Living as the beloved- no more reduced lifestyle, walk with Him, into this place of favor, live in a place of unbroken delight, where the poverty of sin cannot touch us, where His newness of life embraces us everyday, where His favor renews us in the Spirit every morning, where we live, empowered by joy, under the beauty of His smile.
~ Graham Cooke
Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the people of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.
~ from Psalm 103
Seeing the reality of the cross has set me to thinking about the poverty of sin. In doing this, it is helpful for me to look at my own. No, I will not be providing a list of my failures 🙂 … Suffice it to say that the list is long, wide and deep, but G_d has told me in His Word, that He has chosen to remember them no more – and rather washed them away into the infinite and merciful sea of His purposefully-spilled blood. And still, while G_d has set me free from both the penalty and power of sin, it is still damaging to me.
What I am finding is that if I tip back over into any self-driven, self-motivated, self-comforting, or self-supporting modes of thinking, the first thing that happens is my own desires become the primary filter through which my thinking happens. And for any of us who are honest, we realize that this yields further thoughts, attitudes and behaviors that fall far short of the glory of G_d. Said simply: The moment I allow myself to be a victim of anything or anyone, the moment I fear anything other than G_d, I am in danger of becoming a victim of my of selfishness, foolishness and stupidity. And once we fall short of His glory, we hurt ourselves and others.
How does this happen? We can miss the point of sin by seeing the actual failure and ugliness of a given behavior(s). For, while each transgression IS a definite problem, it is the growing cycle of soulic and spiritual poverty inherent in sin that destroys us if we won’t stop and consider a few simple truths. Perhaps a way to see the problem is in how the poor handle purchases, and are treated in many parts of the world.
In case you are not aware, poor people like nice things too. They are just like you and me. They are humans who desire to wash their hair, put on clean clothes, and to enjoy a few of the simple pleasures of life. Also, just like you and I – who are not physically poor – poor people can make some decisions that work against them escaping their poverty. This is where we can see a simple reality that can help us understand the problem of our own sin.
I have seen this most clearly in the way that consumer goods are packaged in poor communities in Asia. Shampoo, for example, is sold in small kiosks, in small, single-use packages for a price that a worker (often paid daily) can afford at the moment. The packaging looks just like the larger containers and is the same product that you and I might buy in a grocery store or online.
The issue is not with the product, it is with the pricing. If one takes a moment to calculate the price per unit of items like single-use shampoo packets (or almost any of the small-volume items in these kiosks), one finds that the real price is often 300%, 400% or even 500% of the price of buying a medium or large bottle of shampoo, etc.
So, if a person were able to wait just a couple of weeks, and save their money, they could easily buy a much larger amount of a product that would meet their needs for a couple of months – and be able to spend the little bit of money they do have on other vital needs in their life. However, since many of the things people buy when they are poor are the things they feel they need right now, they never escape the trap into which their meager resources are falling. And, in the greater injustice, a rich person or company makes its greatest margin on the backs of the people least able to support their own needs.
The same thing is happening with our sin. We buy a moment of anger or selfish pleasure or fear or anxiety or whatever, and we think we can afford it. It is just a little moment we think, easily recovered. But, the damage to our soul is even worse than the damage to the wallet of an impoverished day-worker. The cost per unit of our failure is so high that we drive ourselves backwards in life by 10x or 100x compared to the forward progress we might make on the path He has set before us, while awalking in the power of His Spirit.
This is why sin makes us feel so bad (that is, if we are alive in Him!) … We are stealing energy and life and power and clarity from our own soulic and spiritual budgets by buying a little packet of something that will not get the job done in the long-term. And every time we buy a little more of what we think will fix a problem, we actually drive ourselves much deeper into debts from which we can never recover.
Further, in buying our own little packets of selfish pleasure, we give support to the most evil and oppressive of taskmasters. In our giving ourselves to something like sin, we impoverish ourselves, and others while giving glory and credence to our cretinous adversary, the devil. He gets (temporarily) richer through feasting on our failures, and we definitely feel the emptiness in our draining souls.
Can we see it though? This is why the gospel is so glorious! The Good News is that God has, can and does overcome our failures through His work on the cross. Jesus, with an infinite budget of mercy and grace, is able to make us completely new and to cleanse us from all of our indebted unrighteousness. He has made the way to healing all of the damage we have done to ourselves and others.
Yes, it takes a little time to heal. But the healing and payoff is real! And so, just like the poor day-worker who finally decides to simply wait just a couple of weeks to buy a bottle of shampoo, if we are willing to wait on Him and allow Him to actually meet the needs we have, we find that that the needs do indeed get met – and we are then able to actually progress in peace and help others with their needs as well.
So, is sin setting you back? It does for this fool of a writer sometimes, and I am sure I am not alone. The problem though, is that we don’t understand just how far it is really dulling our progress in Him. It is NOT just a moment of failure.
Tonight is our night beloved, time to wait on Him to meet our needs. On Good Friday, He already has, still does, and surely will give us everything and more. In the death of Jesus, we also see that in dying to our own selfish desires we will find real and unending life in but a few days!
