"I'm not a very good Christian" (Monday Morning Mail)

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One of the things I love about my job is the chance to sit down with folk and listen to them tell me about their walk with God. And they'll often say something like "I'm not a very good Christian..." Of course, on one level there may well be things to discuss or ways that I can help. On another level, it's brilliant that folk recognise that, because in this world there aren't super-duper Christians and awesome Christians and totally obedient Christians, there are just "not very good" Christians, and when we let him, God works through us anyway!


I remember I used to have a big problem with this, and, being me, I'd talked it up into a big intellectual conundrum. "How can I promise to follow God," I would ask, "when I know that I will let him down and fail to keep my promises because I'm still sinful?" And for a year or so, I let that question paralyse me in my Christian life.


The answer, when it came, came through the passage we read yesterday morning. The end of Galatians 2 is quite complicated, but here's roughly how I read it then. It's not at all the whole depth of the meaning in the passage, but it's one layer that is there.

We know that we don't get right we God by what we do – we cannot get right with God by doing the right things, but only by trusting Jesus. That's the only way for anyone to get right with God.

Suppose we already trust Jesus, and we're trying to follow him, and it becomes obvious that we're not very good at it, even that we keep on sinning. Is that a problem? Does that show that this Christianity thing doesn't really work, or even that God is bad? Not at all. The whole point is that we can't save ourselves. We are sinners; we need Jesus to save us and to keep on saving us.

It's like this – the old me is beyond rescue. It's been crucified with Jesus but it's still walking round like some kind of zombie self. The real me; the true me is alive in Jesus and for Jesus and that me does not sin.


Christianity is not about getting the "zombie me" to live better and teaching it some manners. It's about recognising that it exists but that Jesus has rescued me from being it, and learning to keep on putting it to death and living as the real me that God has brought to life in Jesus.


How can I promise to follow God when I know that I will let him down? That's the whole point. It's only when I recognise that I will and do let him down that I can start to be realistic about following him. Christianity is not us doing God a favour; it is him rescuing us from our zombie selves and setting us free to be our new and living selves in him. We never graduate from needing his forgiveness and help.


One of my favourite hymns puts it beautifully:

O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.

May we know God's grace daily growing our love for him and our knowledge of our need for him!

God bless,

John

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