It's Not Just The Potholes That Will Get Ya!

Okay, so I have a horrible, terrible, very bad confession to make.  (Please don’t send me letters.)  People tell me all the time that I am a “good person”.  This always makes me laugh, because my true confession is what I really deserve.  What I really deserve is hell.

No, really.  That’s what I deserve.  It isn’t by accident that Jesus said that if your right hand causes you to sin you should cut it off.  Everyone wants to say that’s metaphorical, but do we get to pick and choose which parts of the Bible are metaphor and which ones we should take literally?  I mean, a Holy God wrote that particular book.  I think he really wants us to take sin seriously.

Someone recently accused me of being confident in my holiness.  I am pretty sure this person does not know me at all.  However, God is dealing with me on this issue recently, and so I have to share.  Hang on to the end, though, because there is hope.

In Genesis, when Adam and Eve first sinned, their human instinct was to hide.  This always makes me laugh.  Playing hide and seek with God is pretty funny.  He made the Garden you are enjoying on the earth that he also made, so how you gonna hide, breaux?  (That’s for my New Orleans friends!)

Anyway, this was the beginning of the blood sacrifice system that would change everything.  Literally.  An animal was sacrificed to provide a covering for the nakedness of that first couple, and the next thing we know, a blood sacrifice is acceptable and a grain sacrifice is not.  (Okay, aside from the condition of his heart – there is still a blood sacrifice here, so hang with me a bit longer.)  In fact, this was such a big deal that it led to the very first murder.

You know the one I am talking about – Cain and Able?  In Genesis 4:6-7, before Cain kills Able, God warns him.  “The Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen?  If you do well, will you not be accepted?  And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door.  Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.’”  (ESV – emphasis mine)

I think sometimes we get this idea in our heads that sin is like a pothole.  It’s coming up on the road and because we might not see it in time, we could fall in.  Sin is much worse than that.  Sin is crouching at the door - it wants us to fail.  However, there must be some way for us to avoid it, since that is what God suggested here, right?

Another terrible confession is now necessary.  I can’t do that.  I mean, yes, I can avoid situations that cause me to sin if I am aware of them.  Sometimes that is harder than others, but if I don’t go to a place where someone is getting drunk, I probably can dodge that bullet.  If I don’t let sinful people speak into my life, I can avoid some sin there, too.  But, really people, it is crouching at my door as well as yours.  It is in attack mode, and even when we see the potholes, sometimes there is nothing we can do to avoid them.  I am now talking about those potholes that do $600 worth of damage, as a reference point for those of you in NOLA.   You know the ones!

I hope that you understand when I say that I could never do this that this is not a defeatist attitude.  (Oops, see?  Double negative!) I just know that I am not capable of avoiding sin in my own strength and ability.  Truly, I think this is impossible for anyone. 

Fortunately, for me and for you, there is a way.  There is a way to at least cut down on our sin, even if we cannot avoid it completely.  That way is surrender.  My own willfulness wants to participate in the sinful activity around me.  My own willfulness surrendered to Christ can usually avoid it.  I say usually because perfection is not my aim.  That, too, is impossible.  However, aiming for holiness gets me a whole lot closer to the goal of being more like Jesus.  The trick is not to defeat myself when I cannot achieve it, but not allowing the sin to continue.  This, I will admit, is a rather difficult task, but not impossible.

The other danger that is so hard to avoid is trying to make it look like I don’t have sin in my life.  I really try to avoid this when I can, but sometimes I think people perceive this about me without knowing the truth.  This third confession, which is not so horrible in my humble opinion, is for all of you that are wondering.  I have not arrived.  Sometimes, I wonder if I am even on the train, you know?

I shared this list with the praise team yesterday from Mark 7, somewhere around verse 22, of sins that defile a person.  See, what you see is outside of me.  What defiles a person comes from within.  That, by the way, is the part you can’t see.  You can pull the wool over my eyes if you try.  You can try to make me think that you have arrived at perfection by covering your secret sin.  It won’t really work, because I know the truth.  But, you can try.

The list starts out pretty hefty – things like sexual immorality, theft and murder.  These are things most of us avoid like the plague, and we are proud of that.  However, it ends with things like pride, which is our Kryptonite.  Did you see what I did there?

Verse 23 sums it up nicely – All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.  Yep, even our pride defiles us.  Man, God must see some really dirty folk walking around down here thinking we are alive. 

Here’s the thing.  Back to that hide and seek with God thing?  Here’s how to avoid it.  The only thing that can cover our sin is the blood of Christ.  Stop.  Read that again.  I am pretty sure this makes me closed-minded, but I am okay with that.  It really is the only thing that can cover our sin.

If I have any confidence in my personal holiness, it is this:  because of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, when God looks at me, He sees His Son instead of my sinful condition.  (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 Cor. 5:21 – Memorize that Friendship Partners – okay, and the rest of you, too!)   My confidence is in Christ, not in Jamie.

That means humbling myself, which most of us do not like.  It also means letting go.  Letting go of our right to have things the way we want them sometimes.  Letting go of our right to have things the way we think they should be.  Even letting go of our right to mentally flog ourselves repeatedly for not doing the right thing, but then correcting our path through the work of the Holy Spirit. 

Let’s face it.  If this sinner can do that, so can you.