Daily Java: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer. (Romans 6:1-2).
I was a youth pastor several years ago and decided to have a circle on the floor in the old auditorium. I tossed an afro comb (which I used at the time) to one of the boys and said tell us what God has done for you and then toss it to someone else.
He went into this long drawn out thing about how much he had sinned and God had forgiven him and how grateful he was.
He tossed the comb to another boy who went into the same thing. He tossed it to a third who did the same thing.
The third boy tossed it to a girl who sat for a moment looking somewhat embarrassed. She finally said, well, I haven’t really done that much wrong.
I reached over and took the comb back and stopped the confession fest.
The girl was embarrassed because she didn’t have a whole litany of things wrong that God had forgiven her for. She felt she just didn’t have that much grace in her life.
The boys, on the other hand (and I think they were lying for the most part) felt that they had been greater recipients of the grace of God because they had been stupid and made bad choices.
I was talking to a guy several years ago, also, who told me that people could not witness to people they didn’t understand. In other words, it took a crook to witness to another crook, or on in that same vein. After all, if you had not done the time, you could not understand the crime and therefore couldn’t counsel the criminal.
Baloney.
Jesus never did anything wrong, yet he is our leader in all we do. It doesn’t take a murderer to counsel a murderer nor a thief for a thief. Quite frankly, I would rather go to someone who had lived their life well to get answers than to someone who had royally screwed up. The person who had gone through the problems of life without falling down had far more answers than the one who was weak and had to turn around.
That isn’t to say that the second person can’t do good, but why would you go to a person who had so messed up to get answers?
I have known a couple of marriage and family counselors who were good at what they did, but who had been married several times and their kids wouldn’t even talk to them. Sure, they had a great abstract knowledge of what they talked about and they were, indeed, disinterested parties.
But their messing up did not qualify them as experts.
Some have the idea that the more you sin, the greater within the grace of God you are. And that is not true.
To sin relying on his grace is a dangerous path to take.
Yes, he will forgive anything (except the refusal to accept him in your life, of course).
But his forgiveness, even though at times his grace had to pile on you like a bunch of rugs, it doesn’t make you more holy.
Live in him in such a way that you remain pure and holy.
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