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.