Till We Have Faces: A Christian's Search For Authenticity

 

“But God… while we were still sinners…”    -Romans 5:8

 

Isn’t it amazing the amount of emphasis the unbelieving world puts on the church of Jesus Christ in terms of its “separate-ness,” its “other worldliness.”  Its “righteousness” and virtues are both boons in the eyes of certain ‘outsiders,’ and as burned out ruins by many more.  Oftentimes, the church is viewed as the broken toy that used to entertain the Western world until Europe grew up and crushed it with Reason.  It’s also, incredibly, seen as a phenomenon by others; a source of hope and spiritual devotion that somehow mankind developed a need for, and, in that it ‘scratches’ that sociological ‘itch,’ it’s great.  –“But, it would be ideal if those people got over it, if they could,” would come the honest, skeptical reply.

 

More amazing is how much emphasis the church of Jesus Christ itself puts on its own “holiness,” “righteousness” and “spiritual discernment!”  When we’re not stealing children from their families because our American dollars let us do it- “in Jesus’ name” ( http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cb_haiti_americans_detained )- then we’re disclosing certain oracles pulled from God’s omniscience to television audiences all over the developed world, outlining private discourses the people of  a certain Central American country has had with the devil, and the deal writ in blood that forged their “pact” ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TE99sAbwM&feature=fvw ).  Simultaneously, we maintain that we are “free,” we are “healthy;” we “are rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing;” it’s the others who need to change!  Is it any wonder why the ‘un-churched,’ or the ‘pre-churched’ don’t know the gospel and don’t really care to?  -We’re just like them, they know it, we’re just illusioned by our airs, them content with what present reality brings, and unconcerned with the hypocrisy so often on display within the ranks of the “saintly.”

 

“For when we were still without strength…”    -Romans 5:6

 

It’s almost as if those inside the church and those outside are similar.  And, maybe they’re similar in more ways than one or than both of them would like to admit?  -Are you seeing where I’m going with this?  Since when did it become unfashionable in the Christian church to forbid boasting in our weaknesses (2 Corinthians 11:30), to refuse confessing our sins to one another (James 5:16) and to fail to restore each other with faith-filled words of forgiveness and friendship (Galatians 6:1&2)?  Was it, because of “what it might look like if I sympathize with him or her;” if I bear my arm and show the scars of my past to another?  “What if they think I’m weak and lose respect for me?”  -Sound familiar?  A little mental justification as to why the work of living Christ-like and reconciling a world to God might not be your “cup of tea?”  ~  Write it down!

 

Now, just in case you’ve been a good Bible student, or a thorough and researched arguer, and looked up the verses I’ve only excerpted from, let me quote them completely, then explain their context, as I see them.  Lastly, I’ll make my thesis plain.

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    -Romans 5:8

And, “For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”    -Romans 5:6

 

These verses, along with each of the nineteen brother and sister verses in Romans 5 say loudly the greatest single truth of the crucifixion (when Jesus hung on the cross as God in our place to make us one with God): that Jesus’ righteousness is the singular basis of every person’s right-ness with God, the Father.  Jesus did it, no one else.  His own ability, grandeur, as God, and Messianic selection accomplished rescue for His Bride, the Church, and purchased the right from God to spare us from His own just punishment against all our ugliness and disobedience of heart and mind, and lavish grace on us as children and friends.

 

  However, chapter 5 cannot be separated from chapter 6, where Paul writes, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness” (Romans 6:17).  In other words, the fact of Jesus’ authority over sin, and His purchasing of us for His pleasure and our eternal, wrath-free joy, even His immense, divine power, won’t stop Christian people from choosing to, in Paul’s words, “present (themselves) as slaves to obey… sin leading to death.”  We still have to choose to do what we know is right, to choose His way.  He wants us to choose obedience towards God and His word, in light of the fact that He loves us, and that He died on our behalf.

 

My thesis, then, reads like this: Jesus’ purchase of sinful men and women for His own purposes did not come to His church like an excuse to separate and “unplug” from our day to day lives and neighbors, even our global family within humanity scattered abroad.  He purchased us for God by His blood on the cross so that we would be raised up before his broken world- as He was- bleeding, suffering the loss of our own lives in order to give life to the weeping or indignant, huddled masses strewn around our own lives’ crosses.

 

Pretensions are a waste of time and a veil for pride.  Satan loves a phony and a weak-willed man or woman; both are easily toyed with and turned away from truth or the will of God for their lives.  Instead, what grows up before them is a jungle of confusion, dense and impenetrable, till scared and utterly debased they break and cry out in truth to Him; no airs then, no doubts or hesitations.  The pain of tasting the fruit of their pretensions purged the soul and brought them to their knees again, before a powerful and patient God.  Then, and only then, will he or she boast in their weaknesses; they will have lost the will to live for themselves, if even only for a day or two, or a month or a year.

 

That’s a special time, when all is Christ, and “having been set free from sin, (we) became slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:18).  It’s a free time, a joyful time; it’s a moment sweet and filling, welling up into Hope.  And, Hope, it says, “doesn’t disappoint” (Romans 5:5).  –I could use some, A lot of that!  What about You?

 

“For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die.

  But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”    -Romans 5:7&8