Have you seen this Golf Town commercial? A guy named Steve is playing golf and not doing so great. Frustration is building, some ladies are watching, he hits the water hazard and then he loses it. He tears a strip off of poor, old Steve. Give it a watch:
It’s easy to get frustrated, annoyed or even disgusted with ourselves, isn’t it? We all can probably think of mistakes we keep making over and over. We have vices that we just can’t seem to beat; bunkers and water traps we just keep landing in. We make resolutions we never seem to keep. We swear we’ll never make that mistake again and then we do. We yell at our kids, lie to our neighbor, resent our brother, hate our boss, lust, envy, cheat, curse, worry, doubt, fear… We try to hit that perfect shot onto the faraway and then totally blow it again and we beat ourselves up over it. “Come on, Steve! It’s not that hard of a game!”
But if Steve is using faulty clubs, no amount of chewing himself out will overcome his problem. In fact it will only make it worse. It’s the club’s fault. If he’s going to see any growth and maturity in his golf game he first has to realize exactly what the problem is and who his enemy is. He has to realize that it’s the clubs that are sabotaging him and get different clubs. He needs to see his golf game from a different perspective, through a different lens.
What Lens are We Looking Through?
If we are going to see growth and maturity in our Christian life here and now we need the right perspective and to be looking through the right lens too. We like to say things like “knowing Jesus changes everything”, but are we clear on how and why? Are we recognizing and applying the good news of Jesus and all he’s done and is doing for us? Are we connecting the dots from the gospel to how we look at the world and our own lives? Has this good news that “changes everything” changed who we think we are, what side we think we’re on and who our opponent truly is? My friends, I know from years of experience that the Christian life can be a very confusing and frustrating one if we’re not always clear and convinced about who we’re with and who we’re against.
I think this part of the famous book on war strategy ‘The Art of War’ is quite true when it says:
“If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Where Do We Stand According to the Gospel?
When you think about you and sin and God what do you picture? I think we all know God and sin are on different sides. But where do you picture yourself? Are you over on sin’s side? Is sin a part of who you are? Are you in it? Or do you hop back and forth between sin’s side and God’s side depending on what you do? If you desire to live a better life who do you have to struggle with? Yourself? Who is the bad guy in our lives? Who is the enemy in this picture?
Well, let’s do what we always want to be doing. Let’s look at this question through the lens of the gospel– the amazing, awesome, everything-changing news about Jesus. We just finished a series at St. George’s on Ephesians so why not start there:
you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air… carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Eph 2:1-3
Okay, so the gospel says we were dead men walking. We were followers of the world and the devil like the rest of mankind. Now let’s keep a close eye on that beautiful, past-tense word “were”. Because it’s the foretaste of everything that’s about to change.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— Eph 2:4-5
Everything changed! In the course of 5 short verses we’ve gone from being dead to alive, evil to good. It doesn’t get more changed than that. When Len preached on this passage recently he emphasized the words “But God.” If two words might be able to sum up the gospel it might be these two. We were done for, we were finished, we were like corpses, we were hopeless– but God changed everything.
and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that for the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Eph 2:6-7
Here is how knowing Jesus and all he’s done for us changes everything. It means that because of him, we who simply believe its true have gone from being corrupt, walking-dead, enemies of God to being God-saved, grace-rich, kindness-covered, eternal citizens of heaven forever alive with the life of Christ Jesus, the King of all kings. This is what the good news of Jesus is. This is what the gospel tells us. This isn’t something that might happen, that will happen later, or that could happen if we’re really good. This has already happened. We “were” “But God!”
Our Question Through the Gospel Lens
So, let’s return to our original question and look at it again, now through the lens of the gospel.
When you think about you and sin and God what do you picture? Who is the bad guy, the enemy in this picture? Who should you be furious with for that vice or wrong?
It’s not God. And now, because of what God has done through Jesus, it’s not you either. You are not God’s enemy. You are not your enemy. You have been brought across the battle lines to the other side.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son
Col 1:13
The only enemy left in our starting equation is sin. And the sooner we realize that, the sooner we can begin by the Spirit to throw off our old way of life– our old sin-owned mindsets. And we can put on the ways of who we are now– our new and true nature (Eph 4:22-24 NLT). We can be furious with the real enemy. And then we’ll even get the joy of seeing this change showing up in our experiences here and now.
Let’s look at one more Bible passage:
We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. Romans 6:6 NLT
There’s that beautiful, past-tense word again: “were.” We were crucified with Christ. Our old selves, our walking-dead selves, our selves who were “slaves to sin” and opposed to God in our very nature, died when Jesus died on the cross. Who we were as the servant and captive of sin ended there and then, forever. That is what the Bible tells us. I know that is kind of mind-stretching and I promise the more you realize it’s true, the more it will begin to make sense to you. But for now, let’s just believe this because God says so. Our old, sin-owned, sin-accountable selves were crucified with Christ. God changed everything. He took us and put us in Christ. When Christ died, our old selves died. When Christ was raised to life, we were raised with his pure, eternal life. So, now just as Jesus is the Son of God, we are children of God as well (John 1:12-13). Just as Jesus is loved by and approved of and glorified in heaven by God, so are we. Crazy, I know! The gospel is crazy! Like I said it is amazing, awesome, everything-changing news.
The Result of the Gospel
One of the results of the gospel is that you, Christian, are not an enemy of God. You are not your own worst enemy anymore. This is what the New Testament tells us. This is what the gospel tells us. You were. And now you’re not. Believe it. Rest in it. Sit in awe of it. You did nothing to earn it or get it or keep it. Jesus did it all. And he did it really, really well. And it’s a free gift to anyone who wants it.
Now this doesn’t mean that sin just vanishes in the life of a Christian. That’s not at all what this means and we’re going to talk more about this later. But it means that our relationship to the sin still in our “mortal bodies” (Rom 6:12) has completely changed and flipped on its head. And the more we realize this the more we’ll be able to deal with the sin–the way of the old nature– that does remain in our bodies.
“The greatest truth we can ever be told is that our old self has gone. I can deal with my old nature only as I realize that my old self has gone and that I have a new self.”
– Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The more we realize this the less time and energy we’ll spend condemning ourselves and despairing and the more we’ll spend praising Jesus and defying sin.
When we see that same-old sin working in us yet again (we hit that chip shot into the water) and we start to think, “Oh, I’m the absolute worst…,” we can begin to catch our mind and heart and say, “Wait, no. That’s not the truth. That’s not the amazing, awesome, everything-changing lens of the gospel. Sin is the enemy, yes, but I’m with God now. I’m on his side. I am not the worst. I am in Christ, by the grace of God, and therefore as good as he is good.” Friends, the more we realize this the less time and energy we’ll spend condemning ourselves and despairing and the more we’ll spend praising Jesus and defying sin.
And this is how we begin: by letting the Holy Spirit renew our minds and ground our hearts in the amazing, awesome, everything-changing news of what Jesus has done. It is the lens through which we see the truth of everything. And so we start here: You were an enemy of God. But God through Christ Jesus has rescued you and changed everything. And now, no matter who you were or what you’ve done, you are God’s friend and child and heir forever. This is what the gospel tells us. This is our starting point. This is who we already are.
Lord, may we live who we are.
