Dec 26, 2011
Learning From Other Sinners
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (0)
Life within the Church can be complex---at times, seemingly bipolar. Lets think about it. The Church is charged with the Gospel which calls us to repent of our sin. So with this comes preaching, praying and training in how to live out God’s standard of righteousness. When we first come to faith and settle down in a church, compared to the more cut-throat people of the world we lived among, they are all quite sweet and loving by comparison. But spend enough time in the Church and you will find all Christians are just like me, broken sinners. We are a sinful lot who truly need the Gospel message we proclaim.
Thus it comes as no surprise that we often become jaded and discouraged with the church. We quickly find ourselves saying things like, “why doesn’t the church just act like Christians?” Well if we are asking that, it is because we have a romantic and idealized view of what the Church. It is not the bastion of the sinless, but an ER for sinners. Jesus said it is the sick who are in need of a physician. And when you are are in the ER yourself for a broken leg, it is hypocritical to look across the room at the girl with an amputated leg and say, “Why don’t you start acting like a healthy person and walk?” Essentially when we look at another sinner this way we are essentially doing the same thing. We are a sick in the same ward, but fail to see our condition is just as compromised.
When we see error in other people’ lives, we can easily think that they have nothing to teach us. But lets think about that for a minute. Every member of the Church has sin, including elders, deacons and pastors. Now if I can ignore the words, the authority, and office of the pastor because he has sin in his life, then what does that do to church order and government? Yes it implodes. The New Testament is quite adamant about submission to those who are over you in the Lord (Heb. 13:17). The fact that leaders in the Church, or even another brother or sister has sin, does not make the Gospel challenge that they speak to you invalid.
Seeing Each Other’s Sins
Recently a close friend and co-laborer in the Gospel and I were doing some reflecting together. He told me of a conversation he once had with a person who claimed that he had a “gift” of being able to see another person’s sins. We both chuckled at this for especially for its self deception. I say chuckle, but not “laugh” for a reason; because it is really not funny. It was amusing of course because saying that one has the “gift” to see another person’s sin is like a person saying they have the “gift of breathing” or the “gift of steady hair growth.” Being able to see other people’s faults comes just about as natural to us as breathing and hair growth. The only difference is that breathing an hair growth come from our original and good created nature. The gift of seeing each other’s sin comes from our sin nature. It is in fact not a gift at all, but a curse. In fact the focus upon other people’s faults is something that Jesus and the other NT writers come down on pretty hard. The classic texts are Matt. 7:3-5 & Luke 6:41-42:
Matt. 7:3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Focussing on other people’s sins is a classic case of overfunctioning. It is when the individual places focus on another person as a self-deceptive act of self-justification. When we pick out other people’s faults, it is easiest to overlook our own. By comparing self with others we are able to cloak ourselves behind their seeming imperfection. So lets just get something straight and put it as simple as it can be conceivably put: Nobody has the “gift” of seeing other people’s sin. All they have is the “sin” of seeing another person’s sin. In fact calling it a gift is actually to take a sin and veneer it with a candy coat of false virtue. That means it is a lie.
Relational Sanctification
So this brings up a good question though. Is it not true that we do naturally see each other’s sin better than our own? And is that not meant in some way to help the growth and sanctification of the body of Christ? Yes absolutely. But there are criteria that are set out in the NT. First of all is that it must be done in the context of a safe and accepting community. The persons who see another person’s sin and distance from that person or the community are committing the deepest and most self-righteous of sins. As a way of example, the Didache, the earliest known catechism from first Century Syria/Palstine has this to say about correcting one another.
Did. 15.3 “You shall not reprove one another in anger, but in peace just as you have in the Gospel.”
The word anger here points out an important point regarding reproving one another. The Scriptures say, the “anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20) Why? Because the anger of man towards another is not righteous, but self-righteous. When we reprove one another in anger, we do it in a spirit of self-righteousness because we are failing to see we are as equally guilty of sin as the one we may be reproving. But reproving one another in anger is not the only way to manifest this self righteousness. This can also be done by criticism, gossip, and slander. This can even be masked by seeming concern for the person through prayer. And again, as we have already pointed out, probably the most common form of self-righteous judging is to distance and cut-off from the person(s). This is the most common I have seen. It refuses to engage the person at all by pulling away without conversation, without genuine care.
What’s the Church’s Problem?
One thing that I have found throughout my time in the Church is that it is always the most spiritually immature who protest the state of the church and its faults the most. The Spiritually mature are never shocked by sin. They never say “I cannot believe you did that” because they know everyone can. And more importantly they never say, “I cannot believe I did that” because they know how sinful they themselves are. But the spiritually immature have a naive and over-idealized view of the Church. When someone sins, screws up, or even just makes a foible, it is the immature who are quickest to say “unbelievable” as if seeing sin in the church really is somehow... unbelievable. The Spiritually immature are always those who are the most easily offended, and the most shocked by sin in the Church. That is usually why when something comes up, often the most hapless thing, that it turns into a sort of witch hunt. Things have to be “dealt with.” This is a “go for the throat” kind attitude that seems to find fault with just about any minor oversight that regularly makes mountains over mole hills. It fails to truly grasp Christian patience that overlooks many faults in a spirit of charity. Because of this the spiritually immature are never quite settled or happy with any church. There is always a fault, problem, or something that makes it seem less than home to them. They are constantly at war within themselves and their environment. And so they are constantly looking for a new situation or environment to rectify the problem. They really believe that if they change churches, jobs, or the place they live that they will be free of their problems and be happy, all along not realizing that wherever they go the will be bringing their problems with them. This is because their problem is in fact themselves! This is true of all of us.
The other response of the spiritually immature is as I have mentioned above, it called “cut-off.” In this case, instead of demanding blood, an apology, or some sort of explanation, it just distances itself from the person. Cut-off is when one avoids, distances, or completely shuns another person for something they have either done or more often than not, what the offended person “perceives” them to have done. A classic case of cut-off is when someone gets offended by their pastor or a leader in the Church. What often happens is that the offended person distances themselves from the congregation. They start pulling away from relationships, attending community gathering less, and a more often than not, they suddenly feel “led to pray” for a new Church home because the current one is “just not a fit.” The bottom line is they assume an unteachable posture toward the ministry, leader, or fellow Christian.
The Spiritually mature on the other hand seem to be at relative peace in the face of discomfort, relational stress, and sin in the Church. Why? Because they understand that they are just as bad as their offender. They also know that if they are not here, there will be another offender somewhere else. Most of all, they know that wherever they go they will bring their own sin nature with them. So the imperfection and sin of the Church is never a reason to go in search of another. Because of a deep and solum knowledge of their own sin they are able to abide, learn, and grow. They are teachable. They understand that God has put other sinners in their lives to not challenge merely their open sin, but to challenge their hidden sin of arrogance and pride. So think about it this way. What do you think would take more radical humility on your part, learning from the all perfect and all powerful and sinless Jesus, or learning from someone who is just as bad as you? Suddenly the perfect wisdom of God in forming the Church for our sanctification is revealed. It is far more humbling and challenging to submit ourselves to other sinners for correction than to God himself. Anyone could submit to God. And so once again the wisdom of man pales in comparison to God. And so an unteachable rejection of the Church, global or even local, as an institution or just one leader in it, is in fact to reject the call to humility. God has established his church in his wisdom as a more powerful path to humility than actually sitting right at the feet of Jesus. Lets give that a ponder in the new year.
Posted by Pastor Todd Murphy in | Comments (0)
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