SIN > Unmasked: Self-righteousness; “not guilty, your honour.”

Three modes of righteousness – which works?

At the outset here, I want to posit a definition of two terms: righteousness and imprimatur.  You’ll see why as we go along.

Righteousness:

Breaking the word down into its parts – right-eous-ness – and working from right to left: the word literally means ‘the state of being in the way of right’ (where right means true and ‘as it ought to be’).  Thinking of it theologically, it means the state of being in right relationship with God – and therefore on track to being (or ‘potentially’) in right relationship with other humans and the rest of creation.

Imprimatur:

An imprimatur is an official stamp of approval; an item with an imprimatur is officially authorised and approved.  A few hundred years ago, the only approved and authorised bible was that with the imprimatur of King James – hence the Authorised Version / King James Version.

Let me now link those two together as we begin this examination: there are three ‘modes’ of righteousness in popular thinking; only one has the imprimatur of God.  Only one mode or type of righteousness is approved by God, secures the divine stamp of approval, and delivers the status of righteous, the verdict of ‘not guilty’ and the declaration of ‘justified’.

Three modes or types of righteousness

One: self-righteousness.  This is that righteousness that we calculate, determine and append to ourselves: we set the terms; we give the assent; we declare it done.  Here you place all your trust in yourself.  In this mode of righteousness, God is who we say he is based on our preferred theology and his standards are those we assess and ascribe to him.  God ‘accepts’ me because I am a good person by the standards I use to measure good and bad.  The USA idea of good guys and bad guys – goodies and baddies – is typical of this approach.  God has to accept me because I’m a ‘righteous’ person by my definition and standards – which I have come to by careful study of the scriptures and religious rules.  You are your own imprimatur.

Two: other-righteousness.  This is that righteousness that comes from placing ourselves under a go-between – a mediator; righteousness which we derive second-hand from our go-between or mediator.  Here you place all your trust is another person or a system.  This ‘other’ person may be a priest, a pastor, a guru, a celebrity, a parent, a shaman, a cleverman – even just a friend.  In this mode, there is always that second ‘layer’ of authority.  In some circles, there are multiple tiers, all the way up to the supreme (yet still human) ‘father’.  God accepts you because you ‘go through the right channels’.  That person – or the system / hierarchy they represent – becomes your imprimatur.

Three: Christ-righteousness.  This is that righteousness that comes from placing yourself at God’s mercy by admitting that you are ‘guilty as charged’ and have no leg to stand on besides the one He provides.  Here you place all your trust in Jesus Christ as the only mediator between God and man who can actually deliver what you are seeking to obtain.  Jesus effectively becomes to us all the things we need for salvation and righteousness.  Apostle Peter makes this point in his letter to the Jewish believers: “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”  Jesus becomes our imprimatur

Of course, I’m not ignorant of the sea of religious debate around this.  However, my concern is not to attempt to prove one ‘system’ superior to all others; rather it is to lay out clearly that system which is central to our particular historical and cultural tradition.  In this respect, I am taking my cues from the writings of the sages in that particular historical and cultural tradition.  For us in the English-speaking world, there is enough given to us in our scriptures that we can genuinely come to the truth if that is our authentic pursuit.

And in that regard, two things stand out starkly to me as pivotal issues: there is one ‘mediator’ who totally has the divine imprimatur; and there is one approach to righteousness that, likewise, has the divine imprimatur.

·         There is one mediator between God and man: the man Christ Jesus – 1 Timothy 2:5

·         Jesus is “the approved” of God: on what basis?  At his baptism, God clearly declares: “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” – echoed by Peter in his letter some years later.  And Paul notes in his letter to the Romans that he was “...set apart for the gospel of God, which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning His Son, having come of the seed of David according to flesh, having been declared the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness, by resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord.”

·         Paul notes (Romans 3:21) there is a righteousness revealed that is not dependent on the old law or on keeping religious laws and rules and protocols.

·         There is a problem with being “unacquainted with the teaching about righteousness”. (Hebrews 5)

·         Peter, writing to Jewish christians of his day noted, “It would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn away from the holy commandment passed on to them.” (2 Peter 2:21)

Now, with that context and background, plus what’s gone before in this series, it’s not hard to see that self-righteousness and other-righteousness is missing the mark, falling short and living by sight; which shines a spotlight on one of the strange features of old Israel identified by the prophets whose writings we have in our bibles: the protest, “we have not sinned”.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, this protest goes up from the earth to assault God’s ears as if the people had never heard a thing.  And in one sense, I suppose they hadn’t, if God ‘hardened the hearts’ of the people.

Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all carried a theme that went roughly like this: “Make the heart of this people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed.”

This is the same theme Jesus picked up on hundreds of years later speaking of the Jewish people of his day.  It’s the idea I referred to earlier about why Jesus spoke in parables.  Indeed, that is precisely what Matthew records (chapter 13) in his version of events when Jesus spoke to the people in the parable of the sower.

And this aligns with Paul’s understanding that, for a time, the Jews are blocked from entering the blessing to allow for the grafting-in of the Gentiles, the nations of the world.

And if you look at the record of Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 9, the Jews were not slow in raising the protest that if God was ‘blocking’ them, how could they be guilty of anything?  ‘Why does God still find fault’, they protest; ‘who can resist God’s will?’

One of the great laments of the old testament prophets of Israel was that, despite everything, they insisted they had done nothing wrong: ‘not guilty, your honour’, they would say; ‘we have just cause and clear justification for acting as we did’.  Jesus and Paul and Peter ran into exactly the same thing hundreds of years later.  What does that tell us?

Paul’s response was strident:

But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?  Shall what is formed say to Him who formed it, ‘Why have you made me like this?”  Does not the potter have the right to make from the same lump of clay one vessel for special occasions and another for common use?

What if God, intending to show His wrath and make His power known, bore with great patience the vessels of His wrath, prepared for destruction?  What if He did this to make the riches of His glory known to the vessels of His mercy, whom He prepared in advance for glory – including us, whom He has called not only from the Jews, but also from the Gentiles?  As he says in Hosea: “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people, and I will her ‘my beloved’ who is not my beloved” and “It will happen that in the very place where it was said to them, ‘you are not my people’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God’.

Then the light begins to dawn: Paul opens up some of the revelation given to Him by the Spirit of God – revelation that had not up to that time been revealed.  God chose Paul to be the bearer of the revelation reserved for that time following the death and resurrection of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  Paul continues:

Isaiah cries out concerning Israel: “Though the number of the Israelites is like the sand of the sea, only the remnant will be saved.  For the Lord will carry out His sentence on the earth thoroughly and decisively.”

It is just as Isaiah foretold: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have resembled Gomorrah.”

And here’s the kicker – from Paul:

What then will we say?  That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.  Why not?  Because their pursuit was not by faith, but as if it were by works.  They stumbled over the stumbling stone, as it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame.”

[You see that the ‘stumbling stone’ in ‘Zion’ is Jesus when you turn on the light of other references such as the letter to the Hebrews.]

Righteousness that is pursued by law (the Law, legalism, rules and regulations, protocols, etc.) cannot produce the right standing before God and the justification needed for salvation.  Why not?  A) because not everyone can understand and keep the law, so its discriminatory; and B) because self-effort and the struggles of go-betweens are just “works” (human effort) – which again is discriminatory.

As Paul put it: “God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that He might have mercy on us all.”

There is not a single person – ever – who can justly claim before God “Not guilty”; with the exception of Jesus.  And for that reason, plus the fact that He did not wince and pull back but went all the way through death to resurrection, God has declared Him ‘Son of God with power’: Jesus Christ our Lord.

Therefore: the righteousness of Christ, appropriated by faith, not by law (any kind of law), has God’s imprimatur and is the approved method of being ‘right’ in the sight of God.  And this righteousness was the subject and the content of the gospel Paul (and others) took throughout Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Roman empire.  And for that, he had the imprimatur of God: note 1 Thessalonians 2:4.

Trying to secure a benefit by means other than that laid down by the giver of that benefit is what we call fraud.  Is it not then legitimate to label as fraud all attempts to gain the righteousness and justification of God by any means other than that laid down by God?

Therein lies the “sin” of old Israel; of the Israel of Jesus’ day; and of many people today.  We miss that important point; and we repeat the hackneyed protest, “we have not sinned”.  That’s self-righteousness, self-justification and failing to have the humble attitude that might allow us to hear and so to listen and so to be justified, and so to be His beloved.

Next: “Swear not at all”

SIN > Unmasked: Repentance Lost – Pt 2

Are all sinners redeemable?

Paul notes that God rejected Israel ‘for a time’ in order to make her jealous.  However, he specifically makes the point that God was not, in doing this, permanently rejecting Israel: far from it.

Mirroring God’s attitude, Paul says to the Romans [Berean Study Bible at biblehub.com], “I am speaking to you Gentiles ... in the hope that I may provoke my own people [Paul was a Jew] to jealousy and save some of them.  For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead [a kind of resurrection]?”

Then he continues:

Now if some branches have been broken off, and you, a wild olive shoot have been grafted in among the others to share in the nourishment of the olive root [that’s Israel], do not boast over those branches.  If you do, remember this: you do not support the root, but the root supports you.

You might say then, ‘Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in’.  That is correct: they were broken off because of unbelief [literally, ‘unfaith’], but you stand by faith.  Do not be arrogant, but be afraid.  For if God did not spare the natural branches, He will not spare you either.

Take notice therefore of the kindness and severity of God: severity to those who fell, but kindness to you, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off.  And if they [Israel] do not persist in unfaith, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again.

If you were cut off from a wild olive tree and, contrary to nature, were grafted into one that is cultivated, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree!

And to reiterate!:

I do not want you to be ignorant of this mystery, brothers, so that you will not be conceited: a hardening in part has come to Israel, until the full number of the Gentiles has come in.  And thus all Israel will be saved.

Paul draws this from his own tradition’s scriptures – in the prophets:

The Deliverer will come from Zion; He will remove godlessness from Jacob.  And this is my covenant with them when I take away their sins.  [Referencing Isaiah 59 and 27]

So...this tells me there is another very highly dangerous sin that – apparently – is impossible to come back from: conceited arrogance as to superiority – “I’m better than you and you’d better believe it”.  In other words: hubris.

But just why is it impossible to come back from it?  Here is another critically important truth:

Repentance is not simply a thing we can conjure up by ourselves, at will, when we feel like it, when we are hard-pressed to experience God’s mercy and kindness.

That might be remorse, but it’s not repentance; Paul calls it ‘presuming upon the kindness and forbearance of God.’  Isaiah calls it an improper fast (see his chapter 58).

Consider these scriptures [from the Berean Study Bible at biblehub.com]:

Acts 5:29-32 – “But Peter and the other apostles replied, ‘We must obey God rather than men.  The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging Him on a tree.  God exalted Him to His right hand as Prince and Savior, in order to grant repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel.  We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him’.”

Acts 11:15-18  [Peter again] – “As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them, just as He had come upon us at the beginning.  Then I remembered the word of the Lord, as He used to say, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’  So if God gave them the same gift as He gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to hinder the work of God?  When they heard this, their objections were put to rest, and they glorified God, saying, ‘So then, God has granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life’.”

2 Timothy 2:23-26 [Paul to his apprentice Timothy] – “But reject foolish and ignorant speculation, for you know that it breeds quarreling.  And a servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome, but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, and forbearing.  He must gently reprove those who oppose him, in the hope that God may grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth.  Then they will come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, who has taken them captive to his will.”

Romans 2:3-4 – “...when you, O man, pass judgment on others, yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?  Or do you disregard the riches of His kindness, tolerance, and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you to repentance?”

2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord is not slow to fulfil His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance.”

God leads sinners to repentance; it is a grace gift.  Blogger Burk Parsons [https://www.ligonier.org/learn/articles/gift-repentance/] wisely notes, “Just as our righteousness is a foreign, or “alien,” righteousness from Christ (you’ll find that clearly in Paul’s letter to the Romans), so is our repentance.  It is granted to us by God Himself.”

If we think we can flippantly ‘pick up’ repentance at will, then ‘put it down’ when it’s too inconvenient, God knows – because of what we see in John 2:23-25.  The same text that gives us John 3:16, a little earlier notes, “While he[Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the signs He was doing and believed in His name.  But Jesus did not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all men.  He did not need any testimony about man, for He knew what was in a man.”

It’s rather like the story with the parables: God knows if the heart is right; and repentance will not be granted to one who remains arrogant and self-righteous, presuming upon the kindness and forbearance of God and trying to outsmart or defraud the Holy Spirit.

Coming full-circle to the questions at the beginning: God remains in control; He ‘grants repentance unto eternal life’ to those He knows.  And he has made it plain that, if one is privileged to enjoy the fruits of His salvation and spiritual blessings in Christ by being in that sphere of influence and then fall into the trap of hubris and superiority and judgement, He withholds repentance because of the outrageous suffering it inflicts again on His Son Jesus.  And without repentance, there is no access to His life.  In that sense, salvation can be ‘lost’.

Next: “We have not sinned.”

Self-righteous hubris – which righteousness works?

SIN > Unmasked: Repentance Lost – Pt 1

Are all sinners redeemable?

Even over my lifetime there have been a number of iterations of this question.  Probably the most common way of expressing it is with the question, ‘can I lose my salvation?’  Another popular rendition of it has been the statement: ‘once saved, always saved’.


Can salvation be ‘lost’?  Can repentance be out of reach?  Are all sinners redeemable?  Whichever way you look at it, there is one non-negotiable piece of understanding that lies at the heart of unveiling a satisfactory – and truth-affirming – resolution to the Hebrews 6 dilemma.  So, first, let’s scope the dilemma- and to do this, I’m using the King James (Authorised) rendition of the Hebrews passage because that translation seems to be the one that is most often quoted in the arguments and debates around this subject.

There are two profoundly important truths that seem to escape many who call themselves christians – including those who are esteemed (and paid) to be ‘shepherds’ among the people of God.  The deficiency of these two things deals a death-blow to the spiritual life of many.

One is the truth that God is circumspect in regard to whom his truth is revealed to and to whom ‘repentance leading to eternal life’ is granted.  We ourselves are encouraged to practise the same principle by the scripture in Matthew 7: “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”  God doesn’t do it; Jesus didn’t do it; neither are we to do it.

Many people dangerously misread the words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 25, Mark 4 and Luke 19: three different accounts of the one teaching of Jesus.  For many, this is their justification for 1) a rabid capitalist economy by which people are taught to be tough, uncompromising and merciless in their bid to get along in the world; and 2) financial gain is the blessing of God and proof of one’s righteousness and acceptability to God.

For others, it’s interpreted as a kind of opposite to that: it’s the way of the kingdom of man, standing in stark contrast to the ways of the kingdom of God.

Neither is true.  If we were to read all the relevant bits of the gospel records, not just do a ‘cut and paste’ proof-text exercise, we would see that we are told quite specifically it applies to hearing (or listening).  The parables of the ten virgins, the ‘talents’, the lamp in its lamp-stand, etc. need to be interpreted through the prism that is given to us in Luke chapter 8: “Pay attention therefore to how you listen...” – the attitude of your heart.  That was the clearly stated purpose of Jesus’ speaking in parables: those whose heart attitude was right would get the meaning of the parable and, hence, the whole kit and caboodle of the good news of the kingdom of God.  And they would ‘get it’ mostly by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, not by study and academic pursuits.  In contrast, those whose attitude was screwed up and fundamentally self-serving would not get the meaning of the parable and, hence, neither would they get what it was pointing to; furthermore, they would go away more confused (i.e. with less) than when they came to ‘hear’ what Jesus had to say.  And that’s what happened.

Jesus could see quite clearly those whose heart was fixed against him by the way they listened and how they went away with less understanding than they came with.  Conversely, he saw the heart attitude of those who believed him as their lives lit up with the unspoken truth the parables contained.  This is absolutely consistent with a much maligned principle of human life on earth: in the kingdom of man, ‘seeing is believing’; in the kingdom of God ‘believing is seeing’.  Coming right back to Hebrews, we can note chapter 11, verse 3: “by faith we understand...”  Few get it; and many spend countless hours trying to make it work the other way: “by understanding we believe”.  It can’t and it won’t work that way.  His ways are not our ways – we’d be wise to believe it.

Let’s not miss here one of the great wonders of the grace of God: no human being needs to be ‘smart’, clever, or academic to fully apprehend the truth of the gospel of the kingdom of God in Jesus Christ.  On the flipside, even the most unlearned or disabled can receive from the Holy Spirit as much as the cleverest of us all – perhaps even more.  Do we get that?

How you listen, how you respond and how you deal with the ‘little’ you get not only determines how much ‘more’ (or less!) you get, it also determines God’s willingness to draw you into his confidence.  I and many of his people around the world and across time can attest to this truth and it lines up with other things we know from scripture in scores of places.  Again: his ways are not our ways.

As it stands, we largely only listen when we like what we hear.  That’s the common way of man.  Yet it is the very thing that God in the old testament prophets, Jesus, and the first apostles told us would keep us from mercy and from finding repentance  ‘Be careful how you hear’, we are told; our common attitude, however, is the thing that betrays our hubris, self-righteousness, and pursuit of personal benefit – which we then label ‘success’.  Argh!

The second is the truth that, while God has a particular – and unique – agenda for the Jews, non-Jews (Gentiles or ‘the nations’ besides the Jews) have a ‘conditional inclusion’ in God’s overall agenda of uniting all things – and all peoples – under one head (Jesus) and into one family – what is known in the new testament as the ekklesia.

[Perhaps we could even note here that one definition of ekklesia might be “those who hear right”.]

To get a handle on this, we need to get the message of Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapters 9 to 11.  I’ll leave you to read that for yourself, but the masterkey is found in chapter 11 with the concept of ‘grafting’ (as in horticultural grafting of plants).  In my view, chapters 9 to 11 of Romans are the best layout of ‘the Jew and the Gentile in the plan of God’ that we have access to.

In summary form, the story goes like this:

·         God’s mercy is his own sovereign act - always and exclusively.

·         From the earliest times, it always was God’s intention to include “all nations” in Israel.  Israel’s former name was Jacob; it was changed to Israel (literally ‘God contends’ or ‘God wrestles’) after the ‘struggle’ or ‘contention’ with God recorded in Genesis 32.  Unfortunately, it never sat well with Israel that “the nations” (the ‘gentiles’) be included.  Hubris became the hallmark of the nation as they jealously guarded and prosecuted their specialness and superiority.

·         Israel, in God’s eyes, was to be the bearer of his grace and his blessing to the world.  Hubris took over and they sought to assert their superiority and to subjugate, insult and disdain all others.

·         God would have none of that, so he subjugated and humbled them; and then grafted in the ‘dogs’ and the ‘unclean’ (cf. Matthew 15 and Acts 10) – those Israel loved to hate – to provoke Israel to jealousy.

That doesn’t mean by any means that they are given up for good.  Note Paul’s question and answer section in Romans 11: “Did God reject His people?  Certainly not!”; “Did they stumble so as to lose their share?  Certainly not!”

However, it does mean 1) that Israel must learn their lessons; and 2) if the gentiles grafted in act with presumption and hubris like Israel, they will be cut off – with no possibility of finding repentance again.  That’s what Hebrews 6 is talking about.  If we understand what God has been up to all along, and we understand Paul’s explanation of how that works, we will understand Hebrews 6 – and we will understand the seriousness of His mercy towards us and how important is Romans 2:1-5.

Part 2 follows

SIN > Unmasked: Nuances

Is all sin forgivable?

In the context of what we’ve seen to this point, as I said, Jesus injects into the picture an astounding concept – which we often carry around as a question: is there a sin which cannot be forgiven?  Is there an ‘unpardonable’ sin?

Here I will refer to Matthew 12 and Mark 3.  Let’s consider the background to Jesus’ words.

Today, if one sees a genuine ‘miracle’ (not of the Scott Morrison election win kind), it is not uncommon for someone to ask by what power and authority it was performed.  Was it ‘magic’?  Was it ‘white magic’?  Was it ‘black magic’?  Was it a confidence trick or sleight-of-hand?  Was it purely physical (some say there is actually nothing else)?  Was it ‘spiritual’ (some say there is such a thing as spiritual life)?  The debate rages; few are ever moved in their predispositions; and within a short time, it’s forgotten – a ‘storm in a teacup’.

In Jesus’ day, it wasn’t that different, despite daily life in Israel at that time being very spiritual or religious; Israel was not entirely a ‘secular state’ and a range of religious leaders dominated daily life.  Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees – some of them lawyers’ – had a tight grip on the daily lives and morals of the people.  Sounds familiar, I know.

Factions were formed based on the beliefs and priorities of strong traditions or large personalities – much like today.  Some believed in the resurrection while others didn’t; some held that all Gentiles who converted to Judaism had to be circumcised according to the Law of Moses.  There were differing views on miracles: on what constituted a miracle; on who could ‘perform’ one; on when they could be ‘performed’ and so on.  There we differing views on things demonic – evil spirits and ‘spiritual powers’.

All that aside, the religious leaders combined held a lot of power and could make or break a person’s life.  Saul (later apostle Paul) was one of them.  He was a learned and powerful Pharisee – and his ‘big thing’ was wiping all memory and mention of Jesus and “The Way” from the history scrolls.  He terrorised Jesus’ disciples for years and had little leniency towards any who argued that Jesus was indeed the Messiah and redeemer of Israel.

On one particular day, a blind, dumb, demon-possessed man was brought to Jesus and he healed him.  The multitudes, Matthew says, were amazed and began to say, ‘This man (referring to Jesus) cannot be the son of David, can he?’  Being the ‘son of David’ [i.e. Israel’s revered King David] was a way of asking if Jesus might be the Messiah – Israel’s ‘chosen and anointed one’.

Matthew notes that when the Pharisees heard this, they spoke up and said, ‘This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons’.  That was their ‘spin’.  Jesus went on to explain the impossibility of that, but their point was clear: they attributed the miracle of this healing to “the ruler of the demons” Beelzebul.

Now, in Jesus’ mind that was blaspheming against the Holy Spirit.  The miracle they had just witnessed was done by the Holy Spirit.  In Romans 8, a redeemed, regenerated, rebooted Saul (now Paul) writes that, ‘the sons of God’ are those who are ‘being led by the Spirit of God’; Jesus was the prototypical son of God; what he did, he did as being led and empowered by the Spirit of God.  So what the Pharisees just did was attribute a work of the Spirit of God to the Prince of demons: they ‘blasphemed’ the Holy Spirit.

Note Matthew’s words (parallel with Mark chapter 3):

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.  If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself.  How then can his kingdom stand?

‘And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons drive them out?  So then, they will be your judges.  But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

‘How can anyone enter a strong man’s house and steal his possessions, unless he first ties up the strong man?  Then he can plunder his house.  He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters.

‘Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven.  Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the one to come.’

By this argument, Jesus makes several points clear: 1) they are proving that Satan’s house/kingdom is divided and will not stand; 2) the demons will be their judges; 3) Jesus is demonstrating that the Spirit of God is present and working; 4) Satan is now bound and they need to choose whose side they’re really on; 5) they had just attributed a work of the Spirit of God to Satan; 6) thereby committing the absolutely unforgivable sin.

So there is an unforgivable sin!

In my lifetime, I have repeatedly heard preachers and teachers of ‘christian city’ attribute clear works of the Holy Spirit to the Prince of demons: “that’s ‘of the Devil’” they say.  Maybe at the time they had forgotten Jesus’ words!

So they’ve got it wrong on two counts: homosexuality and the like are ‘unforgivable sins’, according to many in ‘christian city’; at the same time, they appear to be totally oblivious to their own repeated blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps it’s time to answer Jesus’ question: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”  Perhaps that question prompts another: are you a 21^st century pharisee?  SELAH: pause and consider.

I find it interesting that Matthew’s record has Jesus reprising some earlier material – perhaps by way of reinforcements:

Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad; for a tree is known by its fruit.  You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good?  For out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.  The good man brings good things out of his good store of treasure, and the evil man brings evil things out of his evil store of treasure.  But I tell you that men will give an account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.  For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

There is a heavy price to pay for “careless words” that attribute works of the Spirit of God to Satan, AKA ‘The Devil’, AKA Beelzebul.  “Brood of vipers” is a worthy description.

We all need to face up to the fact that “all have sinned and fall short” of God’s standards; and that admitting and acknowledging this, in humility not hubris, places us in the very spot where “He might have mercy on us all.”  But if we insist (as ancient Israel repeatedly did, to the chagrin of God and His prophets) on claiming ‘we have not sinned; we are safe’, we place ourselves outside the gamut of His mercy and forgiveness.

The great irony of that is, those who insist that others are “going to hell” are far more likely to be the ones going there than the ones they accuse – for precisely the reasons Jesus gave the Pharisees on that day when the Spirit of God did a miracle for a broken man and the religious nutters hated it.

We’ll come back to this well-worn protest: “we have not sinned; we are innocent; we are safe”, but before we do, there is a further matter – quite similar to the one in this post – that has puzzled and divided Christians for many hundreds of years.  That’s next.

Unable to find repentance – the Hebrews 6 dilemma.

SIN > Unmasked: Dystopia

Religion Vs Relationship

Now if you combine self-righteousness and hubris, the outcome is often a rather nasty – even narcissistic – attitude towards our relationships.  Over and over again, this is what Jesus was up against from the Jewish religious leaders around him as he sought to navigate his mission.  The classic chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Matthew’s gospel point to this, as does Matthew’s chapter 23.  The message of Jesus and what became known as ‘The Way’ (the movement that sought to live as disciples of Jesus) were incredibly divisive.  Indeed, it tended to polarise people: some – like those in the room at the first post-resurrection Pentecost – lived and died entirely devoted to Jesus and his way; others lived and died fully dedicated to seeking the end of that way of life.  Has much changed?

Jesus had some incredibly hard, even harsh, words for those religious leaders whom he saw as doing great harm to their people.  At times, Jesus’ approach to them looked and sounded very much like what their old prophet Ezekiel (chapter 34) records concerning God’s attitude towards the supposed ‘shepherds’ of that day.  And even among the Scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ day, there were both believers and unbelievers.

Jesus was scathing of the hubris of those religious leaders.  Remember hubris: “actions of overbearing pride or presumption with an excess of ambition.”  Furthermore, he accused them of being “whitewashed tombs”: painted to look nice on the outside, while on the inside, full of dead people’s bones and all sorts of uncleanness.

He taught those who bothered to listen that they should do what the religious teachers said, but not what they do – thus indicating their duplicity: say one thing but do another; have one set of rules for everybody but another, more convenient set, for themselves; speaking with forked-tongue.  Thinking about our time and place today again, little has changed.

Then there was this commentary on his persecutors’ habit: “They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.”  Again – what’s changed?  The world is littered with pharisaical politicians.

In another place, he spoke to the religious lawyers – referencing their history – accusing them of making mausoleums for their dead prophets (to honour them), yet it was their fathers who killed them – and they continued the tradition of killing prophets they didn’t like in Jesus’ time.  Indeed, one of Jesus’ laments was “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those sent to her!  How often I wanted to gather your children together, just as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not have it!”

Even today, a popular political mantra (many politicians are lawyers) is: ‘always retain control of the narrative’.  Another way of expressing it is: never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  Honour the ‘prophets’ if you must, but first they must be dead and gone and their prophecies the subject of interpretation and interpolation.

Another classic is Luke chapter 6 – especially the later section where he asks rhetorically “How can you say to your brother, ‘brother let me take the speck out of your eye’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye?”

Yet ironically, Jesus taught his disciples that it wasn’t the laws that were the problem [after all, laws are made for man, not man for laws]; it was the sanctimonious and duplicitous preaching of the law – coupled with the failure to live it – that was the real problem.  He taught his disciples that “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of God.”

In other words, one cannot look at religious leaders’ disregard or flouting of the law and justify one’s own lawlessness.  Or, inside out, one cannot justify lawlessness by appeal to some religious preacher’s hypocrisy.  Jesus holds his disciples to a different – and higher – standard than those who simply practise religion as a matter of form and dogma.  This much is evident among the first thousands of disciples in the first century AD: it’s about relationship; not about religion.

This teaching raises the fundamentally critical subject of righteousness: the state of being in the mode and direction of ‘right’ – that is, right as in true and correct against an objective measure or ‘canon’; as things ‘ought to be’.  And as with sin, righteousness is both nature and product.

Now, in this context, Jesus inserts an astounding concept – which we often carry around as a question: is there a sin which cannot be forgiven?  Is there an ‘unpardonable’ sin?

Next: the unpardonable sin.

SIN > Unmasked: Broken Relationship

The Perils of Fencing out God

I am suggesting here that man lives in a four-fold relationship.  Ever, he is relating - poorly or properly - to God, the world, disciples of Jesus and non-disciples.  If he lives ‘according to the Spirit’ as apostle Paul puts it (that is, if He lives in Christ), then renewed relationships form the context of his daily life.  He is a “new creation: the old has passed away; the new has come.”  This is the redeemed, regenerated, rebooted status of humankind.

If, however, he chooses not to live in Christ, then the antithesis of those relationships is the context of his daily life.  This is the un-redeemed, un-regenerated, un-rebooted status of humankind.  And in that state, mankind continues to carry - to bear by himself - both the weight and the consequences of that four-fold relationship being out of whack.


Three key words describe and articulate that state of being in mankind’s life on earth: hostility; guilt; bondage.  Enmity; antagonism; friction; being an ‘enemy’; tend to dominate by nature and it is hard work to mollify God, other people, the environment.  The enmity is exacerbated by guilt: both real guilt (as in actual delinquency) and real feelings of guilt (as in a guilty conscience).  And hostility and guilt are exacerbated by bondage: both actually being unable to shake free and being burdened by a certain sense of helplessness or hopelessness – what some psychologists call the “generalisation of hopelessness”.

Combined (as in a venn diagram), to varying degrees, hostility guilt and bondage overlap producing a dysphoria – a state of unease or generalised dissatisfaction with life, with almost unlimited variability.  The extent to which all three overlap also varies from person to person and from time to time; but this overlap area is a definition of “sin” as a state of being – as comprising our ‘sin nature’.

Un-remediated and un-redeemed, we will always struggle to some extent; and this is, I believe, what very often leads us to conclude and to say ‘well, I’m only human’.  This dysphoria is the ‘natural state’ of human beings not redeemed, regenerated, rebooted.  Few cultures on earth have not recognised this and made varied attempts to both explain it and to remediate it.

Sadly, in our quest to stand by our conviction that “God is dead” and everything about Jesus is myth and legend, we explain all this with a vast array of philosophies, theories, beliefs and so-called scientific explanations.  Fencing out God in this way not only means we become (or manufacture) our own gods; it also means we often wander about lost, while making a lot of loud noise railing against both the ‘darkness’ and the alleged ‘light’ of others.

A few days ago, I happened upon a blog post from Phil Ressler [https://philressler.com/keeping-god-at-arms-length] – worth the read, not the least because it shines a light on a fundamental problem with our modern ‘scientific’ god-denial.

Few are prepared to suspend their unbelief and be even partially scientific enough to seek out evidence and interrogate it for ourselves.  We shut the gate on God and lock it and walk away – dressed in the smugness of our own right-ness.  And another word for our own right-ness is self-righteousness; which (the world over with few exceptions) is expressed in hubris.

A second venn diagram explains that hubris – which, as one dictionary puts it, is “actions of
over-bearing pride or presumption with an excess of ambition.”  And not only do we practise this, we actually affirm and encourage it and very often call it ‘success’ or ‘leadership’ without fully realising hubris is both corrosive and deadly.  It’s the battery acid of daily life and human relationships.

We scrabble around with “eyes wide shut” pretending that only those things we can ‘see’ (hence, ‘seeing is believing’) and scientifically prove are real.  And as we go, we call what we construct “the real world”.  But our ‘real world’ is largely made up of groping in the dark and (therefore) missing the mark and ‘falling short’, and crossing lines of demarcation, transgressing boundaries and limits.

‘Missing the mark’ is an idea borrowed from archery and javelin or spear throwing.  You ‘err’ if you miss your target – either by going wildly off course or by falling short.  In New Testament Greek, this is the word hamartia, one of the words for ‘sin’.

‘Crossing the line’ can be illustrated by reference to today’s car driving: “stay in your lane” will often be the instruction from driving instructors as you learn to drive.  Demarcation or setting perimeters is not uncommon; and going beyond one’s line of demarcation is a transgression (Latin: to go across).  In New Testament Greek, this word is parabasé.  We might hear somebody say ‘you crossed the line there’: you transgressed; you ‘sinned’.

'Living by sight’ goes to the heart of Paul’s teaching on faith.  When we ‘live according to the flesh’ (Romans 8), we prioritise ‘fixing our eyes on what is seen’ (2 Corinthians 4), which leads to our being sucked into the vortex of un-faith.  And ‘whatever does not proceed from faith is sin’ (Romans 14).  When we ‘live according to the Spirit (Romans 8), we prioritise ‘fixing our eyes on what is unseen’ (2 Corinthians 4) – which is Christ and the eternal.

To a greater or lesser degree, we are somewhat like this Russian bear.  And I not only like the picture itself for what it illustrates, I also like it because the barrel is blue – speaking to the ‘conservative’ nature of much of what we get our heads stuck in.

Sadly, we can live with our heads stuck in the blue barrel because a lot of us have a tendency to paint our worldview (our ‘real world’) on the inside of the barrel and don’t really need to have any interest beyond what is painted there.  Because such actions often do not ‘proceed from faith’, they constitute ‘sin’.

Perhaps some of us are more like this snake with its head stuck in an energy drink can: it’s a smaller, narrower world; the snake is venomous; and it’s in pursuit of a sweet artificial energy fix.

Or perhaps we’re like this spider hoping its sinister intent is hidden by digging itself into a hole from which it cannot see the rest of the world.  Not very convincing.

SIN is both nature and product; tree and fruit; spring and water.  And as apostle James, Jesus’ brother, noted in his letter (in the negative): fig trees cannot bear olives; grapevines cannot bear figs; and salt springs cannot produce fresh water.  In stating the obvious (negative) he intends to affirm the opposite (positive): fig trees bear figs; olive trees bear olives; grapevines bear grapes; ‘bad springs’ produce bad water; and ‘fresh springs’ produce good water.  Conversely, as Jesus himself noted, you can tell the nature of a tree by what fruit grows on it.


Both are intended as parable – a short story of a life illustration that teaches us something important for our lives.  Primarily, it is designed to teach us a) that if we want righteous behaviour, useful and productive for life, we have to start with a redeemed, regenerated, rebooted life (and that is God’s speciality).  Which means we need the antidote to ‘sin’; and b) that if unrighteous or self-righteous behaviour is present, ‘sin’ is still in charge and the antidote has not been administered.  Obvious and uncomplicated, one would think; but apparently not.  So many times, our hubris keeps us from exploring the possible and prevents the necessary humility from rising to the surface, thus blocking our redemption, regeneration and reboot.


The old Hebrew prophet Hosea vocalises God with all-too-familiar words: “When they had pasture, they became satisfied, their hearts became proud, and as a result, they forgot me.  So like a lion I will pounce on them.”  Giving up on God because we don’t get what we want doesn’t negate God or render His teaching redundant.  But, as Paul notes in Romans 1, deliberate acts of rejecting or shunning God do lead to the deterioration of our faculties to perceive God or be influenced by His Spirit.  The eternal principle holds true: you reap what you sow.

Next: preferring religion over relationship

SIN > Unmasked: No Place to Hide

God as Wise Parent, Driven by Love

To those who scoff at the idea of God as loving – and it’s a very popular sport – try to imagine yourself as a parent attempting to teach your children right from wrong.  At every point, no matter how tough it gets, no matter how much protesting there is, is it not true that your entire motivation is love?  It is love that speaks the truth even when it is hard to hear – or even harder to speak!  It is love that insists on not being ‘wishy-washy’ in the face of mocking and abuse.  And if you are capable of that kind of love, surely you are also capable of understanding that God can and does love you in the same way?

In my frame of reference, one of the most profound and beautiful statements of God’s love is in Paul’s letter to the Romans.  Before you read it, take another SELAH (a ‘pause and consider’ break).  Are we not proving that we are a ‘corrupt tree’ (thus producing bad fruit) when we arrogantly tell God we will not listen to His words of wisdom and correction; and when we stubbornly refuse to admit that we might be afflicted by sin as we have seen it here?

And even if you don’t want to hear me out, please hear Paul out.  He understood better than most the corruption of the human heart.  Before he became a disciple of Jesus; and before he was set apart as an apostle to the Western world; he hated and persecuted Jesus’ disciples and had them thrown into prison or murdered.  Before he could be the man he needed to be, he had to admit what he then wrote down for all the world to hear: “For God has bound all men over to disobedience [i.e. we are all guilty] so that He may have mercy on them all.”  What a profound and beautiful statement of God’s love towards us!

God and Jesus and Paul well understood that there is no being healed of a sin nature without first admitting that it is real and present.  If there is a ‘real and present danger’ we all need to be aware of and terrified of, it is this: the human nature is fractured and produces bad fruit.  Most parents (and teachers) understand they don’t have to teach children bad behaviour (unrighteousness); but they do have to teach good behaviour (righteousness).  And it is not a matter of weighing scales with good on one side and bad on the other and hoping the good outweighs the bad.  Sin comes from a sinful nature.

Speaking the truth

God is more concerned about the sin nature problem; while we’re more concerned about appearances and sins (acts), while excusing the sin tree by insisting that people can’t – don’t! – change: ‘once a _____; always a _____.  So, as a loving parent, God insists that we know and experience the truth – the truth about ourselves and the truth about His love and mercy.

So... In God’s eyes, ‘we all’ have been “consigned to disobedience” so that His mercy can reach ‘us all’.  God doesn’t play favourites; His mercy is wide open to all who will own up to the sin nature within them that produces the sins in their lives – and who will act like the younger son in the story Jesus told in the gospel by Luke, chapter 15:

“When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.’ So he got up and went to his father.”

If we can find the humility to put ourselves on the same page as God – to agree with His assessment of us – that is a true ‘new beginning’!  Hubris is doing the precise opposite.

And God’s response is just like the response of the father in the story:

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.  The son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.  ‘But the father said to his servants, ‘Quick!  Bring the best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’  So they began to celebrate.”

Typically, christians don’t like God’s strategy: we want to punish ‘bad behaviour’ and deprive fellow-humans of grace, until they learn their ‘lesson’ – or maybe not at all.  Yet it is the very definition of grace that it cannot be earned – only given and received.

And one of the most important lessons for ‘us all’ to learn is that we have no right or authority to condemn when God doesn’t; and this is precisely the ‘scandal’ many simply cannot live with.  To many of us, God must be stupid; but that’s because our understanding is lacking, not God’s; we see things our way, not God’s.  [Check out Isaiah 55:8-9]

This is the journey that takes ‘us all’ from condemnation to celebration.  The Father, filled with compassion, runs to meet the son to welcome him and escort him back home.  So Paul was right again when he said, “There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Let’s stop being lazy and take the journey – together – without condemnation!

Next: mankind’s web of relationship.

SIN > Unmasked: Tree and Fruit

Sin is both Tree and Fruit

>> NEW SERIES BEGINS HERE


Unfortunately for many many people the world over, sin is defined as bad behaviour; immorality; evil actions. Why ‘unfortunately’? Because, apart from its being a serious misunderstanding (and highly stereotypical), it actually works against the whole process of the good news of Jesus and against the very reasons we invoke the word in our language. Most often we use the word within a context of wanting to change behaviour – to reform actions, situations, laws, etc. But when we use an extremely limited definition like this, people very often respond in one or both of two ways: scorn the people and the ideas they are trying to communicate; retreat into a position of comparing: ‘but I’m not as bad as him or her.’

From a theological standpoint, when we define sin this way, it makes a mockery of the biblical concept that “all have sinned and fall short of God’s intent”.  All it does is take us to a place of judging and finger-pointing – both of which are specifically forbidden as acceptable pursuits for Jesus’ people.  So, when ‘christians’ measure people against this false definition of sin, they will most probably be sinning themselves by either judging or pointing the finger, or both.  Apostle Paul once said, “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12).  Is it any wonder ‘hypocrite’ is a common tag used to describe some who call themselves christians? And some such people actually wear the tag ‘hypocrite’ as a badge of honour.

Again unfortunately, this approach is mostly due to serious laziness on the part of people who seem to think they have a God-given right to be presumptuous, arrogant, obnoxious and belligerent.  Anyway, enough with the arrogant laziness!  Let me invite us all to a pause.  An old Jewish word comes to us in English as ‘SELAH’.  In poetic writing, it is used to draw the reader into a pause; to stop for however long it takes to meditate on what was written before the pause and reflect on its life implications for the reader him/herself.  Pause and consider!

So, before we waste any more time, effort and money proverbially ‘putting our foot in our mouth’, let us pause and consider.  The laziness I am talking about is the fact that many of us are far too ready to buy into someone else’s bad ideas and start preaching them because they sound appealing to us.  Indeed, they are appealing: they appeal to our lower nature; our poor self; our tendency to buy a ‘canned’ product instead of making our own.

At the root of all of this is one of the horrible traits of our human nature: to divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’.  It is the opposite of an inferiority complex – it is a superiority complex.  The words may not be there, but the attitude is: ‘I am better than you.’  There is little recognition or ownership of a ‘common humanity’: ‘I know your struggles; I am, in some ways, like you.’  Whether we want to admit it or not, the superior attitude is pride, pure and simple. Could it not be that this is an even greater ‘sin’ than judging and pointing the finger?

How do we come upon an answer to that?  My suggestion is that, when we bother to ‘SELAH’ a bit, we will not only be changed by what we discover, we will find answers to this question and much more.

And since many who use this false definition of sin go by the name ‘christian’ and call on the bible to back themselves up, I will refer to the treasured bible.

First, in the words of Jesus recorded by Matthew (chapter 7), Jesus plainly believed and taught that the actions in a person’s life are like grapes on a vine and like fruit on a tree.  You know the nature and quality of the tree or the vine by the fruit it produces.  Many Westerners do not think like this.  Instead, they insist that the tree or vine is perfectly fine (somebody told me it was ‘perfectly fine’); if it bears bad or inappropriate fruit, the fault lies somewhere else besides the host plant.  There are many applications of what Jesus was saying, but one point in particular is this: a grape vine produces grapes, not passionfruit; an apple tree produces apples, not oranges.  Likewise, evil actions come from a fractured person – despite how much the person protests their innocence.  Sin actions are the ‘fruit’ of a sin ‘tree’.  Consequently, while the actions may be nasty, the real problem is the fractured life from which they come.

Second, Paul the great apostle taught the principles of Jesus like this: “The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like ...” (Galatians 5:19-21, emphasis added).  Behind every sin is, in fact, a sinful nature, just as behind every grape is a grape vine and behind every apple is an apple tree.  It is a law of nature.  And Paul didn’t stop there.  He then went on to apply the same principle of this ‘law of nature’ in the positive: what are the actions of an UN-sinful nature?  He describes the ‘un-sinful nature’ as a person pulsating with the life and the DNA of the Spirit of God: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).  When the life of God is truly present, this is the fruit – emphatically!  Then he adds a couple extra truths for good measure: 1) the fruit of the sinful nature disqualifies a person from the Kingdom of God; 2) there is no law against the fruit of the Spirit.  Have a good look around: are there laws against joy, peace, patience, kindness etc?

And what about James, the brother of Jesus?  In his words: “My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs?  Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water” (James 3: 12). By implication, the presence of salt water indicates a salt spring; the presence of olives indicates an olive tree; the presence of figs indicates a fig tree; and the presence of grapes indicates a grape vine.

My point is that the popular definition of sin focuses almost exclusively on the bad visible actions of people. While this might be popular, it is profoundly counter-productive.  First, it produces little positive response from ‘them’; second, it draws ‘us’ into a position of self-righteousness on the one hand and judgement and pointing the finger and pride on the other. Nobody is better off; and ‘we’ are all worse off.

So, let’s all just stop being lazy.  Search the scriptures you say you believe and follow; and when you do, you will find another way.  A biblical definition of sin, consistent with the notion of the tree that bears corresponding fruit, informs us that there are three basic ideas involved: crossing a line; missing the mark; and living by sight.

Human nature is such that there is not a single person alive or dead who is not marked in some way by one or more of these ideas of sin.  ‘We’ are all tarnished in one way or another. Some of us have a strong tendency to ‘cross the line’.  Even when we don’t particularly want to, we find ourselves drawn to ‘break the law’; sometimes just because the law is there.  We often hear it said, ‘‘the law was made to be broken” and “the law is an ass”.

Others of us have a strong tendency to failure; we disappoint people either because we cannot believe that we have any right to succeed or because we think that success brings responsibilities we do not want or feel we are not ready for.  We ‘fall short’ so often.  We often hear it said: “that’s not good enough” or ‘‘you don’t measure up”.

And others of us regularly find ourselves asking ourselves, ‘‘why did I do that?”; ‘‘where did that come from?”  We might hear it said (or we might say it ourselves), “Jeez, you’re a real jerk!” (or something far worse).  Things in our lives come from a ‘dark place’ we didn’t know existed and do not know much about.

We have no right to be judging and condemning one another’s behaviour, yet we do it so often.  And we do it despite Jesus’ question, “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”  By contrast, even though God is the one who has the right to judge and condemn, He is understanding and tender and patient and allows us the space to be honest with ourselves and admit that, on at least one of these points, we are guilty.

Whether we like it or not, we all have a ‘plank in our own eye’ but prefer to focus on the ‘speck of sawdust’ in someone else’s eye.  If we are brutally honest, we are probably guilty on all points.  Of course, some of us are truly narcissistic – which really means we have some serious blind-spots; but, as is the nature of blind-spots, other people see them but we don’t.  Are these ‘unknown knowns’?  Furthermore, we have a creeping virus in Australia: something is only “wrong” if you get caught; and its flip-side – if you can manage things to not get caught, you are a “success”.

There is no ‘us’ and ‘them’; there is only ‘we all’.

And that is precisely what our precious bibles tell us, isn’t it: “All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God” (Paul writing to the Romans, chapter 3:23).  All: not just some. All: not just those who cannot find what it takes to ‘think positively’ about oneself or who don’t have the wherewithal to buy their righteousness.

The judging, condemning, pointing the finger, proud attitude of many who say they are christians just proves them wrong – very, very wrong.

Am I saying then that we should not talk about sin?  By no means; what I am saying is that ‘we all’ need a SELAH so that God can poke His word in amongst our noise and teach us what sin really is, because ‘we all’ need that redefinition.  And whoever we are, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves (but without condemnation) if we are to be sound, sane, functional people.

Next: God as “wise parent”.