GOD, SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!

For years, I had admittedly struggled with grasping a clear understanding of “sin”: what it is, how it pertains to my relationship to God, what Jesus actually accomplished through His life, death and resurrection, and so forth. Like most Christians, I typically attributed sin to moral failure, as well as a chasm which separates me from relationship with God. As a result, I experienced a great deal of internal struggle. That is, with the realization that I continue to commit moral failure even as a Christian, I found myself constantly in a situation where I was down on my knees, crying out to God for Him to forgive me. And it’s not that being on my knees in a constant plea for forgiveness from God is a “bad” thing. It was that my idea of sin and its existence in my life was a little off, and was furthermore causing me to miss out on the relational potential available with God.

I remember walking into church one day with this same notion of sin and the continued struggle in my life. Oddly enough, the teaching that night involved gaining a proper biblical perspective on this very notion based off of Romans 8:1 which states, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” and even more specifically on Colossians 2:13-14, which states, “…God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailed it to the cross.” The emphasis in both verses was on the word “condemnation.” The pastor was visiting the church as a guest speaker, and is a well-known theologian and scholar. I very much enjoy his work, so I was of course tuned in and listening intently.

“Look,” he said, “we have become so caught up in this idea that what Jesus did was wipe our slate clean. We view our sins as listed on this long slate, and when we invite Jesus into our lives he takes our slate filled with all our individual sins, washes them away, and then hands the clean slate back to us. And of course, we continue to sin, so we end up filling this slate back up with new sins, hand it back to Jesus, He washes it clean again, and hands it back to us. And on and on we go through this cycle. But this depiction is not biblical!”

What he was describing was exactly how I had pictured things, and his suggestion that it was “unbiblical” caught me by surprise.

“According to the scriptures, Jesus doesn’t merely wipe the slate clean; He completely removes the charges against us. In other words, your sins are still a part of you, and to some degree, will continue to be so. But by the grace of God, the charges are removed. You are no longer held in condemnation on account of them.”

What is God Saving Us From?

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus was truly a remarkable event. In fact, the event not only changes everything but is something which demands a response from anyone with a beating heart.

I mentioned in a previous write-up that the purpose of the coming of Christ was not to provide a means for escape. In other words, the Christian faith is not about “going to heaven when we die.” Instead, God, through Jesus, was inaugurating the redemption of His creation. He was reclaiming it as its rightful Lord, and He was also starting the process of renewing what He had created…starting with us. This is one of the reasons why we are referred to as “new creations” when we embrace Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17). We are a template for the grand New Creation of the entire cosmos that will fully break through upon Jesus’ return.

Therefore, it’s important to understand that the reality of sin is not a battle of overcoming moral failings (though it remains important to live morally and is perhaps a consequence of following Jesus). The reality of sin is the ridding of the “old self” in exchange for the “new.” The old self is focused on one’s own wants, needs, and desires. It seeks satisfaction through the likes of a fallen and broken world. The new self, on the other hand, is attached to the purpose and will of God – a purpose and will that is intent on bringing His grace and love to the world…it’s others’ focused. And every time a follower of Jesus shows grace and love to another, he or she is growing and further developing into the new self that God is creating in them. What’s more is that every act of grace and love toward another is a foreshadowing of the New Creation that is to come. God is not necessarily “saving” us in the sense that He is making us moral people so that He can snatch us away into heaven when we die. He is “saving” us from ourselves as well as the direction in which we are headed. The old self leads to destruction. The new self leads to life everlasting.

Freedom “to be”

In my book Faith and Wrestling, I devote a chapter to redefining the notion of freedom as it pertains to sin. We often talk about being freed from sin. That is, we have this picture in our heads of sin as the chains and shackles that imprison us. There is a great deal of truth in this picture. However, freedom in relation to sin is not just about being freed from its imprisonment. It’s about the freedom to be. In other words, what about when the chains and shackles come off? Do we just stand there and wait for God to take us home? Heck no! We are freed from sin, but we are also given the freedom to be the sort of people that God intended for us to be! We’re not sitting on this earth waiting for our escape to heaven; we’re free people with a purpose! We’re in the work of bringing heaven to earth (Matthew 6:10).

A very inspiring way in which to look at this is through the story of Jesus as told in the Gospel of John. John inputs a beautiful theme of Jesus as the culmination of creation. You’ll notice that John’s opening lines (“In the beginning was the Word…”.) offer a re-telling of the creation story through Jesus. And in the ancient world (especially Jewish life) Sunday was the beginning of the week – a new week for new things, new possibilities, new life. Therefore, when Jesus rises on Sunday, according to John, He is a model of the “new creation,” the new human being, the new direction God is taking humanity and, eventually, all of creation. Jesus Christ is the embodiment of redeemed love, of grace, of unending beauty.

When we consider all of this, we come to find that sin is not merely a list of moral failings; it’s rejection of God’s work in redemption. So for us, it’s the missing of an opportunity (the Greek word for sin is hamartia, which means “missing the mark”). God is not inviting us to become moral people; He is inviting us to take hold of the opportunity in joining Him and the direction in which He is taking His creation.

Those who do not seize this opportunity will be left unto themselves, to complete the path they’re on, the one they have chosen, the one that will fail to experience God’s New Creation. Those who do seize this opportunity (like myself!) will undoubtedly fail along the way; but their course remains the same. Sin may still affect them but it no longer has a hold on them. They’re leaving it in the dust as they follow Jesus.

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