Slaves

Slaves

So now there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus. And because you belong to him, the power of the life-giving Spirit has freed you from the power of sin that leads to death. The law of Moses was unable to save us because of the weakness of our sinful nature. So God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son in a body like the bodies we sinners have. And in that body God declared an end to sin’s control over us by giving his Son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this so that the just requirement of the law would be fully satisfied for us, who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-4)

One summer, eight year old Tommy was visiting his grandparents’ home in the country where he loved to roam the woods with his trusty slingshot in hand. He’d aim at trees and bottles and cans, but he didn’t hit much because he was still working on his accuracy.

One day, as he was returning from the woods, he heard grandma ringing the dinner bell. As Tommy was walking toward the house, he spotted his grandma’s pet duck waddling by the pond. Now, he never dreamed in a million years that he could hit the duck, but just for fun he pulled the slingshot back and let it fly. As luck would have it, the rock hit the duck square in the head. The duck dropped dead without even one last “Quack.” Tommy was shocked; he’d never hit anything he aimed at before, and now he felt terrible.

In a panic, he ran toward the dead duck, picked it up and carried it behind the barn where he buried it in the woodpile. As Tommy was headed toward the house, feeling horribly about what had just happened, he spotted his 13 year old sister, Cindy, and realized to his horror that she’d seen the whole, sordid affair.

Later on that night, after dinner, grandma said, “Cindy, if you don’t mind, I’d like you to stay and help me do the dishes.” “Grandma,” she replied, “I’d love to, but Tommy said he wants to do the dishes tonight.” And as she walked out of the kitchen past Tommy, she whispered in his ear, “Remember the duck.” Trapped, Tommy went over and did the dishes.

The next morning, grandpa invited Tommy and Cindy to go fishing with him. But grandma had another plan. “I really need Cindy to stay here and help me with some chores,” grandma said. Cindy replied, “Grandma, Tommy said he’d like to stay with you and help you out today.” Once again, Tommy’s sister walked by and muttered, “Remember the duck.” So, Tommy did the chores and Cindy went fishing.

After a couple days of hard labor doing both Cindy’s chores and his own, Tommy had had enough. He fessed up. “Grandmother, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to, but I killed your duck.” His kindly grandmother gave him a big hug and said, “Thomas, I know what happened; I was standing at the window watching the whole thing take place. I saw how shocked you were, and I’ve already forgiven you. I’ve just been waiting to see how long you’d let Cindy make a slave out of you.”

Like the grandmother, God stands at the window and sees our every mistake, our every failure. The good news is that, as believers, God’s forgiven us. He’s not holding anything against us. He’s just waiting to see how long we’ll allow the Accuser to make a slave out of us. Our text says, “There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus … who no longer follow our sinful nature but instead follow the Spirit.” Those last three words are key because when we make mistakes, if we’re in the flesh, we beat ourselves up. We feel guilty and unworthy. We live depressed and defeated. Choosing that response will only take us down a dead end street.

Unfortunately, too many of us go around constantly feeling badly about ourselves. When we make mistakes, instead of receiving God’s mercy and moving ahead, we listen to the voice of the Accuser: the voice that constantly rails at us about our mistakes, our blown diets, our temper-tantrums and our shortcomings. And after awhile, we become weighted down with guilt and self-condemnation. Guilt’s like a treadmill: we’re constantly working, and struggling, and sweating, but never making any progress. The burden of guilt drains our strength, drains our energy, and drains our enthusiasm. And guilt can not only affect us emotionally, but even physically. Ever known anyone who’s suffered a nervous breakdown because of guilt?

We’ve all made mistakes and done things we’re not proud of, but the moment we ask for forgiveness, God forgives us. The scripture says, “God remembers your sins no more.” (Isaiah 43:25) So, if God doesn’t remember our sins, then that accusing voice can’t be God’s voice. That’s the Accuser’s voice. And we have two choices. We can either believe the lies, dwell on them and allow guilt to weigh us down. Or, we can rise up in faith and say, “No thanks, I’m not goin’ there. If God doesn’t condemn me, then I’m not going to condemn myself.”

You see, there’s a big difference between God’s voice and the Accuser’s voice. When we make mistakes, as believers, we feel a conviction on the inside. Our conscience tells us, “That’s not right.” That’s the Spirit of God convicting us. And the right thing for us to do is to repent, ask for forgiveness and move ahead. The moment we do that, God doesn’t remember our mistakes. He has no record them. Our mistakes aren’t kept on some secret data base somewhere. Unfortunately, no sooner has God let them go than the Accuser starts going to work on us. Even though God has forgotten about them, the Accuser tries to keep us feeling badly about ourselves and the mistakes we’ve made. He reminds us of everything we’ve done wrong, and tries to force us to give up and sit on the sidelines. The Accuser’s goal is to deceive us into constantly living condemned; to make us feel inferior and unworthy of God’s blessings.

But we need to discern just who’s doing the speaking, because the accusing voice is not God’s voice. That’s the Accuser trying to dump another load of guilt on us; trying to keep us feeling bad. But we don’t have to listen to his lies. We need to believe what God says about us: that we’re forgiven; we’re redeemed; our past has been erased and our future, in relationship with God, is bright. By refusing to dwell on those lies, we can silence the voice of the Accuser.

Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) And the truth is that the price for our mistakes was paid over 2000 years ago. We don’t have to pay for them again. We’ve been redeemed; God’s mercy is bigger than any of our mistakes. And although we can’t do anything about our past, we can do something about our future.

One way we can know that guilt and condemnation are not from God is that they don’t help us to be conformed into God’s image. They don’t help us to do better. When we go around feeling badly about ourselves, we’re much more likely to make even more mistakes. Oh, we should spend some time thinking about where we’ve gone wrong – so that we can learn from those mistakes. But the correct way to handle the guilt that comes from making mistakes is to repent, ask for forgiveness and move forward. The wrong way is to hold onto the guilt for a week, a year or even a lifetime. You know, there’s just some things we simply cannot “undo.” For instance, we can’t “unscramble” eggs. We can’t re-live yesterday. But we can live today.

Have you ever noticed how human nature is drawn toward the negative? We could have ten people tell us that we look fabulous today. But if one person said, “You know, you’re looking a little pale today. Are you feeling alright?” We’d probably go home feeling as if we were sick after all. But we can’t allow the 10 compliments to be cancelled out by the one negative remark. We can’t let one weakness, one mistake cancel out all the other great things God’s created us to be.

We may have made a lot of wrong choices, but we’ve also made some right choices. We need to focus on our good qualities; focus on our victories; get off the treadmill of guilt because it’s not taking us anywhere. Guilt steals our joy, and we don’t need to live another moment in regret. Honestly, the source of our guilt may, in fact, be our fault, but that’s what mercy’s all about. We need to rise up and say, “This is a new day. I’m unloading the baggage. I’m done feeling wrong about myself. I’m done living condemned. I’ve focused long enough on what I’ve done wrong. I’m gonna start focusing on what I’m doing right.”

It’s very difficult for most people to accept the fact that God forgives us so easily and so quickly. Instead, when we make mistakes, we think we have to pay for them. As a result, we grow discouraged and get down on ourselves. Sure, we ought to be remorseful when we’ve done wrong. We should be genuinely sorry for our sins, and not be dismissive. But we don’t have to spend month after month wallowing around in guilt and condemnation. I know plenty of people, and you probably do to, who made mistakes years ago and they’re still asking God for forgiveness. They’ve probably asked God to forgive them at least a thousand times. But what they don’t realize is that God forgave them the first time they asked.

The real problem, I think, is that we’ve not accepted the gift of God’s forgiveness. We think we have to show God how sorry we are by giving up our joy and paying some sort of penance. We live defeated and discouraged. We beg God, “Please forgive me. God, I’m so sorry. God.……” But don’t be a beggar; be a believer. Believe that God forgave you the first time you asked. You don’t have to keep asking, and asking, and asking again.

It’s like the story of the prodigal son. (Luke 15:11-32) In the story, a young man takes his inheritance, leaves home and makes some poor choices by living a wild, undisciplined, partying lifestyle. He blows his entire inheritance; all of it. Finally, he has no money and no place to stay. So, he ends up working on a farm, feeding hogs. (No respectable place for a young Jewish man) And he’s so desperate, so hungry that he resorts to eating the animal’s food just to stay alive.

 But one day as he was sitting in the hog pen, guilty, condemned, ashamed, and depressed, something rose up on the inside and he thought to himself, “Even my father’s servants live better than this. And here I am sitting in this hog pen, wallowing around in filth and defeat.” And then he makes a statement that changed his future. He says, “I will arise and go to my father.” In other words, he was saying, “Yes, I’ve made mistakes; yes, I brought all this trouble upon myself. But I won’t allow one bad season of my life to ruin my future. I will arise.”

And maybe we’ve made some poor choices in life, too. Maybe we’re not where we want to be in life. And the accusing voice keeps telling us, “It’s your fault; you’re too bad; you brought this on yourself; you’ve gotten what you deserve.” But if we’re to be restored, it’s not up to God – he already provided the payment for our sins a long time ago. It’s really up to us. We need to do like the young man and say, “I may be down, but I’m not staying down. I may have made mistakes, and it’s my fault. But I know the secret: I will arise and go to my father.”

I believe one reason the young man could arise was because, deep down inside, he knew who he was. He knew the family to whom he belonged. And when we understand our own position, we can change our condition. We are children of the Most High God. He breathed his life into us. We were never created to live depressed, defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed and unworthy. We were created to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind, and then to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matt. 22:36-40)  

We may be down because of poor choices and mistakes we’ve made. We may feel as if we don’t deserve God’s mercy and grace. We may not feel worthy. But we have to shake that off and know our position. Know whose we are (children of Almighty God), and not who we are. We need to remember that because of what Christ did on the cross, he made us worthy. He took our guilt so that we can be free. We need to arise and go to our father. That’s what the young man did. And when the father saw him coming, way down the road, the father took off running toward him. He gave his son a big hug, put a ring on his finger, a robe on his back and sandals on his feet. He said to his servants, “Let’s celebrate! My son has come back home.”

God will do the same thing for us when we make the decision to shake off the guilt, shake off the condemnation and say, “I’m moving forward with my life.” When we make a move, God will make a move. He’ll come running toward us with mercy, forgiveness, restoration and favor. God can still get us to where we’re supposed to be. But so often, when we make mistakes, the accusing voice tells us, “You can’t ask God for help. It was your fault in the first place, you hypocrite! You brought this trouble all on yourself. He’ll never listen to you. Why would he?” But that’s where mercy comes in. When we do wrong, we ask for forgiveness and God forgives us. And then, when we really understand who we are, we won’t just ask for forgiveness. We’ll take it one step further and receive God’s mercy.

Now that’s freedom.

Grace,

Randy