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I’ve been mulling over this for quite awhile now, had this written, and finally decided to post it.  Blast me for my heresy, I don’t care.  Brand me a lunatic with offbeat theology.  Again, I don’t care.  I just like to think about who I am, not who I’m not.

Saints, not sinners.

I’m trying to understand why it’s taken me so long to actually grasp this message.  I’m not going to deny having it preached to me.  I believe that my church definitely did as I was growing up, but it was never really drilled into my head.  And this is the point where I zoom out and look at the Church at large (myself included) and wonder where the heck we went wrong.  We’re saints, not just sinners saved by grace!  Why do our messages revolve so much around sin and what we’ve done wrong, and not what we’re doing right?

We were in Malawi one day driving around with Harvey from one ministry location to the other.  He was behind the wheel and was attempting to drive the truck into a really narrow space.  I clearly saw that there was no way we were going to get through.  It looked impossible.  But in the process he said to me, “in drivers education they told us to not look at the things we don’t want to hit, but to the only place we might possibly get through.”  And surprisingly, we made it through with no problems.

I almost think that our focus is off. 
 
I love the message of the cross and I think it’s terrific.  We should preach it, we should proclaim it, we should shout from the mountaintops that our King loved us enough to send His one and only to die for my stupid mistakes!  He died for all of our sins past, present, and future.  ALL OF THEM!  Hallelujah, amen!  So… if our sin’s an issue that’s been dealt with… why is it still an issue?

What happened to the empty tomb?

I think most times we only preach half the message because we’re only comfortable with half the message.  We’re fearful of new life because of what it’s really calling out of us: a new life full of new habits, new routines, new beginnings, and a plethora of uncertainties and unknowns!  Worst of all, it asks that we stand out!  Worldly people hate that.

When we begin to shift our focus to the Risen King and not just the death of Him on the cross, we start gazing at new life.  We start seeing ourselves for what we really are.  There comes a point in our walks that we have to keep going.  If it’s truly a race, why do we always stop and mope around because of our sin.  We need to keep running with perseverance!  “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5.21).  Our sin’s no longer an issue, the only issue is the fact that we can’t get over ourselves enough to move onto something greater than what we think we presently are.  We like to maintain our gaze on sin because it retains some degree of control in our lives.  Satan wants that for you; God doesn’t.    If you don’t want to struggle with sin anymore, heed Paul’s advice, “live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature” (Gal. 5.16).  LIVE BY THE SPIRIT!  In other words, embrace and stop running from the thing you know nothing about.  It’s okay!  That’s what makes it so cool!  It’s radical, it’s on edge, it’s the new thing!

The only way to become more like Jesus, which a lot of us wants to do, is to start living like Jesus.  Again, let’s preach the cross, but let’s preach the other half of the message and talk about the empty tomb and what that means for us!

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith…”
— hebrews 12.2