Tag: self-justification

The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
Good Samaritan, by Olga Bakhtina

An expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he said, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 

He said to him, “What is written in the law? What do you read there?” 

He answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” 

And he said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.”

But wanting to vindicate himself, he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” 

Jesus replied, “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and took off, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 

“But a Samaritan while traveling came upon him, and when he saw him he was moved with compassion. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, treating them with oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him, and when I come back I will repay you whatever more you spend.’ 

“Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 

He said, “The one who showed him mercy.”

Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.” (New Revised Standard Version)

The Good Samaritan, by Paula Modersohn-Becker

Let’s establish upfront that the chief point of Christ’s parable is mercy shown from one person to another. Mercy is at the heart of Holy Scripture. Mercy is the very heart of Christ – even more than routine obedience:

“Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13; 12:7; Hosea 6:6)

The message of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible continually reinforces mercy to those who are in need – mercy to immigrants, strangers, the poor, the infirmed, and foreigners.

Therefore, any system – no matter whether church, neighborhood, or government – which seeks to ignore, round up, or get rid of those in need of mercy, is in direct contradiction to the instruction of Jesus, the message of the prophets, and the consistent teaching of the early church fathers (and mothers).

We get in trouble whenever we distinguish between people who “deserve” our help from those who don’t. In truth, there is no such thing. Everyone needs mercy and deserves mercy, simply because they are created in the image and likeness of God.

There are no exceptions. And if we think there ought to be, we are playing the judge and trying to take the reins of decision-making away from God, so that we ourselves can execute our own standard of who deserves mercy and who deserves judgment.

In today’s Gospel lesson, the expert in the law started out by testing Jesus. Then, he changed tactics by trying to justify himself as one who deserves to be recognized as worthy of mercy. He believed that, as one who strictly observes the law and obeys the commandments, he is more deserving than others who are less observant.

It’s this privileged mentality which continually connects adjectival words to humans, and even Christians – when, in truth, there are no adjectives to being a human and/or a Christian.

But, in order to justify ourselves, many people like their adjectives, so they can make sure to distinguish before God who is worthy and right, and who is not. The following are just a smattering of adjectives I’ve heard in the church throughout the years:

  • Backslidden Christian
  • Lukewarm Christian
  • Weak Christian
  • Liberal Christian
  • Conservative Evangelical Christian
  • Real Christian
  • Born Again Christian
  • Committed Christian
  • Fairweather Christian
  • Christmas and Easter Christian
  • True Christian
  • Baptized Christian

Yet, in reality, a Christian is a Christian. If we feel the need to add adjectives in describing how less or more of a Christian they are, then we are no longer describing Christianity at all.

When it comes to the word neighbor, there are a plethora of adjectives that we might use to describe our neighbors. Again, all the words are meant to distinguish between “us” and “them.”

I once lived in a very diverse neighborhood. One day I was outside praying, and looking at all the various houses. I prayed for my neighbors by affixing adjectives to them: my black neighbor; my nerdy neighbor; my lesbian neighbors; my single neighbor; my agnostic neighbor; my mean obnoxious neighbor.

On and on I went, until I heard that still small voice of God whisper to me saying, “Tim, these are not your neighbors with adjectives. They are just your neighbors.”

I got the message. I was praying on my holy hill for all these other folks who were different than me, using my adjectives to keep separate from them. My neighbors, however, are simply my neighbors. We live together in the same neighborhood. We are neighbors – nothing more, nothing less.

Even though my neighbors have many differences about them, we all share the need for receiving mercy and giving mercy. Without mercy, neighborliness vanishes.

My sacrificial offerings of prayer for my neighbors didn’t make me better. But both my attitude of mercy and my actual extensions of mercy toward my neighbors, no matter how little, meant a great deal to them.

The priest and the Levite who passed by the man in need, likely only saw that they would become unclean by helping this needy person. “Besides,” they may have pondered, “there’s nothing in it for me.”

There was no way for the man lying in the ditch to reciprocate or pay back the priest or the Levite. A Samaritan (despised by both priests and Levites) ended up being the one to show mercy to the man.

It didn’t matter who helped the victimized person – whether it was a priest, a Levite, or a Samaritan. It didn’t matter how any of them might describe the other. Only mercy mattered.

I admit that I desperately want to see my national government have at least a little neighborly sense. When I observe the opposite, it’s hard for me to live with. I find myself not wanting to see any mercy extended to them, to the current administration.

Yet just because politicians may not show mercy, doesn’t infer that I should withhold it from them. I really do want to take my cues from Jesus by loving my enemies and doing good to them – even if they ignore, mistreat, or oppress others.

God will sort out the judgment thing. As for me, I’m called to a gospel of grace, not a gospel of judgment.

Nobody can justify themselves. In Christianity, only God can justify the person.

Christ’s mercy is not dependent on what kind of people we are but is based simply on need. God graciously gives us the gift of faith and the mercy of deliverance.

Divine Judge, You framed the earth with love and mercy, declaring it good. Yet we, desiring to justify ourselves, judge others harshly without knowledge or understanding. Keep us faithful so that we may be filled with the knowledge of Your will, and not ignore or pass by another’s need, but plumb the depths of love in showing mercy. Amen.

We Are All In the Same Boat (Romans 3:9-20)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment

What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written:

“There is no one righteous, not even one;
    there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
    they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
    not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves;
    their tongues practice deceit.”
“The poison of vipers is on their lips.”
    “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
“Their feet are swift to shed blood;
    ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know.”
    “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin. (New International Version)

Whenever there is division, separation, and polarization between two groups of people, it’s important that someone has the ability to come back to what is true and common to all of us.

And that is what the Apostle Paul did in addressing the two differing groups of people in the ancient Roman Church of both Jewish and Gentile believers in Jesus.

The Jewish Christians, Paul argued, did not have a leg up on the Gentiles, just because of their long history with God. They tended to see themselves as better than their Gentile brothers and sisters in Christ. After all, the Jewish believers reasoned, we don’t have such a background of sinful pagan practices and estrangement from God.

Well, actually they do, however the Apostle did not rehearse his own people’s long history of stubborn rebellion and waywardness from God. Instead, he went back to the scriptures, and reminded the Jewish Christians of something they seemed to have lost sight of:

To be a human being is to be intimately familiar with sin and godlessness, guilt and shame, no matter the group nor the individual. We are all in the same boat.

In saying this, the Apostle Paul was not implying there is not anything good in anyone. Quite the contrary. For what is also true of humanity is that every individual person is a good creature, created from a good Creator, with the divine stamp of God’s image and likeness. There are no exceptions to this.

With all the mudslinging within the church, Paul simply pointed out that there is more than enough blame to go around. All the things that one group accuses another of is also true about they themselves.

And when it comes to sin – all those actions, words, and attitudes we have done and failed to do in loving our fellow humanity, and God – every one of us is in the same boat of guilt before God. There are no exceptions to this.

The power and ubiquity of sin is everywhere. Sin is like a nasty weight which continually burdens the world, and like an acrid fog that is always hanging in the air. We all feel the heaviness; we all breathe the same air.

All of our puny attempts at dividing one another into star-bellied Sneetches, and Sneetches without stars upon thars, is only proof positive of our sinful predilections to acquiesce to sin’s power on this earth.

This means that none of us can claim to take the moral and spiritual high ground. Nobody has an advantage on another. Therefore, it is ridiculous to ever try and implement policies of favoritism, cronyism, or prejudice. Such thinking itself is sinful, and ought to be jettisoned at the first awareness of it.

Whether we know what is right, or not; and whether we have the law and a covenant code, or not, isn’t really the issue. Obeying the law and doing what is right and just, with a good heart, is the real issue for all of us.

But it’s rather difficult to truly embrace justice and righteousness if the heart is no good. In truth, all of us have some rather dark places in our hearts. And until these are addressed, we will keep having all of our humanly contrived divisions and separations based upon a supposed superiority of the other.

The very fact that it is so easy to point out the sin in another, and label them as sinner, ought to tell us that “It takes one to know one.”

All Jews and Gentiles are under the accusation of God’s law, without exception. Everyone is accountable to God and the law. Proper observance of the law is to love God and neighbor – and thus, condemnation under the law is to ignore and disobey God, and to ignore and hate one’s fellow humanity.

What’s more, neither Jew nor Gentile can be justified by the law. Not a one of us can undo our guilt by ourselves.

No amount of work can satisfy the breadth and depth of that guilt. Pledges of perfectionism cannot help us, namely because we don’t even have the ability to follow through on them. Sheer hard work will not do the trick, because it would be like trying to empty the ocean with a kid’s sand toy bucket.

Only grace can reverse things. We need a pardon, and a new heart, which can sync and beat with the holy rhythms of divine love and justice. We need Jesus.

The Apostle Paul eventually got to that point later in his letter. Yet, here, he needed to establish everyone’s commonality of sin, so that they would embrace Jesus together as the one people of God who are in desperate need of his saving work, and the Spirit’s sanctifying work.

Therefore, the proper place to begin in being at peace with God and the world is to confess our own complicity in sin. Let us, then, offer this prayer of confession:

Lord Jesus, we have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, and of neglect to seek you in our daily lives. Our sins and shortcomings present us with a list of accusations, but we thank you that they will not stand against us, for all have been laid on Christ. Deliver us from every evil habit, every interest of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of your grace in us, everything that prevents us taking delight in you. Amen.

A Parable On Being Right with God (Luke 18:9-14)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment
The Tax Collector and the Pharisee by Peter Gallen

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (New International Version)

There’s a lot to observe in Christ’s parable for today. Notice six observations of the story….

1. We Cannot Make Ourselves Right with God

I’m convinced that most Gentile Christians, standing two millennia apart from Christ’s telling of this parable, are much too hard on the Jewish Pharisees: “Well, I’m certainly glad that I am not like the Pharisee in this story!” so many tell themselves. It seems to me the Pharisees get a bad rap because of our own predilection to justify ourselves.

After all, we can only really criticize something we are already familiar with.

A temptation which every individual and community faces is the seduction toward self-justification, instead of being justified by God.

Way back in the day, when I made treadmill belts for a living, I was in charge of quality control. It was my job to make sure that the quality department provided the shipping department with a finished product, free of defects, and could stand the test of continual use. I justified the belt as being a treadmill belt of integrity; the belt did not, nor could not, justify itself, hide or fix its flaws, or make itself right.

To think that a treadmill belt could justify itself is in the same sort of crazy that believes we can make ourselves right. No, it is God alone who justifies the sinner.

The paradox of Christ’s parable is that the real sinners are those who claim to be righteous, while the truly righteous are those who recognize they cannot justify themselves and need God to make them right.

2. We Need to Be Honest about the Right Thing

In order to hear the good news about God’s ability to justify and make right, we must also hear the bad news about why we need justification to begin with. An honest look into the mirror reveals that we have been hiding behind a cosmetic façade of self-justification.

Our illusions and delusions need to be confronted and shattered. Because only then can we receive grace and realize the peace and harmony of God’s justification.

Since God justifies, I don’t have to!

I don’t need to defend myself, make myself look better than I am, nor fool myself into believing that the false façade is the true self.

The parable of Jesus is a contrast between the Pharisee who justifies himself, and the tax collector who looks to God alone for his justification.

3. The Put-Together Guy Wants to Make Himself Right

Jesus uses a Pharisee as a character in the parable because the guy represented someone who everyone else looks up to as the model of a spiritual and religious person. Christ is inviting his hearers to look beyond the façade of what we see with our physical eyes.           

We need to use our spiritual eyes to notice below the surface. Look at the attitude. The smug self-justifying disposition is flat-out sin. What’s more, self-justification is a root of all sorts of sins.

Judging ourselves to be right means that others are wrong. That attitude creates division, separates people into bad and good, fosters disharmony, and is an affront to God. 

To try and obtain what is already provided by grace is plain old-fashioned sin.

4. We’re Obsessed with the Right Lines

Adam and Eve were told by God that they could eat from any tree in the garden but were given strict instructions not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:15-17) So, why avoid that particular tree?

Because it was a tree which spiritually and socially blinds people. Adam and Eve ate from it and their eyes were “opened” to a different reality – which was actually a “closed” view of reality that changed the way humanity deals with one another. From that point forward, people began drawing lines down the middle and placing themselves on the “good” side while vilifying those on the other side, the “bad” side.

“Apple Picking,” the fall of Adam and Eve, by Vittorio Canta

Adam and Eve immediately began justifying their actions, their attitudes, and their behavior. (Genesis 3:8-13) Adam drew a line: “That woman, Eve, gave me the fruit; she’s on the other side; it’s her fault!” Eve drew a line: “The serpent made me do it; that wasn’t really me, I’m basically good….” And ever since, the quest of making ourselves right has never stopped….

Today, we draw all sorts of lines. A popular religious line is this: “We’re good; they’re bad. Our theology is right, everybody else’s is wrong. The Bible says….” (insert a kooky interpretation of Scripture, based in self-justification and separation of people into good and bad groups)

People draw class lines, race lines, gender lines, ethnic lines, economic lines. We want clean lines, vertical lines, horizontal lines, perpendicular lines, thick lines, thin lines, any kind of line; just give me a line! Let’s go line dancing. Maybe take an airline. There are offensive lines and defensive lines. By the way, what’s the line on the Packers? We even judge the lines themselves: Long lines, short lines, front lines, back lines, and DMV lines are clearly evil, right!?

Why are we so obsessed with drawing lines? So that we can take self-justifying sides. Violence, war, and most every other sin of the world comes from the original sin project of trying to make ourselves right: “I’m okay; you’re not.”

The Pharisee (really a representative of us all) drew a very clear line between himself and the despised sinful tax collector. Notice that self-justification always compares itself with others. Those who obsessively draw lines are compulsively concerned about other people; they believe they have a right to know what’s going on with them. They remain vigilant to keep the lines drawn and distinguish themselves from those on the other side.

5. God Is On the Other Side of the Right Line

The Pharisee found that every time he drew a line, God was on the other side with the “sinners.” That makes perfect biblical sense. If God alone justifies sinners and makes them right; and if Jesus identifies with them in his life, death, and resurrection; then God is to be found on the other side of our line-drawing.  

A self-justified person sees no need for God’s justification. Therefore, God is not on their side; God is on the other side, justifying sinners by making them right.

6. The Unraveled Guy Wants To Be Made Right

“O God, Be Merciful To Me, A Sinner,” by Ronald Raab

The tax collector’s only concern was for God to show him mercy because he is a sinner. In contrast to the proud attitude of the Pharisee, the tax collector, a sinner by anyone’s definition, humbled himself and sought justification from God alone.

  • Justification by God makes us right and:
  • Lifts the curse upon humanity and reverts everything back to its original design. (Revelation 22:1-5)
  • Erases the lines. (Romans 4:7-8)
  • Restores our souls are and strengthens our faith. (Acts 16:5; Romans 4:20)
  • Enables us to rest in Christ’s finished work. (John 19:28-30)
  • Does not condemn us. (Romans 8:1-2)
  • Eliminates comparisons because Christ is sufficient for us. (Colossians 2:13-14)
  • Replaces the anxiety and fear about how we look to others with the contentment and satisfaction of God’s love in Christ. (1 John 4:16-18)

Conclusion

Self-justification separates us from people and creates distance and division. But God’s justification connects people in love and crosses the arbitrary lines created by others.

The bad news: Many religious folk, when confronted with their self-justifying attitudes, do not change. Instead, they label the person as bad and place the offending person on the other side of their line so that they can maintain their façade of righteousness.

The good news: Jesus can be found on the other side of the line because justification is a gift. Yet, until we go to him, outside our little camp, we will continue in vain to make ourselves look good and be on the right side of everything while making others look bad.

The good and the right is to humbly – and with much flavor – cry out to God for mercy because only the Lord can save us from our plight.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner, and grant me your peace.

Just and right God, by your mercy we were created, and by your mercy you redeemed us through your Son, the Lord Jesus. Your mercy is the light by which all people – both sinner and saint – return to you. Your divine justice and your divine mercy exist together so that you refuse to punish us as we deserve.

Lord Jesus, it was not enough for you to take on our humanity; you died for us as well. So, we humbly and gratefully receive your gracious deliverance from sin, death, and hell. Amen.

Luke 18:18-30 – A Rich Man’s Question

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”

“All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.” (New International Version)

The sorts of questions we ask say a lot about us. We might classify all questions into genuine curiosity and self-justification. This includes the tone of voice and affect in which the question is asked.

The wealthy man in today’s Gospel lesson asked a question. Rather than his tone being one of truly seeking to know, and his affect reflecting an authentic desire to know, instead he had his nose held high with a sanctimonious sounding expression. The man was mostly after a divine sanction of his lifestyle and his spirituality.

It doesn’t take the Son of God to know that this guy was pompously trying to angle for some kudos from Jesus about his superior life. But Christ, rather than blowing off the rich man or just blasting him for being a peacock, answered his question and led the man to what is most important.

One way of looking at the interaction between the rich man and Jesus is that it was an intervention. The rich man was addicted to wealth and money, but he didn’t see it. And he wanted validation that his way of life was sanctioned by the Almighty. 

The rich man believed himself to be quite godly and spiritual – an upstanding citizen, a religious man, attentive to God’s law. It’s a sad story because he walked away un-transformed by his encounter with Jesus and refused to follow him. He didn’t see himself as hopeless and desperately needing to change. He held to his denial.

We are all addicted to sin.  If you want to push back on that statement and are thinking, “Well, I don’t have as much money as _____” or, “So-and-so really has a problem with this…” then you are practicing what we call, in terms of addiction, denial. 

Truth be told, all of us are in some sort of denial about how much we really trust in paychecks, bank accounts, investments, and a wealth of stuff. Even people who are truly in poverty can also be addicted to wealth by always thinking about money and wishing for it as the answer to their problems, as if wealth is the highest good to attain in life.

Jesus put the problem out there for us all to see by communicating to us that sin cannot be managed – rather, sin needs to die. 

The good news is that by honestly facing up to our own addiction to things we can find grace. Grace always has the last word. Grace trumps addiction to money, stuff, and anything else. 

God’s love and acceptance is not conditional. Both the wretched sinner and the pompous peacock will find Christ’s forgiveness through the cross. Jesus put sin to death. We are simply invited to bring it out in the open, confess it, and follow Jesus.

One question that delights the heart of God, and reflects a humble and penitent spirit from us is this: “Will you forgive me, Lord?”

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.