Rev Gav

How do we reach perfection?

John 8.1-11

I asked one of my best friends why he did not come to God and his reply was that he was not ‘ready’ in that he felt unworthy to come to a holy God, and would do so when he had got his life together. I bit my lip thinking, if the criteria to come to God is to have our lives together then God might be waiting a rather long time!

You may be shocked to discover that the purpose of Christianity is not to become a ‘better’ or more holy person. Despite some in popular culture claiming they follow a ‘Christian ethic’, Christianity is not about adhering to a set of holiness rules and obedience to a Godly morality.

Imagine a bar, and God is above this bar and we are below this bar. Everything above the bar is holy and everything below the bar is unholy, although the closer to the bar we get, the more holy we get. At one end of the bar is the letter A, our starting point, and at the other end of the bar is the letter B which represents God’s will for our lives. We human beings stand below the bar and we walk underneath it trying to fulfil God’s plan for our lives. Our life journey, is to travel horizontally from A to B — towards God’s will for our lives. Got it?

We know the bar is there and we know that trying to reach the bar or maintain as much height as possible is probably a good thing! So how can we travel closer to the bar? Can we even reach it?

The Law, if you will, is like a set of ladders reaching up to the bar. They help us measure ourselves against the height of the bar. Each law is a ladder and each rung is like a subset of the law, therefore, we can climb the ladders and become more holy, however, try as we might, we either choose to ignore the ladders or fall off them! No-one has ever reached the bar. Ever.

We can decide that making the ascension up one of the ladders our goal, but as soon as we start climbing upwards we are not journeying and fulfilling God’s plan. God wants us to get from A to B, not go from down to up!

Legalism is the condition whereby we think that our purpose is to ascend the ladder.

The story of Christianity is the story, not of God lowering the bar, but God stepping over it and descending to the floor with human beings in and through the person of Jesus. The bar is still there and the ladders are still there but Jesus says to us, “You don’t need to keep ascending the ladders because I am with you!”

The Christian journeys on the shoulders of the Spirit of Jesus. The Spirit keeps pointing us towards B and we find that, miraculously, through following the Spirit we get magically lifted higher towards the bar — not in our own strength but in the power of the Spirit of God. When we look down our feet are off the ground! We call this grace.

We are painfully aware that we fall short of the God’s bar — God’s perfection and holiness — and this gap between us and God is called sin. Sin comes from the Hebrew word ‘hata’ or the Greek word ‘hamartia’ and both literally mean ‘missing the mark’ (as in archery). We all miss the mark. None of us can reach the bar.

To focus on sin — the gap between ourselves and the bar above us — is to miss the point because closing the gap is the same thing as climbing a ladder, and we know that you do not get closer to God through climbing a ladder!

So, why did God make us such rubbish ladder climbers? Did God make a mistake? The answer is, no. We were never created to be autonomous and disconnected from God, but connected to God — the author of all holiness. God knows that we are meant to be connected to them. It is in our design and how we are wired! This is why the writers of the New Testament remind us that there is no guilt, shame, or condemnation for those in Christ Jesus because there is no gap and that this is, literally, ‘good news’!

To root this in a Bible story, read the story of the woman caught in adultery. If you are unfamiliar with the story you can find it in the Gospel (good news) according to John, Chapter 8. At the end of the story Jesus — speaking with the authority of God — said to the woman, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”

Was Jesus really expecting the woman to be able to continue a life free of sin? Was he expecting her to be able to continually reach the bar from now on? Because if he was, then it seems to me that this was rather unreasonable! No, he is saying go and be separated from God no longer. Why? Because God was not condemning her and there was no longer any gap!

If you are trying to follow Jesus and you are being told you are a ‘sinner’ and you are being made to feel guilty or condemned — possibly by a Christian leader or church doctrine — then you are being told to focus on a gap that is no longer there. Contrary to popular belief, you do not become a better person by trying harder — i.e. by climbing ladders. Hear Jesus saying to you, “Neither do I condemn you,” and trust in the good news that Jesus has closed the gap. Learn to ride on the shoulders of the Spirit, to continue on your journey with Christ, that you may you know and fulfil God’s purpose for your life in this world.

Amen.