FREEDOM FROM FEAR, PART 3: FAILING GOD

1 John 3:19-23, 2:1-2; Galatians 4:1-7 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
22 September, 2002
All Rights Reserved

I. NICO MAKES A BREAK FOR IT

The sun coming in the window pecked incessantly at Nico’s eyelids until he grudgingly opened them to the new morning. Birdsong chirped outside in the green college quadrangle. Nico was, perhaps, the most grudging student at the summer study program. The weathered English stones of the university were beautiful, the lectures enlightening, the seminars stimulating--for someone else. The feeling of the night before had not gone away. It had only intensified, and Nico knew there would be no lectures or seminars for him that day--perhaps never again. His exhaustion was not so much physical, though the study program was rigorous. No, he was soul-weary, and it had been building for a lifetime.

He thought back to his childhood in the rural Italian village. Life had been so structured, so peaceful on the outside. Nico was sent to a private religious school where discipline was everything. Lessons were to be done on time and in the manner prescribed by the teacher--exactly, or there would be a public scolding. Infractions of behavior in the classroom were rewarded with a stern look and a sharp rap across the knuckles with a ruler. Nico buckled down to please his teachers as well as he could. After school it was home for the chores. There were goats to be fed, a small barn to be cleaned, and whatever chores Poppa had assigned that morning. Though he had the normal boyish failures, Nico was a good kid at home, and Momma drenched him with love.

Love was not what he experienced at the ancient village church. It loomed over the town both in architecture and in influence. Its power was compelling and it overwhelmed little Nico. The incense, the candles, the shadows, and the looming presence of statues impacted his soul. If the sanctuary struck fear in his heart, the imposing altar area made his blood run cold. It reeked of dangerous otherness, like one might feel if deposited in the Arctic in a pair of Bermuda shorts. Nico’s family, like most in the village, attended church faithfully, and Nico had walked through the words, the patterns, and the feelings of worship from his earliest memories. To do differently would have been unthinkable.

Momma was so pleased when Nico had decided to study for the ministry. It was a profession which seemed to fit like a glove. It offered significance, a life of study and contemplation, and stability. He would be set for life. He would have to give up many things, but he would not have to strive to cut his way in a harsh world like everyone else. So it was off to seminary, ordination, work under an experienced pastor, and finally appointment as a pastor himself in a church on the outskirts of Rome. All this had proceeded like a train running on well-laid tracks.

The only thing missing was peace in Nico's soul. As he lay in bed, he laughed grimly at himself, “I’m like a prosciutto sandwich without the prosciutto.” He had expected that as he progressed through his religious training that joy and peace would eventually become his. Nico had been plagued as long as he could remember with a fear that no matter how carefully he followed the instructions of his pastor that he was never good enough. Surely there were faults that he did not even know about himself, and God would hold him accountable for these! And worse than that, Nico was painfully aware of many ways in which he failed God on purpose. He didn’t want to do these things--he knew they were wrong, but he felt powerless to stop himself. Nico had done every ritual he had been told to do to get these failures off his soul and make things right with God, but nothing had worked. The weight on his soul, in the end, had become unbearable and the dogging fear of displeasing God crippling.

Now, at age forty-seven, Nico was thinking the unthinkable. He lay like a paralytic on his bed until after lunch, expensive lectures sliding by without him. The resolve which sometimes comes to the hopeless formed within him. He would look for hope where he had never looked before. He would think impossible thoughts because no other thoughts were left. While attending his classes that week he had seen signs for classes on a noted author and exponent of “the other view.” Nico had heard that some Christians claimed confidence of eternal life, peace with God, and the daily experience of real, you-can-taste-it forgiveness! He had seen the literature, and the thought of it now gripped his mind.

Nico quickly dressed in his clerical garb because they were the only clothes he had with him. He walked down the street and into Christ Church College to the door where he had seen a sign which read, “C. S. Lewis Institute seminar, lecture room B.” A russet-haired woman popped out the door, and Nico’s heart leaped. “Scusa,“ he said. The woman looked up in surprise at this austere, black-clothed man with the clerical collar, and she was even more surprised to hear him ask in broken English: “Where are the books?” He pointed to the sign on the door. The woman didn’t understand. “Where are the...C. S. Lewis books?” Now she got it. And as she pointed across the quad, past the statue of Mercury in the fountain, past the porter’s lodge under the great Tom Tower, and across the street to the bookstore at St. Aldate’s Church, she floated a whisper heavenward: “Lord Jesus, please open this man’s heart!”

II. FAILING GOD ACCIDENTALLY

We are all gripped by different fears based upon our experiences in life and upon our temperaments. In the first two parts of this series we learned God's solution to fears about people, evil spirits, and being forgotten by God. Another fear which must be conquered through faith in Christ is failing God.

I have discovered that some believers become frozen up spiritually because they fear that although they have confessed every known sin they will fail God accidentally. They are correctly aware that sin has caused so much damage to the human soul that we all sin even when we are not aware of it. This idea can be like a plague of locusts landing on our assurance in Christ and eating it up. Nico had been conditioned to think that he was always displeasing someone and he transferred this feeling to God. No matter what he did there was always the sinking feeling that he had fallen short. God became to him a heavenly copy of people who would never affirm him, never accept him, and never love him because of failings which were beyond him. Have you ever felt that way about God?

Jesus knew that our hearts would condemn us at times, and he had the Apostle John write these words to us, his children, to give us the way out: "We shall know by this that we are of the truth, and shall assure our heart before Him, in whatever our heart condemns us; for God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us" (1 John 3:19-23). We have a promise that real people like Nico and us can live with confidence before God and please him! So the next time your heart says: "You are no good... God could never love someone like you. No matter how hard you try, you will never be good enough for him," you say: "Heart, God is greater than you! You don't determine the love of God for me, he does! And heart, he always wins!"

These are among the most precious realities for the believer in Christ. So how exactly do we overcome the fear of failing God accidentally? How do we "assure our hearts before him?" This is a tall order because God is a holy God and we are sinners under the sentence of death. We ought to be devastated before a holy God! The Apostle John tells the way out is to "keep his commandments." This does not sound like good news. We already know that we are failures at that. Even when we have confessed every sin we sin in ways that we do not know!

Hebrews 9:6-7 tells us why this is the way out: "Now when these things have been thus prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle, performing the divine worship, but into the second only the high priest enters, once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance." In the Old Covenant there was a means for dealing with sins done in ignorance. Specific sacrifices were prescribed for known sins, but once a year all the remaining sins of the people were placed upon the sacrificial lamb on Yom Kippur--the Day of Atonement. So when Jesus Christ became the sacrifice for all the sins of the world (Heb. 9:11-14) every sin done in ignorance was included. Now that's good news! The one who has received forgiveness of sins cannot fail God accidentally!

All our fears about failing to perform the whole law are true, but Christ has fulfilled the law for us. The Apostle John wanted his beloved children to live in this wonderful reality, so he explained it very carefully: "...And this is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us..." It's no longer: "perform all the law." Now its "trust and obey"--believe God and follow him, put your faith in Christ and walk in love. That's it!

You see, God is trying to move us from performance to relationship. What a great relief to admit that we cannot keep the law, and therefore cannot please God, but Christ has done it for us!

III. FAILING GOD ON PURPOSE

Not being condemned for sins we do in ignorance is all well and good, you say, but we have a worse problem. We all sin at times on purpose! How can we avoid having our hearts condemn us when we know that we should not sin but we do it anyway? The Apostle John told his beloved children in Christ the answer to this problem in 1 John 2:1-2: "My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world." In other words John says: "I challenge you to fight and kill sin everywhere you can in your lives, but when you do fail the solution is a person--Jesus Christ." He does not say: "When you fail, your solution is to study the Law again and try harder." Neither does he say: "When you give in to sin it is proof that you are a pathetic, second-class Christian," or worse, "When you sin you prove that you are not really a Christian at all."

No, he says: "When you fail, don't look to the Law for hope, forgiveness, or power to live better. Look to Jesus Christ." John calls Jesus the "propitiation" for our sins. This word means that the anger of God over sin is turned away. It landed on Jesus at the cross, not on us. The work to relieve us is already done. Performance is not the solution--relationship is.

You might wonder if thinking this way will cause us to sin more because we stop worrying about it. Actually, walking in relationship with Christ provides the best motive for avoiding sin. Tony Campolo tells the story of counseling a young man at a Christian college who was working at sexual conquest of as many Christian girls as possible. Tony asked him how he could do such a thing in good conscience, and he replied: "Well, you know that the cross of Jesus pays for all sins through all time. Jesus lives in the eternal present, and so my sins with these girls are paid for even as I am doing them!" Now that's a twisted piece of logic!

Tony responded by saying the student was clever to realize that Christ exists beyond time and his cross applies to all sins for all time. "Therefore," Tony said, "every time you sin sexually you should think of Christ screaming on the cross in anguish at that very moment for what you are doing. Remember the nails piercing Christ's hands and feet for you, and the spear rammed into his side because of what you are doing at that moment."

John tells us that even our deliberate sins are forgiven. We remember what Christ did to turn the wrath of God away from us, and so we have a good reason not to sin again. But when we do, the solution is not to try harder, it's to move more deeply into relationship with Christ who is the propitiation for our sins. God's great desire is that we not lose the gift beyond all price: true atonement for all our sins by faith, and therefore a heart which does not condemn us. I urge you to move from performance to faith. God makes no other offer.

IV. FAILING GOD RELIGIOUSLY

Paul the Apostle warned the early church about false religious standards, calling it "self-made religion" or "self-imposed worship" (Col. 2:23). Nico found himself caught in a religious system filled with false standards. He spent the energies of his life trying to fulfill them, and finally realized that he was ending up with nothing as a result--except a heart which continually condemned him. What kind of salvation is that? Paul warned the Galatians that the introduction of even one false religious standard for acceptability before God caused a break with the true Christ and all he came to do: "You have been severed from Christ, you who are seeking to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace" (Gal. 5:4). We find it hard to believe that such a seemingly small deviation from the good news could have such devastating results, but it does!

Nico's problem is not confined to any one religion or branch of the church. Any one of us, or any group of us, might find it pleases us to erect false religious standards. And the moment we do so, we are enslaved again as Paul explained to the Galatians--we have lost the very thing Christ came to do. This is true whether the standards are completely made up, like: "Women should not wear make-up," or whether we recover them from the Old Testament, like: "Christians should not eat pork or lobster." It makes no difference where we get the rules. The bondage is the same. We can easily turn the true religion of Christ into a performance test and end up with hearts condemning us all the time. Nico just plain got worn out, and the same thing will happen to us. For years he was flunking humanly-devised religious tests and thinking that he was failing God.

Paul explained how the Law was supposed to work in Galatians 4:1-7: "Now I say, as long as the heir is a child, he does not differ at all from a slave although he is owner of everything, but he is under guardians and managers until the date set by the father. So also we, while we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental things of the world. But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that He might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' Therefore you are no longer a slave, but a son; and if a son, then an heir through God." The term "son" means any child, male or female, with full rights and privileges in the family.

As full members of God's family through faith in Christ we have the right to call the Almighty God our Father. We have the right to call him "Abba," or "Daddy." We have the right to live free from the condemnation of the Law or any religious rules. The performance standard has been removed and replace by relationship to God in faith.

V. CONCLUSION

Jesus said, "Come to me, you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." In Christ we have the right to live with no fear that we are failing God so long as we live in the terms of the New Covenant. This is a relief! If you have received Christ you need never walk around with a condemning heart. Have you come to the place where you are finally ready to look in the only place from where this relief comes? Nico was on the verge of finding what he had been seeking all his life. What about you?