A guy tells a lie in front of many people. Every one knows that he has lied. But when pressed he says, “I said things that were not true”. He cannot bring himself to actually name his sin. This would be like a man busted for having countless affairs say, “I’ve slept with women who are not my wife”.
I lied. I committed adultery. There is no wiggle room in these.
Everybody says things that are not true. I once lost a bet with my wife about how to spell banana. I had an extra “n” in there somewhere. In arguing my point I said many things that were not true. But nobody would call me a liar. Nobody would question my qualifications to pastor and lead people into truth because of this.
But if I truly lied. And I said, “I lied”. There isn’t much wiggling out of there. You don’t get to wonder whether maybe I just had a slip-up, or I was misunderstood. No, I was guilty. I lied. I’m guilty.
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As a pastor I have the opportunity to talk to many people about the issues they are facing in life. My job in caring for their souls is to listen to what they are saying and to discern what is underneath their words. In order to help people grasp the gospel more fully I need to try to find places where there are gaps in their understanding/application of the gospel.
One place I look is in how people speak about their sin. If they are never able to name it I know that the gospel hasn’t gone deep enough. Because we only are able to truly name our sin and own up to our guilt whenever we realize that we are already forgiven in Christ. We haven’t drank deeply of grace when we pretend like we are carrying around fictitious or little sins. It’s as Luther said:
If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true and not a fictitious grace; if grace is true, you must bear a true and not a fictitious sin. God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly, for he is victorious over sin, death, and the world…No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Do you think that the purchase price that was paid for the redemption of our sins by so great a Lamb is too small? Pray boldly—you too are a mighty sinner.”
So listen to the way you talk about your sin. If you are trying to dismiss it, to cheapen it, to excuse it, to make it not such a big deal—this is likely because you aren’t truly believing the gospel. This is not to say that you are an unbeliever—it’s just saying that in this regard you are living as one. Apart from Christ all we have to hide behind are the walls of flimsy excuses that we’ve constructed.
In the end all our wordsmithing will topple and we’ll be seen as guilty. Only in Christ can we—as full-blown liars and cheats—stand guiltless. When folks drop the façade, own up to sin, and rest in Christ—I know that they are truly believing the gospel.
