One problem area in justification by faith is that of man’s capabilities. What is our potential? What are we able to do and what are we not able to do? Where is the beginning place in our experience? Can man obey the law and thus become righteous? Will striving, self-discipline and strenuous effort produce a righteous life that God can accept and approve? Does not God command us to work and to strive?
There is much disagreement on these questions. There is also a deception involved in these questions concerning ourselves because it is so difficult for us to see ourselves as we really are. So often we judge ourselves by what other people are like, and if we are doing a little better than they, then everything must be all right. Our real concern should be: What does God think? Righteousness has to do with God and His concepts of righteousness; and His word and the Spirit of Prophecy contain much information about this. I want to survey several people in the Bible to give you some understanding of what we are like and how the Lord deals with us concerning these questions.
Among the most righteous people of Christ’s day, at least as regarded by the general public, were the members of the Sanhedrin. They were the highest and the most elite. One of those men was Nicodemus who went to visit Jesus at night. At first, he did not ask Jesus a question. He only expressed his thoughts about who Jesus was. “There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that Thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with Him.” John 3:1-2. Either Christ did not hear him, or did not wish to hear him, because he steered Nicodemus in a different direction. He looked into his heart. Jesus had been thinking about this man for a long time. Jesus responds: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Verse 3. He told Nicodemus about some things he cannot have and cannot do. This was a surprise to a man who seemed to be able to do so many things; and now he finds out there is something from which he is omitted.
“Nicodemus had heard the preaching of John the Baptist concerning repentance and baptism, and pointing the people to One who should baptize with the Holy Spirit. He himself had felt that there was a lack of spirituality among the Jews, that, to a great degree, they were controlled by bigotry and worldly ambition. He had hoped for a better state of things at the Messiah’s coming. Yet the heartsearching message of the Baptist had failed to work in him conviction of sin. He was a strict Pharisee, and prided himself on his good works. He was widely esteemed for his benevolence and his liberality in sustaining the temple service, and he felt secure of the favor of God.” DA 171. When Nicodemus went to the service on Sabbath, he was at perfect peace and in total complacency. He was a liberal giver, and secure in the pride of his own works. He felt he had gained the favor of God. There was nothing in his lifestyle to bother him.
The response of Jesus seemed to irritate Nicodemus. “He was startled at the thought of a kingdom too pure for him to see in his present state.” His questions such as, “How can a man be born when he is old?” shows how flabbergasted this intellectual man was. He was startled out of his normal composure; and the Lord startled him on purpose for he wanted this man to see something that he could not see in his present condition. This was hard on Nicodemus, and it is hard on anyone who suddenly finds out that they have been falsely secure. Christ was not denouncing the man or being critical. He simply told him that unless you are born again, you cannot get inside heaven.
The words that Jesus spoke to Nicodemus apply to every person. “Many are not sensible to their condition and their danger…We may flatter ourselves, as did Nicodemus that our moral character has been correct and we need not humble ourselves before God like the common sinner. But we must be content to enter into life in the very same way as the chief of sinners. We must renounce our own righteousness and plead for the righteousness of Christ to be imputed to us. We must depend wholly upon Christ for our strength. Self must die. We must acknowledge that all we have is from the exceeding riches of divine grace.” 5T 219.
Nicodemus was a very unusual and gifted person. He was an esteemed leader in the eyes of the people. If he were alive today, he might be elected General Conference President. Everyone back home would say, “Amen, they elected the right man.” They would be happy about it because there would be nothing discernable about him that would seem to say that he was not ready for heaven. But Jesus told this capable man that unless he is born again, he would not make it.
The Bible has more to say on this that I would like to put together with the thoughts about Nicodemus. “For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:20. Just as Jesus told Nicodemus that he would not make it unless he was born again, He says to the rest of us that if we are not better than the Pharisees, we will not get there, either. He does not mean to be discouraging. He means for us to discern the true meaning of righteousness, and to judge righteousness by different criteria than we have in the past.
Another man who appeared very righteous and who felt that God had approved of him was Isaiah the gospel prophet. Isaiah felt approved of God until he saw the purity of the Lord high and lifted up in the temple: “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” Isaiah 6:5. Isaiah knew himself to be a prophet of God; therefore he thought he was blessed of the Lord and spiritually safe.
“As the prophet Isaiah beheld the glory of the Lord, he was amazed and overwhelmed with a sense of his own weakness and unworthiness; and he cried, ‘Woe is me!’ Isaiah had denounced the sin of others; but now he sees himself exposed to the same condemnation he had pronounced upon them. He had been satisfied with a cold, lifeless ceremony in his worship of God. He had not known this until the vision was given him of the Lord. How little now appeared his wisdom and talents as he looked upon the sacredness and majesty of the sanctuary…His view of himself might be expressed in the language of the apostle Paul, ‘O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?’” FLB 190.
Here is an apparently righteous man, a prophet whom God had called to tell other people what was wrong with them, and now as he sees the purity of the Lord in the temple, he himself finds that there are many defects in his character. He felt totally undone. Just like Nicodemus, he was amazed and upset by this revelation; and he began to sense that there was something in him that he thought was only to be found in the people. He thought he was home safe, but now he had these suspicions that he was in the same sinful condition as the people he was sent to warn.
Another man of whom the Jews were greatly envious was Moses. He had a marvelous deliverance from the time he was born, trained by his mother, a very godly person, and raised up in the home of Pharaoh. This man who seemed to have such an excellent beginning thought that he was qualified to deliver God’s people and that it was a righteous act to go out and start killing Egyptians; and so he did just that. When he found out he had been discovered, he became frightened and fled for his life. Pharaoh found out and determined to take the life of Moses. Then Moses, who seemed to be so righteous, spent forty long years herding sheep in the wilderness in order to eradicate some deeply imbedded problems in his life.
Can you imagine taking forty years to get rid of some negative things in your character? We admire Moses for having led God’s people out of Egypt and for those forty years he spent dealing with all manner of trials in the desert. But just imagine spending forty years with a flock of sheep. What kind of education is that? At the beginning, Moses attempted to lead God’s people as a general. That’s the way many people try to lead, commanding and manhandling, dictating and using weapons of all kinds. Some generals tell people what to do, and if they don’t do it, he might have them shot. But the Lord had to take Moses by the hand and teach him a better way. Moses realized that he could not use the techniques of a general when tending after sheep. When he got mad at the sheep, he realized he could not afford to kill too many sheep or he would starve to death after awhile. The sheep were his livelihood. His job was to keep them alive, not kill them off. It took forty years for Moses to learn God’s way to deal with people. He was a godly person and we think highly of him, but we never stop to think that God spent a long time getting him ready. There were character traits he had to get rid of before he could become the leader of Israel.
Another great man in Israel, at least at the beginning, was Saul. We usually remember only the bad things about this man, but the Bible tells some good things about him, and I would like you to see those first, and then put the bad things in perspective with them. “And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.…And it was so, that when he had turned his back to go from Samuel, God gave him another heart: and all those signs came to pass that day.” 1 Samuel 10:6,9. I left out the signs that were mentioned there. He became another man with a new heart—a converted person. God took care of that. When he was finally proclaimed king, these are the words that were said about him: “Therefore they enquired of the Lord further, if the man should yet come thither. And the Lord answered, Behold, he hath hid himself among the stuff [he was a humble person]: and when he stood among the people, he was higher than any of the people from his shoulders and upward. And Samuel said to all the people, See ye him whom the Lord hath chosen, that there is none like him among all the people? And all the people shouted, and said, God save the king.” Verses 22-24.
Saul was at one time a born-again believer. God said to Saul that He would make him another man, and He gave him a new heart. This was King Saul! How long has it been since you have read those words? He had an amazing beginning and was considered by all the people as most righteous. That is why God chose him. He was a special leader and a godly man. Yet this is the man who for all those years tried to kill David because he was jealous of him. How could a man of such stature and prestige have any peer pressures? He came to the point in his life where he was envious of David and tried to kill him.
Worse still, Saul was for a while a prophet. This is significant when you put that in the context of the rest of his life. “And when they came thither to the hill, behold, a company of prophets met him; and the Spirit of God came upon him, and he [king Saul] prophesied among them. And it came to pass, when all that knew him beforetime saw that, behold, he prophesied among the prophets, then the people said one to another, What is this that is come unto the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?” 1 Samuel 10:10,11. This must be put in context with the last acts in his life when he went to the witch of Endor, to the devil’s messenger or false prophet, to find out what God would tell him to do. The man who with his own eyes had seen the visions and heard the voice of God as a prophet, turned his back on that years later and went to the devil’s spokesman to ask what God wanted him to do. If his experience had not been that of a prophet, if he had not witnessed it with his own senses, his own mind, it might not have been so bad to go down to the witch of Endor. But prophets of God have certain responsibilities and accountabilities. Imagine him going to the devil’s prophet. It is unbelievable.
What was there in Saul’s heart—that new heart—that could cause him to do these things? Did he know his own heart? If someone ten years prior had told him he would go to the witch of Endor, he would have laughed. If someone had told him he would try to kill David, he would deny it over and over again. He would never believe that. None of these men we have mentioned would have believed some of the things the Bible tells about them in retrospect.
Israel’s greatest king was David, whom God called “a man after Mine own heart.” Acts 13:22. Surely David must have been a righteous man. He was God’s own man for that time; yet lurking inside of him was the potential to commit adultery with Bathsheba, and then plan to have her husband murdered to cover up his own sin. There was no one who thought that David could do things like that. Had you tried to tell him before that time, he wouldn’t have believed it at all. Yet there was something in David, in that righteous person, that brought on those problems. There was an inward corruption, and he seemed to sense this perhaps more than any other Bible writer as he wrote about his own experience: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalms 51:10. He knew that on the inside he must have been defiled or those thoughts and deeds could never have emanated from him. He asked the Lord to change him entirely from the inside.
Similar situations may be found in the disciples of Jesus. The three most prominent of the disciples were Peter, James, and John. Ellen White said they were with Him at all the miracles he performed. For Christ’s entire ministry, they had a most intimate relationship with Him. Yet we find among them some of these same problems with self. Imagine seeing and eating and walking with Jesus day after day for years. Yet what were these men like?
You find out some things about James and John when their mother went to see Jesus. “Then came to Him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping Him, and desiring a certain thing of Him. And He said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto Him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, the one on Thy right hand, and the other on the left, in Thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto Him, ‘We are able.’” Matthew 20:20-22. Tell us what to do and we will jump. How foolish they were. They did not understand their own hearts. They did not understand the trials that were about to come upon them, or they would never have said they were able.
As we learned in the previous chapter, the greatest act of righteousness was the death of Jesus on the cross. There was more love in that one act than you can find anywhere else in the whole Bible. And remember that love is the fulfilling of the law. God is love and His character is written down in that law; and righteousness is obedience to the law. The sufferings of Christ on Calvary were the greatest act of obedience you can possibly find. When you put those sufferings together with the sacrifice of His life, you get a totally different concept of righteousness. Righteousness is not merely trying to avoid telling lies about somebody, or trying not to covet what other people have. That is such a juvenile understanding of righteousness.
Righteousness is most perfectly embodied in that one act of Jesus. In the death of Jesus we see the ultimate example of righteousness. The disciples were righteous because of the things they suffered for Christ and for us. We say we are willing to bear much for the Lord, but many baulk at the idea of suffering physical pain or humiliation. Many stand around in their pride and say, “My, I am so thankful I am not like other people.” And they call that righteousness. How different was Jesus’ demonstration of righteousness. Somehow we must go back and see how wrong the disciples were when they said, “We are able.” Jesus told them they did not know what they were saying. They did not know what they were asking for and what was going to happen to them. They were not able. How little they knew their own hearts.
The most obvious and glaring case was that of Peter. Peter was an amazing person and some of us identify with him because he was so much like us. “And Jesus saith unto them, All ye shall be offended because of Me this night: for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. But after that I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee. But Peter said unto Him, Although all shall be offended [meaning the other disciples], yet will not I. And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny Me thrice. But he [Peter] spake the more vehemently, If I should die with Thee, I will not deny Thee in any wise. Likewise also said they all.” Mark 14:27-31.
How could Peter say this so strongly? How could he dispute with the God of heaven? Peter, like many of us, would defend himself whenever anyone talked about his deficiencies. We automatically defend our own righteousness.
“When Peter said he would follow his Lord to prison and to death, he meant it, every word of it; but he did not know himself. Hidden in his heart were elements of evil that circumstances would fan into life.” DA 673. Have you ever noticed how everything can be going along fine in your life and then the wrong set of circumstances come about? Some simply collapse. Have you ever found yourself in a social environment, laughing at all the jokes you thought you would never laugh at again? Some people fold up under certain circumstances. We give in and all our righteousness goes flying out the window.
Continuing with the quote: “Unless he was made conscious of his danger, these would prove his eternal ruin. The Savior saw in him a self- love and assurance that would overbear even his love for Christ.” These days we teach people you must have self-love. Christ said that was Peter’s most dangerous, vulnerable point. We say that you must love others as much as you love yourself, but you cannot love others unless you love yourself. Have you heard that preached lately? We talk about selfworth, self-achievement, pride, and self esteem. This was Peter’s hang-up. The Lord saw in him a self-love and assurance that would overbear even his love for Christ.
Continuing on: “Much of infirmity, of unmortified sin, carelessness of spirit, unsanctified temper, heedlessness in entering into temptation, had been revealed in his experience. Christ’s solemn warning was a call to heart searching. Peter needed to distrust himself, and to have a deeper faith in Christ.” He needed to distrust himself, but he did not. What was his response? If you continue reading in that same paragraph on page 674, you find that “Peter felt that he was distrusted, and he thought it cruel. He was already offended, and he became more persistent in his self- confidence.” He became more self-confident than he was before, and he was already too self-confident. Now he becomes more extreme than ever. Peter was like that; and sometimes the best help the Lord gives us only exaggerates our weak points. You can see it in others, but you cannot see it in yourself. The best help He gives us sometimes entrenches us as we seek to defend ourselves, our pride of opinion, our justification of self and all our acts.
We are so certain so often. We, like James and John, say we are able. How reluctant we are to say we are unable. The Lord said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3. The little child is always saying, “Mommy, I can’t do it. Show me how.” But we say we are able and that we can do what the Lord requires, and thus fulfill all righteousness.
Some sense their terrible inability and do not even want to try; while others always say they are able. Many who think they are quite able to do things right do not like us to speak to their loved ones, for those close to them know all about their hypocrisy and phoniness, and how they are different at church than at home. They know about these things. They listen to them pray at church but know that they almost never pray at home. There are many things in our characters that are understood very well by our children and spouses.
The Bible has many examples of people who did not know themselves. The Lord, in His divine grace, tries not to expose our hypocrisy to other people, but rather tries to reveal to our innermost soul the corruption that is there and the changes He would like to make on our behalf. The question is: Will we let Him? We have such pride. There are thousands, even millions, who are just like Peter, and James and John, and David, and Saul, and Moses, and Nicodemus, and Isaiah. Some of them learned about themselves by the revelation of God to their souls. Some of them never learned. And some of us will never learn, not because the Lord does not try, not because He does not love us, not because He has not tried repeatedly, for He never gives up. It is just that we will not let self be exposed. And we take it as extreme criticism when people begin to discuss with us very kindly about what’s inside us that protrudes to the outside for everyone around us to see. We never seem to outgrow this. One of the marks of a healthy Christian is an honesty with self, when we take every negative statement about self and carefully meditate upon it, pondering if what people say is really the truth. A well-adjusted Christian does not get hung-up because there is something wrong on the inside. They expect to find something wrong on the inside.
Is that a new idea? Do you think you are so holy and perfect that you never find anything wrong? Are you so afraid of what’s wrong that you think you could be lost? You know that the Lord knew all these things about us before He died for us; yet He still died for us. It does not matter how bad you are; He still would have died for your sins. There is nothing in your life so horrible that it is going to cause you to be lost, if you let Him take care of it.
I know of people who take personality tests and falsify the answers so they cannot find out what they are like on the inside. This doesn’t make sense. There is nothing so terrible or startling there. We are just human beings and human beings are like us; and being like us is being sinful and having a lot of problems, like Moses had, like Saul had, and David and the others. They were apostles and prophets. How can you get any higher than they are? And the Lord came to expose to them, not to others, their innermost souls. We need to know the truth about ourselves, and then we will not think ourselves so righteous. And this will be a great blessing to us when that happens. Instead, we chase the blessing away. We think we are different.
Watch how in Sabbath school classes or during Bible studies people will try to prove the other fellow wrong. We want to advertise that we are right, and that we have a greater Bible knowledge than anybody else in the class. Adventists love to do this. We do it with non-Adventists and then wonder why they don’t like us and come to our churches. But I showed them the truth! Yes, but how did you show them? By every time proving they were wrong. And then we think we love our brother as Jesus loved us. In this I detect a spirit like that of James and John—a desire to be preeminent in the kingdom.
Somehow we feel safe when we can always prove we are right. The Jews could prove they were right but they were lost, and they were even wrong about the Messiah. We must be careful about being right and calling that righteousness. We must be careful about adopting any attitude that would make us first in the kingdom. That is not the way. The first in the kingdom are those who serve. They are the meek and lowly ones.
In all of this we are certain that we believe in Christ as our righteousness, and that we live according to that truth; and yet Christ our righteousness teaches that I live by faith in the rightness and righteousness of another and not by the faith in myself. In my self-confidence I am establishing that I do not have faith in His righteousness, but am trying to have faith in my own. We might even claim that we are believers in Christ as our righteousness, but be a thousand miles from it.
In Romans, Paul spoke about those who go about establishing their own righteousness, being ignorant of God’s righteousness. As soon as you try to make yourself righteous, you are ignorant of His. Righteousness comes by faith in another and not by confidence in self. It always has been that way.
The greatest truth we have to discover is the truthfulness about self. “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” Isaiah 64:6. I have always believed this to be true for those in the world, haven’t you? But I did not believe it for me, that my righteousness is nothing more than dirty rags. That is a different truth, isn’t it? It is easy for you to apply it to your spouse or your children or somebody else; but does this mean you? Some people will answer, “No!”
There is another statement like this that is just as difficult to accept in a personal way: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9. Your heart does not deceive me. My heart does not deceive you. But my heart deceives me and your heart deceives you. We make many assumptions that are a thousand miles from the truth about self. Distrust of self can be a healthy thing. We are always suspicious of the other person and think that they do not do us right. When I get into problems with several different people, I never realize that something may be wrong with me! Instead I become paranoid. All those people are not mistreating me. There is something wrong with my attitude.
The heart is deceitful and I do not understand my heart. It deceives me, and I go along assuming that since other aspects of my life are okay, there is nothing wrong in my heart. We fail to see our deceptions because we are prone to look at our outward actions and almost never take a look at our motives. Why do we go to church on Sabbath? Why do we pay tithe? Why do we feel we ought to do missionary work? Why do we feel we ought to stop doing that particular activity or sin or what ever it is? Why do you feel guilty about doing or not doing certain things?
As long as we are content with external activities that seem right to us, we go along quite complacent. We do not see our own selfishness because we do not look at our motives. The Lord is constantly trying to bring us to a realization of what we are like inside. But we keep fending Him off. It seems that we are desperate for Christian survival in our justification of self. We are frightened that something terrible is going to happen to us if something is found wrong with us. Why do we assume nothing is wrong with us; or why do we assume everything will be all right if we do not hear about it?
The Bible writer with the greatest understanding of this, and the one who has written the most about it, is the apostle Paul. He had the greatest difficulty because, while trying to kill off the Christian church, he thought he was serving God. What greater deception could there be? This is the man who wrote these strange words: “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.” Galatians 6:3. If we think ourselves to be something when we are nothing, we deceive ourselves.
A man of great understanding, of tremendous experience, and who had a close walk with God was inspired to write those words. He had already applied it to himself for he said, “I am the chief of sinners.” 1 Timothy 1:15. This was not an idle boast. Paul was a humble, meek man, and he was utterly amazed that God would use him after all the terrible things he did in persecuting the church. He knew from experience that “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” Romans 5:20. He believed himself to be the worst of all sinners. Who could do the terrible things he had done? He had no confidence in the flesh.
Why do we trust ourselves? Why do we have confidence in what we think or what we can do or what we can say? When we understand what self is like, we will have no confidence in the flesh. When God reveals your true self to you, you will not place much confidence in self. You will put your confidence in Him and His righteousness.
This was the emphasis back in 1888 when Christ our righteousness began to be preached. In the book The Glad Tidings, Waggoner over and over wrote about having no confidence in the flesh. He emphasized the nothingness of man, a concept that today many abhor.
Ellen White wrote: “When men see their own nothingness, they are prepared to be clothed with righteousness of Christ.” COR, 104. This is preparation. “The burden of our message should be the mission in the life of Jesus Christ. Let there be a dwelling upon the humiliation, self-denial, meekness and lowliness of Christ, that proud and selfish hearts may see the difference between themselves and the Pattern, and may be humbled.” COR, 38. We should say amen to that. Many do not like to think very much about the humiliation and self-denial of Jesus.
Remember this important definition: “What is justification by faith? It is the work of God in laying the glory of man in the dust, and doing for man that which it is not in his power to do for himself.” TM 456. This can be a humiliating experience.
But in our distrust of self, we find great hope. “Nothing is apparently more helpless, yet really more invincible, than the soul that feels its nothingness and relies wholly on the merits of the Saviour. God would send every angel in heaven to the aid of such an one, rather than allow him to be overcome.” 7T 17. He would empty heaven just for one person who senses his own nothingness.
In the Bible there is an experience that I almost never hear talked about. “And there shall ye remember your ways, and all your doings, wherein ye have been defiled; and ye shall lothe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils that ye have committed.” Ezekiel 20:43. Someday, all of us will have a revelation of self. The Lord does not want to put our weaknesses and sins on display. That is not His way. He has a tender, loving, compassionate way. He is more long suffering than we can imagine. He understands that we are but flesh. He is able to succor us because He became human and understands us. He knows the problems we have in dealing with self. He knows how defensive we can be; but He knows we must see ourselves before we really want Him. Do you know that? Some think they are too good to need Him. And some think they are too bad to ever have Him.
This problem in Christ our righteousness is the most severe in the Adventist church today that it has ever been. As older members see how young people are lacking, they become even more critical. The young retaliate by criticizing the older ones. Neither believes the other. The credibility gap in our denomination is one of the widest. Somehow a strong emphasis on legalism—that you must do this or you are not accepted—has permeated our churches, our homes, and our schools for many years. We have lacked the knowledge of Christ and His righteousness and saving grace. A lack of emphasis on that has put every child in a dilemma. How do you perform without Jesus? How do you live these standards without Christ? The strongwilled can at least give an external appearance of righteousness; but there are many weak-willed among us and they cannot. There is a tremendous difference between strong-willed and weak-willed. The strong-willed cannot change the heart. They can just polish the outside; but don’t step on their toes because they bite. They are still the same on the inside. Therefore, it does not matter whether you are strong-willed or weak-willed. On the inside they are both still the same. And as you see in your life these many failures that parents and teachers and pastors have taught you for years, you become more and more discouraged and you want to quit; and you feel condemned over and over and over again. Why would anyone want to be condemned all the time? No one does! You don’t like Sabbath school, you don’t like church, and you don’t like Bible class because they are always sticking you. When you go home, you retaliate by finding fault with those who find fault, or against the establishment.
There is a reaction to this critical attitude and this legalistic emphasis. We find young people justifying their sins to protect themselves; and this is a defense measure, by the way. Then the older ones say, “Horrors! They are not only doing what is wrong but they justify what is wrong.” Then they become even more extreme in their legalistic criticism, and more conservative, if you want to call it that. So old and young part ways, farther and farther away, both believing themselves to be right, and neither one believing that there is anything wrong with self. You cannot criticize if you grow up in our homes anymore. You cannot even tell people that there is anything wrong with them, because they have been told that so many, many times that they want to fight with you. In fact, they would like to punch you in the nose. Therefore, we don’t talk about sin anymore. We have other names for it. And to protect ourselves and to find some hope, we join groups where they tell each other how good they are and where they emphasize selflove and self-achievement. We try to pick people up off the floor like gum that has been there for twenty years. And they like that. They don’t want to go home, they don’t want to go to church, and they don’t want to go to school because everybody is telling them what is wrong with them. They cannot bear to see the nothingness of self. Dads and mothers, the preacher, the teacher told them that for many years. The older people say, “Don’t go join those groups because they believe in ultimate promiscuousness. They say that everything wrong is okay.” The older ones believe they are right and the young ones believe they are right. And the devil laughs and laughs and laughs when we all say we are right.
Friend, I honestly believe that is happening everyday, and it has been going on for a long time. How can the Lord tell us that He wants to bless us and that He has tremendous righteousness to give us as a free gift? He wants to take care of all the deficiencies, all the weakness, all the inadequacies, all the ineffectiveness. But not until you acknowledge your need and your nothingness will you ever depend upon Him. He must tell you that you are needy, and you must accept it. We have become so defensive. God has never been involved in this credibility gap. It has always been our misunderstandings, our misrepresentations, our misinterpretations. He is not critical like we are. He does not point the finger and denounce and exact performance. He has never done that; but we have done it as pastors and parents and teachers.
God has a still, small voice. He speaks to us like He did to Nicodemus, and to Moses, and to David. See how delicately He pointed it out to them. He is very careful that He does not crush out the only spark of hope we have, as He points out our deficiencies. He is literally asking, “Why will you die in your sins? Why will you die with all those things when I can take them away and make you like Jesus?” Why do we go on and on perpetuating these problems? I believe with all my heart that the Lord this very day wants to bridge all these credibility gaps. He wants to look into every heart, not just the young. He wants to look into the preacher’s heart; He wants to look into the administrator’s heart; He wants to look into the teacher’s heart. He wants to show us our sham, our phoniness, our corruptions. He wants to show us how we have misled people. He wants to look into parent’s hearts, but he doesn’t want them to give up. He doesn’t want them to commit suicide. He does not want them to go around blaming themselves.
He wants us to turn to Him and depend on Him for the strength and the righteousness we do not have in self. He has been waiting all these years to bless us with His power and His Spirit, with His love and His righteousness. And we go on defending ourselves as though there was nothing wrong with us.
Forget the voices of many humans who find fault and who excuse and justify self. We are accountable for one voice: the voice of God’s Spirit. He is speaking to us as He did to Nicodemus, telling us we must be born again, and have the blemishes and cancers taken out of our lives. Unless we become new persons, wholly dependant on God, we cannot enter the kingdom. He wants us there. That is why He died for us. He wants you to give Him your heart, to trust Him, and to lean on Him. It doesn’t matter how useless you think you are, He can make you mighty. He can bless you and even make you like Jesus. He wants to say to you someday, “Well done good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”
May the Lord by His sweet grace somehow penetrate into our hearts and minds and take away all this defensiveness, all this self-justification; and may we see what Christ is really trying to do for us. This is my prayer for you in Jesus’ name.