No Condemnation
Listen, I know how bad I’ve been in my lifetime. You know how bad you’ve been in your life. For the vast majority of us, we don’t need to constantly be reminded of the fact that we aren’t good enough for heaven. We are well aware of it! Most of us think something like this:
“I’m too bad of a person. I haven’t done enough to get into heaven. Maybe I haven’t committed murder, but I’ve done enough to know that I don’t belong in God’s house. I’m a broken, sinful, worthless individual and I have failed
myself, the people around me, and my eternal Father.”
It’s easy for us to dwell on our guilt and shame. It makes us insecure about our salvation. It makes us feel inadequate when we pray. It makes us feel insufficient when God shows us ways we can serve Him. We put ourselves through all kinds of self-punishment to make sure we don’t forget how bad we’ve been. We fall short, then we want to crucify ourselves emotionally because we haven’t been perfect. And it doesn’t end there! We dig up memories of the past and remind ourselves that we are not worthy of God’s love.
Do not be fooled–these thoughts are not of God. It’s alright for us to remember the fact that we’ve sinned and feel the sorrow which leads to repentance and life. But we aren’t called by God to dwell on our badness. We aren’t called to live our lives raking ourselves over the coals and feeling unworthy.
At some point we have to ask ourselves how much we really believe passages like Romans 8:1,
"Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."
Say what you want about how easy it is to abuse passages that talk about freedom in Christ. Listen, you and I both know we don’t have an excuse to intentionally go on living sinfully. We’ve been taught it and we understand it–we’ve read Hebrews 10 and Romans 6.
Would it be alright, though, if we moved away from preaching about what “no condemnation” doesn’t mean and start preaching about what it does mean?
When looking at my sinfulness, how could Paul tell me that I am no longer condemned? It doesn’t seem justifiable!
…until I reach those crucial two words: IN CHRIST.
In Christ, there is no condemnation for the things I have done in the past, that I’ll do today, or that I will do in the future. My shortcomings and failures are taken away. I am cleansed, purified, and whole. I don’t have to dwell on the fact that I haven’t always been perfect–for He makes me perfect.
I know we don’t have an excuse to go on sinning. But the fact of the matter is that far too often we do sin. We don’t make a habit out of it and we do our best to repent, but we aren’t perfect! And if John has anything to say about it, we are forgiven! Putting 1 John 1:7 in my own words, it sounds something like this:
“If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin and takes away all condemnation.”
Dear Christian. You who are struggling with the shame and guilt of the past. You who are struggling against sin and longing to be perfect as He is perfect. You who are in Christ but are stressed, tired, and weary of bearing your sins. Hear Paul’s message to you: “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
And one more thing. We will at times still struggle with our guilt and shame. Our emotions aren’t always what we would like. John writes us something especially powerful in 1st John 3:19-20, "By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything."
Oh Christian, fight on.
Endnotes:
This article originally appeared on https://nathandiller.wordpress.com
