It's My Right to be Right, Right?
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Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations 2097 The Grace of God
When the learned, and wealthy John Selden was dying he said to Archbishop Usher, “I have surveyed most of the learning that is among the sons of men, and my study is filled with books and manuscripts (he had 8000 volumes in his library) on various subjects. But at present I cannot recollect any passage out of all my books and papers whereon I can rest my soul, save this from the sacred Scriptures:
“’The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and wordly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works’ ” (Titus 2:14).
Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and take them to heart that, by the patience and comfort of Your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
It has been a long grueling year since Jan 9, 2020, when the World Health Organisation announced that there was an outbreak of a “novel corona virus” in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China. Between the pandemic and the fear, confusion and politicization of our response to it, and the various other apparent unraveling of the body politic, from the continued stresses of the issues related to police - community relations with American citizens who are descendants of slavery, to the more recent call to address problems faced by Asian North Americans and Asian American Pacific Islanders, to the seeming unrelenting assault upon American cultural values by the Critical Theorists, our citizens, including the Christian communities, have been under a ton of stress and a bewildering sense of instability.
I think that, the way that “nature abhors a vacuum, most people hate instability. We like things to go smoothly and predictably. We like to go to sleep at night, and wake up in the morning, thinking, “God’s in His heaven, and all’s right with the world.” We want to be on “the right side of history.”
Let me just put it out there, we want to be right! We wonder, “Is all the posturing, and the protesting and dividing, about caring about where we are going as a nation, or is it all about winning - being right? I wish that we were so concerned with justice that we are willing to endure painful conversations to find it, and that right was just short for righteousness, but it isn’t for a lot of people; instead, they seem to be fighting for the right to say, “I’m pure and you’re evil.”
The world is filled with this energy because the world operates on the basis of the Law, it’s what we are wired to do. The Law exposes sin, the Law declares what is right, but it doesn’t tell you how to get there. The surest way to not have the Light of the Law shine on you is to develop alternative lights and turn them on someone else. So that is what we do. The combination is alluring: We can avoid dealing with our own sinful weakness of the flesh, put our opponent on the defensive, and even get some “attaboys” as a bonus. But no matter how much you tinker with it, a heat lamp is not the sun.
We talk a lot about “justice” today, but we have become so fractionalized and competitive that it sounds like “justice” has become a synonym for “vengeance.” The world no longer uses the word “sin” because that points to God’s objective judgment, the Law that condemns us all, and you know how people feel about judgment, unless it is casting judgment on those judgments that make them uncomfortable, like regarding chaste behavior, or being “swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger” or “remembering your Creator in the days of your youth.” Of course, between everything that we have heard denying the Creator, and trying to find materialistic reasons for everything, we have created a vacuum that is begging to be filled with something!
Deep down inside, though, we know that contrary to Andrew Lloyd Weber’s lyrics from Jesus Christ Superstar, everything is not alright, nor is everything fine! Something is out of sync, out of alignment, with something, but, having rejected the Word of Life, we don’t know quite what to do. We want to “do the next right thing,” but bitterly fight over what that is.
The Church is struggling with this too! Just look around on social media. It’s a lot easier to find people who “earnestly contend for the faith” than to find people who “seek peace and pursue it.” I remember when Andre Crouch sang “Jesus is the answer for the world today, above Him there’s no other, Jesus is the Way.” Today, Christians spend as much time picking each other apart as we do building one another up. James asked the question:
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
You have a passion to be right that outweighs your passion to be holy. You want to win, because winning is better than losing. But God isn’t picking winners and losers in the heavenly lottery, God is saving souls, He’s rescuing His sheep, saving His children.
1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.
The only right side of history is the the one that John Selden talked about at the beginning of this message:
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, 13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, 14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
The world’s “Plan B” - rejecting God’s revealed will in His holy and righteous Commandments and replacing it with their own materialistic standards of equity and social justice - won’t work because the Creation was designed to respond to its Creator, and no one else. You won’t get peace by going to war with God, you won’t find a good way of life by rejecting the Good News of Jesus Christ, or by trying to blend it with artificial sweeteners like “intersectionality,”and “social justice,” or by refusing to listen to others as they seek to find a solution to their pain and sorrow because it makes you uncomfortable, rather than doing the hard work of applying the proper distinction of Law and Gospel to their wounds, not to validate their wounds, but to heal them.
Yes, those who love the Lord will seek to do good, they will seek peace and pursue it, they will seek peace with all, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord. But they will do so, “not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the Lord.”
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Wishing won’t make sin go away; repentance from sin will. Positive thinking won’t bring peace; trusting in the Gospel of Jesus Christ will.
So you can have it all, the accolades, the praises of men, the fame and fortune that comes from having the tweet of the week. Just give me Jesus, the Word of Life, who transforms us through the Gospel into God’s dear children, to the praise of His glorious grace.
And let the peace of God, that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.