The Gracious Church
7-24/25-04
THE GRACIOUS CHURCH
While everyone is still standing, turn to the person next to you and say something encouraging or affirming to them. Whether or not you know the person, you could at least say, “I think you made a wise decision to go to church today.” It might be awkward to do this, but shouldn’t the church be a place where we affirm and encourage each other?
A lot of what I have to say today comes from the book, “What’s So Amazing About Grace” by Phillip Yancy. In it he relates this true story he heard from a friend who works with the down and out in Chicago. His friend said...
A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two year old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter--two years old!--to men interested in kinky sex. She made more money renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a whole night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable--I’m required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman.
At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face, ‘Church!’ She cried. ‘Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.’”
It’s alarming to realize this is the reputation the church has in the world, but by no means is it an isolated incident. In an interview with 12 evangelical Christians then President Bill Clinton said, “I’ve been in politics long enough to expect criticism and hostility, but I was unprepared for the hatred I get from Christians. Why do Christians hate so much?”
When PhilipYancy wrote an article for Christianity Today about that meeting with President Clinton, he received bags and bags of angry letters from Christian people in response. Less than ten percent had anything positive to say and most were filled with vicious personal attacks. Why are Christian people like this? Why does so much of the world experience the church’s condemnation rather than it’s salvation? God wants us to reach our world and He wants us to do so redemptively. The church God uses to reach our world will be a gracious church. “All too often the church holds up a mirror reflecting back the society around it, rather than a window revealing a different way.” The world doesn’t need to see how bad it is. They already know that. The world needs to see through a window to a different life. The world needs a church full of grace.
In order to reach our world the way God wants us to we must...
Deal In God’s Forgiveness With Humility
As much as we like to say, “the church is a hospital for sinners not a museum for saints,” it hasn’t seemed to make a great deal of difference. Most people who aren’t doing well with their lives don’t have it on their minds to seek out a church to get help. They don’t have that kind of impression of the church. Many people who might think about going to church say, “I’ll turn to God and I’ll go to church when I get my stuff straightened out.” This kind of thinking mistakenly separates people into two categories--the good people and the bad people, the people who do well and the people who mess up, the people who go to church and the people who don’t--the guilty and the righteous, but that’s all wrong. We’re all guilty ones and is doesn’t help anything to act as if we weren’t. As the Bible says, “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” Some people have said, “There but for the grace of God go I,” when the only true thing Christians can say in that situation is: “There but with the grace of God go I.”
The 17th century Christian philosopher and scientist, Blaise Pascal said, “Truly it is an evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them.” People outside of the church may be full of faults, but people inside the church are just as full of faults and they sometimes appear to be unaware of it.
These two viewpoints are represented in a scene recorded in John 8. The incident takes place in the temple courts, where Jesus is teaching. A group of Pharisees and teachers of the law interrupt this “church service” by dragging in a woman caught in adultery. Following the custom, she is stripped to the waist as a token of her shame. Terrified, defenseless and publicly humiliated, the woman trembles before Jesus, her arms covering her bare breasts.
At that moment Jesus bends down and writes on the ground with his finger. This is the only scene from the Gospels that shows Jesus writing. John does not tell us what Jesus wrote in the sand. People have speculated that he spelled out the names of various sins: Adultery, Murder, Pride, Greed, Lust, and each time Jesus wrote a word, a few more Pharisees filed away.
The people watching probably thought there were two categories of people there that day: the guilty woman, caught red-handed, and the "righteous" accusers who were, after all, religious professionals. When Jesus finally spoke, he shattered that kind of thinking. “If any one of you is without sin,” he says, “let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” There were simply 2 categories of sinners there--one who knew her guilt and those who failed to acknowledge any.
Again he stoops to write, and one by one all the accusers slink away. Next, Jesus straightens up to address the woman left alone before him. “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she says. And to this woman, dragged in terror to her expected execution, Jesus grants forgiveness; “Then neither do I condemn you.... Go now and leave your life of sin.”
The world longs to hear such liberating words and God seeks to speak these words rather than words of condemnation.
“For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” [John 3:17]
But the world don’t always hear this message from God’s people. People in churches are still too often acting like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day. It is only the open spirit of the woman caught red-handed, not the haughty spirit of the Pharisees that deals in forgiveness.
But this scene challenges me because I identify more with the accusers than with the accused. I cover up far more than I confess. I hide my inner self under a layer of respectability. Yet if I understand this story correctly, the sinful woman is the one nearest the kingdom of God. The truth is I can only experience what God has for me if I become like that woman: trembling, humbled, without excuse, my palms open to receive God's grace. The church today like the Pharisees who denied or repressed their guilt also needs hands empty for grace it can give away. Jesus said...
“I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” [Luke 5:32]
“St. Augustine says ‘God gives where He finds empty hands.’ A man whose hands are full of parcels can’t receive a gift...A man who admits no guilt can accept no forgiveness.” We must go to God like the old hymn says: Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Your cross I cling.
“This is God’s gift to you, and not anything you have done on your own.” [Ephesians 2:8b, Contemporary English Version]
If the church is going to be God’s dealers in grace, we are going to have to be humble because...
“God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble.” [James 4:6]
God clearly tells us how to minister to people in spiritual trouble.
“If someone falls into sin, forgivingly restore him, saving your critical comments for yourself.” [Galatians 6:1, the Message]
Not enough people are getting this message well enough. We’ve got to live it and give it. God wants us to reach our world dealing out Forgiveness with Humility. And the Gracious Church must also...
Give Up Condemnation
Whenever we say to someone: ‘Something’s wrong with you,’ that is a condemnation and the church has been called into existence to eliminate all that. Condemnation was the effect of the OT law.
In order for people to understand what God required, He first gave His people a specific code of conduct to follow. This code specifically designated some animals as fit to eat and others as unclean and not to be eaten. The word ‘kosher’ for these kosher foods means ‘fit.’ Close study of clean and unclean animals suggests that God forbids animals that don’t fit their kind. They show an anomaly from other kinds like them. In other words they are imperfect. For instance: Birds are meant to fly so non-flying ostriches are unclean because they don’t fit their category of birds. Clean animals were those that fit without any anomaly. In one sense they are perfect.
Basically, the idea of the OT laws regarding clean and unclean is this: No Oddballs Allowed. This principle applied not just to eating but also to animals acceptable for sacrifice in worship. No worshipper could bring a maimed or defective lamb to the temple. God deserves the best. The very nature of God demands perfection. The same demands applied to people in worship. No one could enter the Temple to worship who had even a temporary defect.
“The law code had a perfectly legitimate function. Without its clear guidelines for right and wrong, moral behavior would be mostly guesswork.” [Romans 7:7, the Message]
Then religious people added to the Biblical rules. The scribes and Pharisees who studied Moses' law tacked on many additions to its 613 regulations. One rabbi specified how often a common laborer, camel driver, or sailor should have sex with his wife. There were scores of rules added just about Sabbath behavior. A man could ride a donkey, but if he carried a switch to speed up the animal he would be guilty of laying a burden on it. A woman could not look in the mirror on the Sabbath lest she see a gray hair and be tempted to pluck it out. You could swallow vinegar but not gargle it.
But the problem is, the Law can’t make people perfect. It can only tell them they have to be perfect. It tells what is perfect, and it tells them that they are not perfect.
“The people under the law offer the same sacrifices every year, but these sacrifices can never make perfect those who come near to worship God.” [Hebrews 10:1, New Century Version]
So Jesus came on the scene to remedy this problem. There were precise rules in Palestine for staying clean: never enter the home of a Gentile, never dine with sinners, wash your hands 7 times before eating. Jesus scandalized them by touching unclean people like lepers. He let a prostitute wash his feet with her hair. He dined with tax collectors (and included one in his group of 12). Jesus was notoriously lax about the customary rules of ritual cleanness and Sabbath observance.
Jesus invited defectives, sinners, aliens and Gentiles--the unclean to God’s banquet table. Go into streets and invite “poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind.”
Jesus brought a cataclysmic change in the way people were to relate to God and to each other. The Bible calls this new relationship the new covenant. Jesus’ New Covenant eliminated all the impossible demands on people to be perfect.
“But now God has shown us a different way to heaven—not by “being good enough” and trying to keep his laws, but by a new way...” [Romans 3:21, Living Bible]
The very first Christians had a hard time adjusting to the new covenant because they had lived by the old way all their lives up to that time. The Bible tells how God helped one of the first Christians make this transition. This person was the apostle Peter.
Acts 10 records Peter’s experience. During his morning prayer time Peter began feeling hunger pangs. His mind wandered, he fell into a trance, and then a scene appalling to him played out before him. A large sheet descended from heaven overflowing with animals that the OT law called unclean. In childhood Peter probably heard his mother say, “Don’t touch that. It’s nasty. Go wash your hands this instant! Why? Because we’re different, that’s why. We don’t eat pigs. They’re nasty, unclean. God told us not to touch them.” If Peter happened to touch the carcass of an insect, he would wash himself and his clothes and be unable to worship at the temple until the next day. If a spider happened to fall from the ceiling onto a clay cooking pot, he would have to dump it out and smash it up. Now he hears a heavenly voice telling him to make a meal of these things. “Never, Lord,” he said, “I have never eaten anything called unclean.” The voice replied, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
This vision was repeated 2 more times and immediately afterwards a group of unclean Gentiles wanted to talk to him about becoming followers of Jesus. God was training Peter in the new relationship and the new covenant says ‘Don’t condemn.’
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...” [Romans 8:1]
So Peter followed those Gentiles who came to his house after his vision and went to the house of the Cornelius who became the first non-Jewish Christian.
But tragically throughout Christian history people have tried to pour themselves and others into a religious rules straight-jackets hoping to make themselves acceptable to God. They try to remove their Oddball, imperfect status by labeling certain things as “wrong” and condemning the people who do them.
When Oberlin College was established here in Ohio they barred stimulants such as coffee, tea, pepper, mustard oil, and vinegar. Just a few years ago a young Seventh-Day Adventist starved himself to death out of concern over which foods were permissible eat.
“These rules refer to earthly things that are gone as soon as they are used. They are only man-made commands and teachings.” [Colossians 2:22, New Century Version]
Jesus’ death cleansed the impurity and imperfection of everyone. The requirement demanding perfection from people was satisfied. There is no longer anything to condemn.
“Christ gave himself to God for our sins as one sacrifice for all time...For by that one offering he made forever perfect in the sight of God all those whom he is making holy.” [Hebrews 10:12, 14, Living Bible]
The truth is we’re all Oddballs We’re all imperfect, but God loves us anyhow. No regulation people define can make us holy.
“A state government can shut down stores and theaters on Sunday, but it cannot compel worship. It can arrest and punish KKK murderers but cannot cure their hatred, much less teach them love. It can pass laws making divorce more difficult but cannot force husbands to love their wives and wives their husbands. It can give subsidies to the poor but cannot force the rich to show them compassion and justice. It can ban adultery but not lust, theft but not covetousness, cheating but not pride. It can encourage virture but not holiness.”
Gordon MacDonald said: “The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace.”
“Don’t condemn others, and God won’t condemn you.” [Matthew 7:1, Contemporary English Version]
We must be God’s Church offering the world grace. We must Give Up All Condemnation and simply...
Convey God’s Healing Grace
The laws of the Old Covenant guarded people from becoming unclean. Contact with a sick person, a Gentile, a corpse, certain kinds of animals, or even mildew and mold would contaminate a person. Jesus reversed the process: rather than becoming contaminated by those considered unclean, he made those people whole with His contact. The woman with the flow of blood did not shame Jesus and make him unclean; she went away whole. The twelve-year-old dead girl did not contaminate Jesus, she was resurrected.
God made certain things holy by separating the sacred from the profane, the clean from the unclean. Jesus did not cancel out the hallowing principle, rather he changed its source. We ourselves can be agents of God’s holiness, for God now dwells within us. The ‘unholy,’ the sick and the deformed are not for us contaminators but potential containers of God’s mercy. We are called upon to extend that mercy, to be conveyers of grace, not avoiders of contagion. Like Jesus, we can help make the “unclean” clean.”
“Serve one another with the particular gifts God has given each of you, as faithful dispensers of the wonderfully varied grace of God.” [1 Peter 4:10, Phillips]
Whatever difficulties we go through to grace people cannot compare to what a holy God went through when he descended to us on planet Earth. It is amazing that Jesus gained the reputation as being friend of sinners like prostitutes, wealthy exploiters, a demon-possessed woman, a Roman soldier, a Samaritan with running sores and another Samaritan with serial husbands.
Jesus was able to do this only because he saw through the unclean surface of sinfulnesss. His eye caught the divine original which is in every person and He gives us new eyes to see people as He sees them.
“No longer, then, do we judge anyone by human standards.” [2 Corinthians 5:16, Good News Bible]
When Jesus loved a guilt-laden person and helped him, he saw in him a hurting and misguided child of God. He saw in him a human being whom his Father loved and grieved over because he was going wrong. He saw him as God originally designed and meant him to be, and therefore he saw through the surface to the real man underneath.
Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that really did not belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him and from which he would free him and bring him back to his real self. Jesus was able to love men because he loved them right through the layer of unloveliness.
Every one of us is a gross sinner, but we are still God's pride and joy. All of in the church need "grace-healed eyes" to see the potential in others for the same grace that God has so lavishly bestowed on us. "To love a person said Dostoevsky, "means to see him as God intended him to be."
“If the world despises a notorious sinner, God’s church will love her. If the world cuts off aid to the poor and the usffering, God’s church will offer food and healing. If the world oppresses, God’s church will raise up the oppressed. If the world shames a social outcast, God’s church will proclaim His reconciling love. If the world seeks profit and self-fulfillment, God’s church seeks sacrifice and service. If the world demands retribution, God’s church dispenses grace. If the world splinters into factions, God’s church joins together in unity. If the world destroys its enemies, God’s church loves them. That, at least is God’s vision for His church.
Think of the impact if the first thing radical feminists thought of when the conversation turned to evangelical men was that they had the best reputation for keeping their marriage vows and serving their wives in the costly fashion of Jesus at the cross. Think of the impact if the first thing the homosexual community thought of when someone mentioned evangelicals was that they were the people who lovingly ran the AIDS shelters and tenderly cared for them down to the last gasp.
Think what it must have been like for Jesus to live on earth. Perfect, sinless, Jesus had every right to be repulsed by the behavior of those around them. Yet he treated notorious sinners with mercy and not judgment.
“Think about Jesus’ example. He held on while wicked people were doing evil things to him.” [Hebrews 12:3, New Century Version]
One who has been touched by grace will no longer look on others as “those evil people” or “those poor people who need our help.” Nor must we search for signs of “loveworthiness.” Grace teaches us that God loves because of who God is, not because of who we are. Categories of worthiness do not apply.
In a scene from the movie Ironweed, the characters played by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep stumble across an old Eskimo woman lying in the snow, probably drunk. Besotted themselves, the two debate what they should do about her.
"Is she drunk or a bum?" asks Nicholson. "Just a bum. Been one all her life."
"And before that?"
"She was a whore in Alaska."
"She hasn't been a whore all her life. Before that?" "I dunno. Just a little kid, I guess."
"Well, a little kid's something. It's not a bum and it's not a whore. It's something. Let's take her in."
The two vagrants were seeing the Eskimo woman through the lens of grace. Where society saw only a bum and a whore, grace saw “a little kid,” a person made in the image of God no matter how defaced that image had become. And that’s what we’re called to do.
God’s grace extends to everyone. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’ve been, what’s happened to you, or what you’ve become. God loves you.