A Welcome to Honest Living

The Bible is honest about life in this fallen world. This honesty is a sign of God’s love. He’s the wise and gentle father preparing his child for that walk through a tough neighborhood on the first day of school. He’s the faithful friend praying with you before you face an unusual challenge. He’s the caring physician informing you of what to expect from the disease he’s just diagnosed.

A primary goal of all this diagnosis, description, warning, comfort, and counsel is to call us to certain ways of living. Why would you need to be “completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love,” (Ephesians 4:2–3) if you were not living in a community of flawed people where this kind of character is essential? Relationships in a fallen world are hard. Ministry to flawed people is fraught with difficulty. Character is needed because the world is broken.

In being honest, the Bible welcomes you to be honest as well. In its refusal to minimize, diminish, or deny the harsh realities of this broken-down house, the Bible calls us to face the facts as well. Things are not okay around us or inside us. The brokenness presses in on every side. What should we do with all this? Let me suggest five ways to pursue the character qualities to which God calls us, and in that way prepare ourselves to participate more effectively in the great task of restoration.

1. Determine to be honest.
Do not permit yourself to give way to location amnesia. Look the real world squarely in the face. Locate those places in your life where things are not the way they were meant to be and determine, by God’s help, to be a reconciler and a restorer.

2. Let yourself mourn.
If we are honest and look the world in the face, we will be sad at what we see. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mathew 5:4). The condition of the world we live in should make us weep.

3. Fight to be dissatisfied.
I agree with C.S. Lewis that one of the big problems for Christians is not that we are dissatisfied, but that we are far too easily satisfied. We can become so content with the material sights, smells, sounds, and tastes of the physical world that we lose perspective. But if we’re honest, if we mourn to see the broken world around us limping its way into hell, it will make us sick inside.

4. Be glad.
You and I also must fight to not lose our joy and awe. Even as we fully acknowledge this broken world, we must lift our eyes to a greater truth. The Sovereign Creator God has become our Savior, and through him we are the beloved adopted children of God the Father. We must require ourselves to celebrate this every day, for all of this is the result of his grace. We must remind ourselves that Emmanuel is with us wherever we are, and in the middle of whatever we are facing.

5. Live with anticipation.
We must recall again and again that this broken home is not our permanent address. By an extraordinary act of God’s grace, all his blood-bought children are guaranteed to be part of a much better neighborhood. Someday we will all live in the New Jerusalem on a street called Shalom, where brokenness will be no more.

Last week your boss gave you your walking papers, or your teenager rebelled to your face, or you were diagnosed with a disease, or a tree fell on your garage, or your best friend gossiped about something you said in confidence, or your aging body ached, or your church disappointed you again, or you pulled your back out, or your vacation proved to be more work than retreat, or you found out that your exorbitant city taxes are being misused by a politically hungry elected thief, or you learned that someone stole your identity, or you felt drawn to something you knew was wrong.
Last week you encountered the world as it really is: broken. How did you do? Did you long for a better world? Did you seek and celebrate the grace that is yours until that better world is your final home?

Between a Rabbi an Two Imams

It was a wonderful opportunity. I was asked to participate in an open discussion about death and dying from a patient’s perspective. The event was held at a local medical college. It was the first ministry situation I’d ever been in where I’d sat between a rabbi and two imams. My Jewish and Islamic colleagues were all very warm and articulate, but I had an unfair advantage. My advantage had nothing to do with my gifts, ministry experience or skill. My advantage was simply this; I came armed with the gospel. I carried something into the room that no one else had, and as the evening went on the practical, real-life glory of the gospel glistened with greater and greater beauty.

The men on either side of me were gentle and caring. They knew their faith well, but they’d one distinct disadvantage: the only message they brought into the room was the message of the law. The only hope they could give was the hope that somehow, someway, a person could be obedient enough to be accepted into eternity with God. Their message was basically this, you’ve either performed your way into acceptance with God or you haven't. The more they spoke, the more beautiful the the promises and provisions of the gospel looked.

The most significant moment of the evening came when we were asked about what we’d say to a family of someone who had committed suicide. It was at this moment that the gospel shined the brightest. I said, “Suicide doesn’t change the paradigm. Think with me: who of us could lie in our bed during the last hours of our life and look back and say to ourselves that we’ve been as good as a person could be? Wouldn’t we all look back and have regrets about things we’ve chosen, said, and done? None of us is able to commend ourselves to God on the basis of our performance. In this way, the person who’s committed suicide and the person who hasn’t are exactly the same. Both of them are completely dependent on one thing and one thing alone, the forgiveness of a God of grace in order to have any hope for eternity.”

You and I share identity with the hypothetical suicidal man just as we share identity with David, the adulterous and murderous king of Psalm 51. Our only hope is one thing — God’s “steadfast love” and his “abundant mercy” (v. 1). We can’t look to our education, or family, or ministry track record, or our theological knowledge, or our evangelistic zeal, or our faithful obedience. We’ve one hope; it’s the hope to which this ancient psalm of confession looks. Here’s that hope in the words of a wonderful old hymn, “Jesus Paid It All”:

Since nothing good have I
Whereby Thy grace to claim,
I’ll wash my garment white
In the blood of Calvary’s lamb.

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain;
He washed it white as snow.

I said good-bye to the rabbi and the two imams and got in my car to drive home. But I didn’t just drive; I celebrated! In fact, I sang aloud in my car the hymn quoted above. You see, I was very excited as I thought about the evening, not because I’d had such a golden opportunity to speak the gospel, but because by means of God’s grace I'd been included in it!

The Sweet Harvest of Forgiveness

Yes, you can choose to carry that list. You can choose to punish the other. You can choose for disappointment to become distance, for affection to become dislike, and for a desire for companionship to morph into a search for an escape. You can taste the sad harvest of relational détente that so many people live in, or you can plant better seeds and celebrate a much better harvest.

The harvest of forgiveness is the kind of relationship everyone wants. Forgiveness stimulates appreciation and affection. When we forgive one another daily, we don’t look at one another through the lens of our worst failures and biggest weaknesses. As we talk honestly, weep and pray, and repent and reconcile, our appreciation for one another grows and our affection deepens. We quit looking at the other person as the enemy. We stop protecting ourselves from him or her and begin to work together to build walls of defense against the many threats to a relationship that exist in this fallen world.

Forgiveness produces patience. As we respond God’s way in a daily lifestyle of confession and forgiveness, we begin to experience things we never thought we’d see in our relationships. We begin to see bad patterns break, we begin to see one another change, and we begin to see love that had grown cold become new and vibrant again. We experience hard moments when God gives us the grace not to give way to powerful emotions and desires that would take us in the wrong direction, and we see the practical help and rescue his wisdom gives us again and again. All this means that we no longer panic when a wrong happens between us. We no longer take matters into our own hands in the panic of hurt and retribution. We no longer try to be the other’s conscience or judge. No, we are much more relaxed in the face of failure and willing to patiently follow God’s commit-confront-confess-forgive plan. We’ve come to understand that his grace is bigger than any difficulty we’ll ever face in any of our relationships. So, we’re able to rest and wait, knowing that God is at work, even when we’re exhausted and discouraged, and that he’ll not quit working until his work in us and our relationships is complete.

But there’s one more thing. Forgiveness is the fertile soil in which unity in relationships grows. When you’re living every day in the confession and forgiveness pattern, you’re forsaking your way for a better way. Your relationships are no longer a daily competition for who’s going to get his or her way. You no longer see the other person as a threat, wondering just when he or she will once again get in the way of what you want. You’re not obsessed with your comfort, pleasure, and ease and with the fear of when your friend or relative will interrupt it. No, forgiveness puts you on the same page with each other. You’ve both submitted your desires to the desires of Another. You no longer try to build your own little relationship kingdom. No, you now, together, live for God’s kingdom. You now live with the same set of expectations and rules. You now have the same way of thinking about and addressing problems. And together you celebrate what God's given you, both aware that you could never have done it yourselves. You now experience unity as never before, because forgiveness has liberated you for a higher purpose and a better daily plan.

But there's yet one more thing. Forgiveness is the fertile soil in which unity in marriage grows. When you're living every day in the confession and forgiveness pattern, you're forsaking your way for a better way. Your marriage is no longer a daily competition for who’s going to get his or her way. You no longer see your spouse as a threat, wondering just when he or she once again gets in the way of what you want. You're not obsessed with your comfort, pleasure, and ease and with the fear of when your mate will interrupt it. No, forgiveness puts you on the same page with each other. You've both submitted your desires to the desires of Another. You no longer try to build your own little marriage kingdom. No, you now, together, live for God’s kingdom. You now live with the same set of expectations and rules. You now have the same way of thinking about and addressing problems. And together you celebrate what God's given you, both aware that you could never have done it yourselves. You now experience unity as never before, because forgiveness has liberated you for a higher purpose and a better daily plan.

Remember, God put people in our lives to show us a better way. So we learn to make war, but no longer with one another. Together we battle the one enemy that's after us and our relationships. As we do this, we all become thankful that forgiveness has freed us from the war with one another that we used to be so good at making.