Scriptures of Recovery - Romans 3:23

I can remember sitting in church the very first Sunday that I went. I had been invited by friends because I was hopeless and stuck in a major depressive episode. I had not been to a Sunday service in 20 years. I had stopped going to church the first week of my 5th grade year. I am exact on that, because that is the week that my mother left my father and we went to live with my paternal grandfather. He was my abuser for the next 1 1/2 years. That is when I had decided that there could not be a God. Don't get me wrong, I had tried church several times in high school. I felt out of place in church and from my sophomore year on I had not been to church other than weddings and funerals.

As the service started, I was already feeling a little more open to what was about to be said. One of the songs before the service was Third Day's "Cry Out to Jesus," which you can read about here: http://spiritualspackle.blogspot.com/2011/07/songs-of-recovery-cry-out-to-jesus-by.html. It opened me up to listen. So there I am, sitting in church actually listening as the pastor, Cal Swenson, gave his sermon. 

I remember sitting next to my friends Nate and Becca thinking that I did not belong in church. Truth be told, I probably did not feel that I deserved friends that were as caring and kind as Nate and Becca. I was looking at them and the people sat around me, all the while feeling that I we all had nothing in common. What could they possibly have in common with me? 

Then Cal read Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." 

I suddenly looked at every one around me, and I felt that maybe I fit in. I was not the only one in there who had sinned. But, and there is that word but, as I looked around I still felt that my sins were far more and far greater than every one else in there. I was so full of self-loathing that I felt my sins completely outweighed every one else's. 

I did not believe in God at this time, but I can remember thinking that even if God was real, my sins were bigger than his forgiveness. I guess that it is really easy to make God insignificant if you have no faith in Him. That does not make Him so, but perception is reality (at least your perception is your reality). Amazing how Paul helped me see that all can be forgiven. His conversion from Saul of Tarsus to Paul and what he was employed to do when he was Saul helped me realize the extent of God's forgiveness, but that is for another blog!

So all sin, not just me but everyone that sits in church. I mean from the pastor to the deacon to the greeter at the door.  Mother Teresa, Ghandi, the Pope, all of the disciples, everyone! I had somewhere forgotten that no one is perfect, not even the people in church. Romans 3:10 expresses this best when it says, "There is no one righteous, not even one."

Sometimes I wish that the people in church would remember that and stop looking down on others and instead love them enough to get them inside of the church. That gives the Holy Spirit the chance to work on them. I believe that we should hold each other accountable, but acceptance in a genuine and nonjudgemental fashion is what will get people to stay so that the Spirit can begin to work on them and recreate them. This is a soapbox of mine, and I will step off of it now and get back to Romans.

So we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. This is a relief, because as a sinner it should make it hard to look down on other sinners. I know that this does not really happen, but it should. As I looked around the church that day, even though I knew that my sin's were more extreme and more frequent, I felt a little more like I could come back. I felt like maybe I at least had one thing in common with everyone in church at New Life. We were all imperfect, and we all fell short of the glory of God. 

Since we all fall short of the glory of God, which I would define as how God intended us to be. We were made to be holy, righteous, and eternal. We have all fallen short thanks to Adam and Eve. That said, it is time that we begin to accept responsibility for out actions. How do we do that? 

Romans 3:24-25 says that we are, "justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in His blood." So Christ was sent to redeem us from our past sins, so that we could be justified. Justified is another way of saying declared righteous. So thanks to God's grace, we are now able to be declared righteous based solely upon what Jesus did for us. 

When Jesus walked the Via Dolorosa on the way to Golgotha, He knew what He was doing. The blood that He shed, from the whipping post to His crucifixion, was all done so that we could be forgiven. We sinned against God, and out of His mercy, love and grace He sent His Son as an atonement. What we could have never done on our own, God out of His love did for us.  

Just so that you do not get caught up like I once did in my sins and never being able to find forgiveness, Romans 3:28 says that, "we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law." That means that we are not justified, or declared righteous by our obedience to the law. Instead, we are declared righteous by having faith that Christ died so that we could live eternally. 

Finally, this is not a ticket to sin. 1 John 2:3-6 states, "We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did." 

So in summation, everyone sins and no one is perfect. Jesus was sent as a sacrifice so that we could be forgiven of our sins by God. We are redeemed of our sins not by our acts, but by our faith. Yet, this does not mean that we are free to sin. If we put our faith in the redemption of Christ, our lives will be directed by the Holy Spirit that resides inside of us and we will begin to live lives that are more and more Christ-like. Ergo, we will live life more righteously and sin less!