10-15-2019

Good Morning All,

         Romans 3:23-24; “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,”

    I remember a conversation that I had with a non-churchgoer.  She told me that she would never go to that church after all it was full of hypocrites!!  My initial (sinful) reaction was to say to her, “well thank you for not being one more in there.” But the Spirit held my tongue and I just smiled.  I wanted to say something but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything; perhaps this has happened to you as well.

    It seems that we hear comments like this often.  We hear often how the church and its members are judgmental, hypocritical, greedy, self-serving and a bunch of other things.  At times, it may seem that those charges are right.  Yet from my standpoint, most of the people that I talk to in the church have faith.  They believe that Jesus died for their sins and hold onto that truth.  So, the church is made up, mostly of believers.  So why does the church so often trip over its own feet and make mistakes? 

    The reason is that the church is made up of sinners; people who are fallible, who make errors, who make bad decisions, who cannot see into the future and go the wrong direction; in other words, the church is made up of people like you and me.  We are redeemed by God but we continue to sin.  There is a Latin phrase to explain this; it is “simul justus et peccator”.  This means that you are, at the exact same time, justified and still a sinner.

     We are justified by faith through God’s grace.  We don’t work to earn it.  So, when we look at the church each person is this type of person.  We are God’s children and it is through us that God chooses to work in the world.  Yet at the same time we are sinners; we say callous things, we are jealous of other’s success, we tend to look out for ourselves; we are sinners.  We are an imperfect people working in a broken creation; we are probably going to make mistakes but who we are; we are the redeemed children of God.  We will make mistakes so if we go in realizing this; that perfection here on this earth will not occur, then we can go forward trusting in God for guidance.

    We don’t need to defend the church. If someone tells you that the church is full of sinners; tell them,” Yes, that is the complete truth!!”  We are not the church because we are perfect; we are the church because we are the redeemed; we are the justified.  We are declared holy by God’s grace and Jesus’ sacrifice.  So, as you go forward today; know that you probably will sin.  You probably don’t want to but you probably will.  Know for certain that you are a redeemed child of God; you are justified by faith.

Dearest Father, we are weak yet you build us up and send us out as your church.  You move through this world using the weak and the feeble.  Through this you show your grace to us and to the world.  Give us the certainty to trust in your mercy to keep us close to you.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret