FRIDAY
This week we’ve been talking about the moral law as an essential component of the irresistible gospel. To conclude this week, we come to the second, obvious conclusion that follows the first conclusion that there is a moral law: We don’t follow it.
Romans 3:10–18 10 As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” 13 “Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” 14 “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” 15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood; 16 ruin and misery mark their ways, 17 and the way of peace they do not know.” 18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
We’ll continue what we started yesterday in Romans chapter 7: (Paul, here, writes in the first person and talks about himself, but he is referencing all of sinful humanity.)
Romans 7:22–23 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
If we are honest with ourselves, even for a moment, we know this to be true.
Not only do we not obey the law but we are masters at deceiving ourselves into either believing that we do, or that we do most of the time, or that we do more than that other guy. So, somehow that absolves us of the consequences. Of course, these are all irrelevant but in our self-deception they feel meaningful.
Jeremiah 17:9 9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?
We so often generalize our sin instead of dealing with it honestly. When we generalize it, it’s way easier for our minds to excuse it and deceive ourselves into thinking that we are actually good people. I often hear, “I mean, I’m not perfect but…” What follows is always an excuse or reason why the person considers themselves a good person. When I hear that, I always want to ask the person to tease out that first part—”I’m not perfect.” Don’t just generalize it and move to excuses or rationalizations. That only deepens the self-deception.
I recently read in John Ortberg’s Soul Keeping about an interesting study that sought to examine the affects of self-deception. In this study, a group of women were each given an expensive pair of Chloé (I don’t know what that is but I’m sure they are magnificent) sunglasses. One group, selected at random, was told that the glasses were fake. Those who were told the glasses were fake were more than twice as likely to cheat and steal than the women who believed they were real. So when we deceive ourselves into thinking that we are good people, knowing deep down that we really aren’t, we leave ourselves—in the condition of our souls—more prone to sin and evil.
He later references another study that demonstrated how humans are driven by two primary motivations: 1. We want to receive selfish gain and avoid pain. We want it so badly that we are willing to lie or cheat or deceive (sin) in order to get it, 2. We want to think of ourselves as good people. To marry these two seemingly inconsistent motivations, we simply lie to ourselves. And we are quite good at it.
The antidote, then, is genuine confession, repentance and self-examination.
This is kind of a bummer to leave us on for this week. But again, the irresistible nature of the gospel is found not always in the comfort that it brings but the truth that it illumines. We must first shed light on the truth of our nature and the world before the gospel steps in with comfort.
C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity
“…Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.”
“All I am doing is to ask people to face the facts—to understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer. And they are very terrifying facts. I wish it was possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I think true. Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to go on to that comfort without going through that dismay. In religion, as in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”
We live in a culture that has largely abandoned pursuit of genuine truth in search of comfort. The end of this pursuit, as Lewis says, is despair. Jesus describes this as a lost soul. So the irresistible nature of the gospel is first found in the truth that it illumines. The uncomfortable truth of the moral law and how our failure to live up to it puts us at odds with the God who created it. It does us no good to deny it. Reality is pesky and difficult to avoid. Avoidance only leads to more and more bondage. In the truth, however, we find freedom.
What, then, is to be done about our violation of the moral law? This is the question we will address next week. This is where the story gets really good!
Reflection
Don’t run from this. Don’t seek only pleasure and avoidance of pain and the painful truths. You will find no comfort in that pursuit. Instead, pursue truth. Plunge into the depths of your depravity and allow the light of Christ, the truth of gospel to shine into it. Confess. Repent. In this you will find great comfort and take the first step toward the truth of Christ setting you free.