The Poor Loser In the Room

How does one get from a point of knowing you need to change to actually wanting to. The cycles and seasons written about in an earlier post are evidence of times when I knew I needed to make a change. But they failed because I clearly didn’t want the change. I didn’t desire it. The biblical life is very much a journey of desire. Admittedly, I am no expert on this subject. My simple musings are no road map. They are simply diary entries of a pilgrim in progress, but for the first time in my spiritual life I find myself at a point where I REALLY want change.

In the last post, we talked about the woman at Jesus’ feet in Luke 7. We addressed in sufficient detail that she understood Jesus’ grace. Her sinful past enabled her to. We discussed the fact that Simon the Pharisee did not at all understand. His right standing within the religious institution of his day created a barrier to his heart. The question that was not asked in the earlier post is: why did he, Simon, not understand?

There are probably a plethora of reasons why. But chief among them is his own self-deception. If you take the story at face value, the lesson that you could glean from this passage is that the more sinful that we have been, the better we understand Christ’s grace and mercy. Perhaps even life experience has seemed to solidify that concept, but that is NOT Jesus’ point. It’s not even the truth!

The truth of the matter is that Simon, being confident in his “goodness,” glanced at the other person in the room and began to safely evaluate his own righteousness. The problem was that he was looking at the wrong person. His righteousness was self-righteousness. His contentment is negated by a false standard of evaluation. Simon has equal sin, different in practice, but equal in substance and quantity. He doesn’t see it because the social, political, and religious norms of his day condemned obvious public sins while allowing “smaller” private sins...perhaps even celebrating them. By that measure, he is justified while she is condemned.

But the measure is wrong. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. We still, however, measure it in the same way. It is easy for us to glance around the room and justify ourselves. To be sure, there are some in the room that we don’t quite measure up to, but we are pretty certain that they have sin that just hasn’t revealed itself yet. There is sure to be something pretty ugly in their closet. It makes us feel better. There are also some in the room that make us feel really good about ourselves because we aren’t them. They are an obvious wreck! Thank God we are not like them!

The standard of measure is not the other mere mortals gathered in the room with us but the glorious, all- powerful, risen King. By that measure, we are sunk. Understanding grace and mercy is not made possible by realizing that another’s sin accumulation smells worse than ours. It is made possible by realizing that we all have a stinky sin accumulation that makes us desperate for a Savior. We are ALL in equal need of a Savior. Until we get to that point, we will never experience grace and mercy. We will never get past knowing that we need to change. We’ll just be content to know that we are better off in our spirituality than the poor loser over there whose life is an obvious wreck. But we are all somebody else’s poor loser!

What we find is that the longer a person follows the Savior, the less aware they become that they need a Savior. We become inoculated to the truth contained in God’s word. “Son of man, you live among rebels who could see the truth if they wanted to, but they don’t want to. They could hear me if they would listen, but they wont listen because they are rebellious.” (Ezekiel 12:1-2) Our rebellion is self-deception. We hear many (ok, some) truth filled messages and hope the poor loser in the room is listening. We, like Simon, look around the room and pray that Jesus helps the poor loser because they sure do need it. Truthfully, though, I am the poor loser. So are you!

As I read today in Ezekiel 11, I was impacted by God’s words. “When the people return to their homeland, they will remove every trace of their vile images and detestable idols. And I will give them a singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, so they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people and I will be their God. But as for those who long for vile images and detestable idols, I will repay them fully for their sins. I, the Sovereign Lord, have spoken.” (Ezekiel 11:18-21)

This IS a road map for the biblical life. You should not trust in my words, nor any mere mortal for that matter, but you can be assured that God’s words are true. After nearly 10 years, I have returned to my “homeland.” Some has changed, but much is the same. The challenge here isn’t a struggle with “bad” things. Of course bad things are present. They always are! But the challenge, the idols if you will, that impinge our worship are good things. But good simply isn’t good enough. God desires more than we currently give, and he is certainly worthy of it. Do we want to give Him what He richly deserves or are we content to just know that we need to?

Sacrificing our desires is difficult. Obedience is required to do it. If we respond to Gods call, which means we have to shut up long enough to hear Him, then He promises us that our hearts will be changed. We have become so accustomed to ignoring God’s rule and voice in our lives that our heart, like Simon the Pharisee’s, inadvertently becomes hardened. But it only takes us surrendering our good things for God’s better things to reverse this trend in our lives. But we have to want to!