen to his advice and put it into practice to the best of his ability. But whoever is in Christ, who trusts him, will do his best without fear of being rejected if he fails. It happens to all of us very often (failure, I mean).

When we rest in Christ, our effort to overcome our sinful habits and mindsets becomes a committed mindset rooted in God's trustworthy forgiveness and salvation. He did not throw us into a never-ending battle for perfection (Galatians 2,16). On the contrary, he takes us on a pilgrimage of faith in which we learn to shake off the chains of bondage and pain from which we have already been delivered (Romans 6,5-7). We are not condemned to a Sisyphean struggle for perfection that we cannot win; instead we gain the grace of a new life in which the Holy Spirit teaches us to enjoy the new man, created in righteousness and hidden with Christ in God (Ephesians 4,24; Colossians 3,2-3). Christ has already done the hardest thing - to die for us; how much more will he do the easier thing - to bring us home (Romans 5,8-10)?

The leap of faith

Believe so will us in Hebrews 11,1 said, is our firm confidence in what we, those who are beloved of Christ, hope for. Faith is currently the only tangible, real appearance of the good that God has promised - the good that still remains hidden from our five senses. In other words, with the eyes of faith we see as if it were already there, the wonderful new world where the voices are friendly, the hands are gentle, where there is plenty to eat and no one is an outsider. We see what we have no tangible, physical evidence of in the present evil world. Faith generated by the Holy Spirit, which kindles in us the hope of salvation and redemption of all creation (Romans 8,2325), is a gift from God (Ephesians 2,8-9), and in him we are embedded in his peace, his calm and his joy through the incomprehensible certainty of his overflowing love.

Have you taken the leap of faith? In a culture of stomach ulcers and high blood pressure, the Holy Spirit urges us on the path of serenity and peace in the arms of Jesus Christ. Even more: In a terrifying world full of poverty and disease, hunger, brutal injustice and war, God calls us (and enables us) to direct our believing gaze to the light of his word, which brings the end of pain, of tears, of Tyranny and death and the creation of a new world in which justice is at home, promises (2. Petrus 3,13).

“Trust me,” Jesus tells us. "Regardless of what you see, I make everything new - including you. Worry no longer and count on me to be exactly what I have promised to be for you, for your loved ones and for the whole world. Worry no longer and count on me to do exactly what I have said I will do for you, for your loved ones and for the whole world.”

We can trust him. We can load our burdens on our shoulders - our burdens of sin, our burdens of fear, our burdens of pain, disappointments, confusion and doubt. He will wear it as he has carried and wears us even before we knew it.

by J. Michael Feazel


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