Honoring God with a Wayward Heart
Unbelievers love to say the church is full of hypocrites. There’s some truth to it, albeit a half-truth. Hypocrisy, like all sin, is forgivable. Those who commit it are people like me, who fail in their attempts to honor and please God. Rather than admit our failures, we sometimes pretend they never happened.
Fortunately, the Christian life is not about performance.
If it were, we’d all be sunk. Rather, it’s about grace, forgiveness, and conferred righteousness. We actually believe that Jesus’ righteousness is bestowed on us through simple faith in Him. Our rags in exchange for His riches. What a deal!
The arrangement can make those of us who are Christians spiritually lazy, and often does. We grow fat upon our couches of grace, humming our “saved by grace, not by works” Reformation mantra. It’s the risk God willingly takes when doling out unmerited favor.
Incontrovertible grace is our distinctive in a world that judges people by appearance and performance — the ability to look good and accomplish things. Every non-Christian religious system and secular philosophy has a ladder to climb — to enlightenment, success, acceptance, or self-fulfillment.
But the heart of Christianity is conferred worth without a lick of striving or achievement on our part. Like kids at Christmas, we receive the free gift of salvation and revel in our good fortune of being made right with God. Some want to make it more complicated, but that’s the essence of Christian faith.
We’re handed undeserved love and mercy, and through it find favor with God.
Being good means doing good
Our response of pure gratitude is where the good works come from. We love and serve others because He first loved us; never to win God’s approval. We give and do and sacrifice out of passionately thankful hearts. Gratefulness constrains us, not the need for an acceptance we already have in full measure.
But…the arrangement can make us lazy. The old nature clings to the new birth, and too often we give in to it by doing what we wish not to do and failing to do what we know is right (Paul’s lament in Romans 7:18–25, NIV).
Many Christians are loath to admit this. They’ve adopted a culturalized notion that we are supposed to be perfect, and then attempt to project that image to a skeptical world. But the world smells a rat, mainly because all are aware of their own inability to always do what they feel is right.
It’s time we Christians admit that a life of faith is a hard road. We stumble; we fall. Yes, God is with us every step of the way, but that doesn’t rid our journey of obstacles that sometimes get the best of us. Among them are the same old habits that accost the rest of humanity: lust, pride, greed…need I go on?
Coming clean
If we admit our struggles and failures, will a non-believing world be more willing to listen to the message of hope and redemption in Christ we wish our lives to announce? Probably not. Calling out hypocrisy, like other arguments against faith, are only smoke screens anyway.
They are mere diversions which attempt to hide the real issue: that individuals want to avoid their own personal need to deal directly with the Living God, regardless of what others think and do. In the end, we will all stand naked before our Maker. On that Great and Terrible Day, “the church is full of hypocrites” excuse will sound as flimsy as it is.
Still, if Christians learned to “come clean” and live honest and vulnerable lives before a non-believing world, it would undoubtedly accomplish something worthwhile. It would put the focus back on grace, where it belongs, and take it away from our appearance and performance, where it can only disappoint.
And putting the spotlight back on grace illuminates the One who is gracious and forgiving. Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32, NIV). We lift Him up whenever we shift the focus back to Him.
It never was and never will be about us.
We have no power to draw people to Christ no matter how persuasively we lead our lives. Only He can draw them. It’s His job. Ours is to live authentic lives before God and each other, fully trusting that in His sovereign power, God can and does use our brokenness to illuminate His perfection and glory.
A Christian’s instructions for living a righteous life are familiar ones:
No assembly required.
Art Image: Luca Giordano (1634–1705) — The Parable of the Prodigal Son Received Home by His Father. National Trust, UK.
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