One Simple Choice
I want to begin by saying, the basic message of the Christian faith is not that difficult to understand. God said he would make it so clear that even a child could understand it. Having said that, it took me a long time to realize the difference between religion and Christianity.
I grew up in a religious home. Every Saturday, my father and I would put our lawnmower in the trunk of our car and drive to church to cut the grass, so it would look nice on Sunday morning. I polished my shoes on Saturday night and wore a suit to church. We always sat together as a family until I became an acolyte and sat up front facing the congregation. It was a big deal to light the candles and sit up front in a white robe. I went to Vacation Bible School, was confirmed after two years of Lutheran catechism and believed in the general notion that God existed.
In all this time I never knew Christianity was a relationship with God, not a religion about God.
Religion is spelled D-O. It is something I do to win God’s favor. Religion is designed to place me in a position of special status or favor before God. Religion says I earn my way to heaven by being good. Religion says the goal is to balance the good and the bad. I get drunk on Saturday night but I get up and attend church on Sunday morning. Religion says God grades on a curve and on the curve I’m doing ok. I’m not as good as some but I’m not as bad as others. I’m not an international terrorist, a dope peddler or a criminal.
Religion says I do religious things. I get baptized, confirmed, attend church and attempt to lead a morally successful life. Religion says, on the curve, I deserve to be in the front half of the line.
The problem is, nowhere in the Bible do we find any kind of such status keeping. In fact, we find just the opposite. There is no curve. There is nothing I can do to win God’s favor. The Bible says the problem with that kind of thinking is that I’m comparing myself with the wrong standard.
It really is a question of what standard do you use. How good is good enough? Several years ago, I signed up to run the Disney marathon on January 1. I made my way to the local lake where runners would train by running around the lake. The first day, I hooked up with some pretty lean runners. They asked me if I would like to run with them. I said, “Absolutely!” Off we went. Three quarters of a mile into the run I realized I forgot to ask two important questions. “How fast are we going to run and how far?” I thought I was going to have a heart attack! It really is a question of what standard do you use. How fast is fast and how far is far?
When I go to the movies and order popcorn, the clerk asks what size do I want, small, medium or large. So,I ask how small is small and how large is large? Small is a bag, medium is a bigger bag and large is a giant tub. I get the tub. It’s a question of which standard do you use.
When it comes to our relationship with God, we tend to compare ourselves with the lowest common denominator. Another flawed human being. The problem is, I can always find someone doing worse than me. It’s like me bragging that I can bench press more than my grandmother. I don’t hear many people comparing themselves to Mother Teresa or St. Francis. It’s a question of which standard do we use.
Now, we have a big problem. God’s standard is perfection. When Jesus was asked, what is the standard to enter the Kingdom of God he replied in Matthew 5:48, “You must therefore be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” Do you want to know what the standard is? It is not another human being, it is God! We should compare ourselves with God. Any question what the standard is? It is the very character and nature of God himself.
Now this creates a big problem. At one time Jesus said, let me break this standard down in real concrete terms. A simple definition of perfection is 100% conformity to the Ten Commandments. All of them, all of the time. Let me make it simpler Jesus said, “love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul all of the time.” And if you still think you’re on the plus side of the curve, he throws in a kicker, “And love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Any question what the standard is?
The standard is not human goodness. That is religion. The standard is perfection and righteousness. The kind that God has. Nowhere do we ever find Jesus talking about human goodness as the way to heaven. He says it is righteousness.
When we compare ourselves with God’s standard,we all fall short. Paul writes in Romans 3:10, “As it is written, none is righteous, no not one. In Romans 3:23 he writes, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Did you notice that word “all.” Know what all means. All. Everyone. That’s you and me. We have a big problem. We fail to meet God’s standard. There are a lot of good people in the world. But there are none who are righteous.
The philosopher Friedrich Hegel said in the Age of the Enlightenment, that every day, in every way, the world was getting better and better. He believed that if we applied science, learning and education, we could produce a great world to live in. He believed we were born basically good. I have always wanted to ask Mr. Hegel, “Have you ever had children?” My experience Mr. Hegel is that the first words out of our children’s mouth were not Mommy or Daddy, they were, ”Me, mine, no way and right now.” I have spent all my parenting hours teaching them how to “be good.” I have not had to spend one moment teaching them how to “be bad.” They do that inherently.
There seems to be something intrinsically wrong in our human nature. Not that we are as bad as we could possibly be, but there just seems to be something wrong. There is something broken and fallen That is why bad things happen in our world.
And so, the ultimate question of human history becomes, “how do flawed people, who have made bad choices and failed to meet God’s standards, get back into a relationship with a Holy, righteous, perfect God.
It’s not that we’re as bad as we could be. Think of a glass of crystal clear water. Take a drop of black ink and drop it in the water and stir it up. It affects all aspects of the water. It is still water. But it is polluted in all its areas and parts. That’s like us. We have a pollution in our human nature that contaminates all of our being. Now here’s where the problem comes in.
God by his very nature is perfect and because he is perfect he cannot have a relationship with that which is imperfect without affecting the very nature of perfection. Now things get even more complex.
Because of our failure to meet God’s standard, we have piled up a huge moral debt before God that we can’t possibly repay. The concept of debt should not be foreign to most of us. Most of us live with mountains of borrowed credit. We finance our homes, cars and children’s educations on debt. Consumer debt recently hit 13 trillion dollars in our country. And one thing I’ve learned about creditors. Sooner or later they call in the debt and like to get paid back.
Our debt before God is like that. We have piled up an enormous moral debt. before God, one dollar at a time, until we are buried in debt and can’t possibly pay it back. We are morally bankrupt.
No matter how much God loves us, because He is a Holy God, he must see that justice is served and that the debt is paid in full. A payment we can’t possibly make.
Martin Luther understood the seriousness of this dilemma. As a monk in the Augustinian Monastery in Erfurt. The priests had told him he must live a sinless life. No matter how hard he tried he realized he was missing the mark. Every day he went to the confessional to have his sins forgiven. He was terrified that there were sins that he was omitting. What if he didn’t know something was a sin. What if he was sinning in his dreams at night and couldn’t remember them in the morning? When he expressed his concerns to the priests, they told him “You are taking your sins too seriously.” But Luther knew better. He knew God demanded perfection and payment. Finally, one night in his cell he realized that he was damned and that the only way out was that he would need a savior. He said it was as if the heavens were opened and he realized that is exactly what God had provided. A Savior in His own son.
He understood, that at the point of our greatest need God makes an amazing provision. An exchange takes place. God does something He doesn’t have to do. He sends His Son to pay my moral debt. A substitution takes place. One person takes the place of another Jesus says, “I will exchange my life for yours.”
Jesus did what I couldn't do. He paid a debt I couldn’t pay. He met a standard I couldn’t meet. Making it possible for my debt to be forgiven. It is stamped, paid in full.
Outrageous, ridiculous, unbelievable we say. John Wesley called it amazing, amazing grace.
That’s why Christianity is spelled D-O-N-E. I’m a Christian not because of what I do, but because of what he’s done. This is the central message of the Christian faith. It is not shrouded in mystery. Even a child can understand it.
The question becomes, how do I get in on it? How does it become a part of my life? It begins with a relationship that starts by saying “I do.” Understanding is not enough. I have to make a decision. I must act individually.
Before I got married, I started dating my wife. Over time we started to steady date. We took long walks in the rain, stayed up late and talked on the phone. I even made attempts at poetry. Over time we got engaged. Question. When we were engaged, were we married? No. We didn’t get married until we said, “I do.”
Becoming a Christian is saying “I do” to Jesus. It is not the end of a relationship. It is the beginning. It is making a commitment to spend the rest of my life getting to know Him and His Father through the Holy Spirit.
Question: Is there a time in your life when you said “yes” to Jesus and God’s amazing grace? Is there a time when you became personally aware of your moral inability to meet God’s standards and said, “I need Jesus to do what I can’t do?” Is there a time when you placed your faith in Jesus and trusted Him as your Savior? Is there a time when you trusted Jesus not only as the Savior of the world but also as the Savior of your life?
In 1912, Bruce Ismay, the CEO of the White Star Lines, said his newest and greatest ship, the Titanic, named after the mightiest of the Greek gods, was “unsinkable.” It was a veritable floating palace of tennis courts, saunas, beauty shops, restaurants and state rooms. Four days out of port, on a star-lit night, with the seas, smooth as silk, shortly before midnight, the alarm sounded. Less than three hours later, 1,514 souls went to an icy grace.
There were all kinds and classes of people on board that ship that night. The servant class, the engine room, some of the richest people in the world. But when the ship went down, there were only two kinds of people on board, the saved and the lost. No one was half saved.
When it comes to God’s amazing grace there are only two kinds of people. Those who have heard about God’s grace and those who have been changed by God’s grace and been saved. Is there a time in your life when you said, “I do” to God’s grace? If not, maybe this is the time God has chosen for you to say “yes” to Him. If you do, it will change the whole trajectory of your life, family, relationships and future. God bless you! Stu
