WEEKLY COMMENTARY: Reasons to Reach Out to God ---- Or to Not Reach Out

I seldom travel into New York City to meet someone for lunch, but I had been invited by Richard, a good friend from college days, and I was eager to see him again.

We had planned to meet at a restaurant near Union Square, and while waiting for our food and drink to be served, we tried to give each other a quick story about what we had been doing since we had last met.  I learned that Richard, his wife and their two kids now live in New York City, and seem to be enjoying city life and its many diversions.

Later, Richard mentioned that he had become a member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan.  The Senior Pastor of that church, he said, was a man named Timothy Keller.  Rev. Keller had been preaching recently on the subject of one's relationship with God.  Richard paraphrased Pastor Keller as saying,

"Our identity is not built on our earthly record or our earthly performance, but on God's love for us through Christ.  Our main purpose is fellowship with God.  Our self-view should not be be based on our mortal achievements. In Christ all of us are simultaneously sinful and lost, yet Christ accepts us.  We are so bad that Jesus had to die for us, and we are so loved that Jesus was glad to die for us."
        
Richard stopped to take a breath, and then continued to paraphrase Pastor Keller.

"This leads us to deep humility, but also confidence, at the same time. Our identity and self-worth are centered on one who died for us.  We are saved by sheer grace, so we should not look down on those  who believe or practice something different from us, because only by God's grace are you and I what we are."    

Frankly, I knew all of this, so I was a little surprised that Richard found it so astonishing.

Then Richard reminded me that in his college days, he had been his own boss, and that he had not believed there was a God who cared about humankind.  So, Richard had seen a need to be his own Savior.  Later, after college, Richard  said, as he saw a bit more of the world, that he looked  upon God as his helper and teacher, and through Jesus as the model for our daily behavior.  Richard claimed that in those years he had always tried to obey God's law (that is, to be really righteous and really moral), but he was still the boss.

Richard seemed to be admitting that he had been obeying God in order to get things from God. He said that when circumstances in his life would go wrong, he was angry at God, because he believed that anyone who is "good" deserves a comfortable life.  He said that his prayer life had consisted mainly of petition, and prayers that he would employ only when he was in a "time of need."  Richard admitted to me that in.those days his main purpose  with prayer was to control his environment, not to develop a relationship with God.  That reminded me of the Pharisees of Jesus' time, who were so fixated on the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law.

Richard said of himself that his motivation in those days was based on fear and insecurity.  "If and when I was living up to my standards," Richard continued, "I felt confident, but then I was prone to be proud and unsympathetic to failing people.  If I was not living up to my standards, I felt humble, but not confident ---- I felt like a failure.  My identity and self-worth were based mainly on how I worked, or how moral I thought I was ---- and so I had to look down on those I perceived as lazy and immoral."

I thought hard about where Richard said he had come in seeking a compass for his life.  It seemed that before hearing Pastor Keller, Richard was avoiding God as the Savior and Lord.  He was trying to keep control of his life by looking to something besides God for salvation ---- HIMSELF.

Now I needed to react to Richard's description of his chosen path to spiritual discovery ---- his personal discovery of a relationship with God.

"Only an experience of grace," I said, "can change us so we understand Jesus Christ as our Savior, and we would do good things for goodness's sake.  So, what is this grace?  It is not fundamentally an invitation to become more "religious."  No,  Though we often do fail to obey the moral law, the deeper problem  is why are we trying to obey it?  Our earlier efforts to obey it may have been just a way of seeking to be our own Savior."  Now I told Richard he should be doing things that would please God, not simply please himself. 

In my opinion, I said, the way to live does not involve only an attempt to repent.  Richard's earlier way to live had involved simply repentance of his sins.  But Pastor Keller urges that we live by repenting both our sins and our self-righteousness.

"So," I concluded, "we must change not so much the amount, but the object of our faith.  We must do more than just subscribe intellectually to a set of doctrines about Christ.  It is more than that ---- we must transfer our trust from our own works and record, to Christ's work and record."

Having said that, I felt obliged to pick up the tab for lunch.

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These thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping to encourage you to pursue some personal spiritual growth this year at CPC.

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