Casey Anthony and the Gospel

            A friend of a friend recently posted a question on Facebook for the Facebook world to respond to.  She the following:  “So Casey Anthony will probably be released soon and will possibly relocate and perhaps feel like she needs to find a church. What if it's yours? What if she's in your small group? In your living room? Please just ponder.”

            The response was unbelievable.  What I mean by “unbelievable” is simply this:  People were enraged and appalled by Casey Anthony.  One woman, in particular, justified her position by saying “my church has a focus on missions...bringing the word of our Lord to those who have never heard it...my church is not focused on Casey...and I do not mean for this to sound awful but she does not deserve all of this attention!”

              So what if Casey Anthony walked into your church?  Now, none of us actually saw Casey Anthony kill her daughter.  But for the sake of argument, let’s just assume (as many already have) that she is guilty, and got off without having to face the worldly consequences of murder.  Let’s also assume that, if Casey Anthony came into our church, that the leadership of the church would be mindful of their responsibility to protect the children within the church from a woman who killed her own daughter several years ago.

            Now that we have made those assumptions, realize that this woman has been taken out of her home and made a public spectacle.  Most people with any sense of a moral conscience would be dissatisfied with what this woman has done; and rightfully so.  Our natural response to someone who has failed to meet our expectations is to distance ourselves in one way or another.  Some would draw attention to her sin.  Some people would avoid her all together or just wouldn’t look at her.  Regardless, we are inclined to put up a wall.  After all, that’s what sin does.  It destroys relationships (primarily, our relationship with God) and distances the parties within those relationships.  Sin builds walls.  We see this in Genesis 3, where the shame associated with sin created distance in man’s relationship with God.  Just the same, the shame associated with Casey Anthony’s sin has created distance (both real and perceived) between her, God, and men. 

            Now imagine that you are the guilty party.  The world suspects you of being guilty, and it is difficult (if not impossible) to be able to have a healthy friendship with anyone.  You are at enmity with God.  You are alone in the world.  Nobody is looking out for you.  So it is your responsibility, alone, to fend for yourself.  You are forced to fight for your own social or emotional survival.  You may continue to proclaim your innocence loudly in an effort to “make right” your relationship with the world.  Maybe you’ll point your finger at those around you in an effort to deflect accusations and draw attention to the sins of others.  You may accept an immoral lifestyle in an effort to redefine your own morality and justify your true immorality.  Whatever it is, you are enslaved to a lie.  You are enslaved to the lie that you can somehow provide for your own worth.  But that’s what you resort to because you are unaware of any other provision out there.

            Are we any different than Casey Anthony?  I get it.  We may not be murderers.  But Jesus said that if you are angry with your brother, you are guilty enough to go into the fiery hell (Matt 5:22).  He also said that if you look at a woman lustfully, you are guilty of adultery (Matt 5:28).  Do you think that He was just saying those things for effect?  Within our hearts and our Christian “bubble”, some of us stand tall and proud proclaiming that we would never give into such horrific sin.  The reality is that we are all, equally as desperate for a Savior.  When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus at the temple, He responded to the Scribes and Pharisees saying, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7).  Slowly, one by one, the Pharisees laid down their stones and walked away.  When all was said and done, those who had no place to condemn her to begin with, were gone.  The woman caught in adultery remained in the dust, a mess of a woman drenched in shame and guilt.  Then the One who is worthy to judge knelt down and said to her, “I do not condemn you, either.  Go.  From now on, sin no more” (John 8:11). 

            As Christians, we are quick to recite the scripture that tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23).  We are also quick to understand that Jesus died to pay for our sins (Rom 3:24-25).  But often fail to realize the implications of those truths as God empowers us to shed the guilt and shame and live abundantly for His purposes.  We fail to realize the fundamental significance of our adoption and acceptance (Rom 8:23; Eph 1:4-6; Gal 4:5).  You are no longer a slave!  You are a son (Gal 4:7)!  This world may shun you.  This world may reject you.  This world may even kill you!  But we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus (Rom 8:38).  I heard an interesting story once, that illustrates this perfectly:

When John Chrysostom (ca. 347-407) was brought before the empress Eudoxia, she threatened him with banishment if he insisted on his Christian independence as a preacher… he said, “You cannot banish me, for this world is my Father’s house.” “But I will kill you,” said the empress. “No, you cannot, for my life is hid with Christ in God,” said John. “I will take away your treasures.” “No, you cannot, for my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.” “But I will drive you away from your friends and you will have no one left.” “No, you cannot, for I have a Friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me. I defy you, for there is nothing you can do to harm me.”

           

            Now imagine if Casey Anthony walked into your church and received the Gospel.  Imagine that she is met by Christians who are aware of her sin, who are honest with her about her sin, and who wrap their arms around her in spite of her sin.  Imagine the church being an extension of the love and character of Christ.  The truth of her sin and the horrific nature of it is essential to bring her to her knees in understanding that she can never justify herself before a holy God.  Eventually, she may be overcome by the grief of her sin.  She may avoid that moment by busy-ness, self-justification, deflection or deceit.  But let’s just say that she comes clean.  Exposed, this mess of a woman lays face down in the dust, drenched in her shame and guilt.  Those who are followers of Christ will say to her, “I do not condemn you.  Go.  And sin no more.”

            This does not make her sin, or anyone else’s sin, “okay.”  Instead, as Casey Anthony grows in her understanding of all that Christ as accomplished for her, she has the freedom to deal openly and honestly with her sin.  While our justice system will not try her a second time for the crime of murder, she can still face the other consequences of her crime.  That may take her to prison.  But what great assurance there would be knowing that nothing can remove her from the graces of a Friend in heaven who has given everything for her; and what an amazing opportunity for the good news of Jesus Christ to be made known to those who have been condemned and locked away. 

            Now, what about your life?  Do you conceal your sin to avoid the shame associated with it?  Do you look at the lives of those around you, nitpicking at their sin or shortcomings in an effort to avoid dealing with your own?  Do you lower the standard of righteousness by saying, “no one can be perfect”, effectively relieving you of the need for a Savior?  Do you lie to yourself and your loved ones, for fear of being found out in your sin?  Do you fill your day with good deeds and hard work in order to cope with grief or shame?  If we are afraid of being found out our sin, we just might avoid dealing with it all together. 

But let me encourage you; be who you are and deal with your sin.  The more we realize the depths of our sin, the more we realize the greater depths of God’s love and what He has accomplished.  The result is that we are thrown to our knees in worship of the One who is righteous and has satisfied the rightful requirements for our justification and imputed His righteousness upon us.  We realize how much we have been forgiven, and this leads us to love the Giver of the gifts all the more.

            The Gospel frees us to live for Him in spite of who we are and what we have done.  Let me encourage you all to be free.  If you’re living the lie, stop it!  Cling to the cross and know that you are worthy, solely based upon what He has accomplished.  You are accepted.  You have been adopted.  Your identity and value and worth and righteousness are found in Him.  Nothing will ever separate you from that.  Thanks be to God!

She must know I'm right!

     Just the other day, Bethany and I got a bit frustrated with each other over how a discipline issue was handled in the home with our oldest daughter.  When all was said and done, she recognized my leadership but we still had a solid difference in opinion.  I believed I was right in principle and practice.  She believed I right in principle, but wrong in practice.  I was amazed that she had the audacity to be mad at me about this; however, after working through that with the Lord, she told me the next day that she was no longer mad at me, even though she still believed very strongly that I was wrong in my timing and execution.

     When she told me this, I immediately began fuming.  I said to her, “what!?  You have no right to be mad at me.  I did nothing wrong.”  I felt as if I was on trial in the courtroom.  I felt like I was the one on trial for something that I believed whole-heartedly that I had done right in the eyes of the Lord.  In my mind, it was absolutely necessary for my innocence to be known to my wife in the matter.  So I expressed my frustration to her about this, to which she patiently and kindly responded by saying, “It’s okay.  You don’t need me to agree with you.  You don’t need me to think that you’re right.”

     Would you believe it?  She was right.  She was reflecting back to me the same thing I’ve challenged her about from time to time.  Often times, we make a stand “for justice”, saying that it is absolutely critical that everyone knows that I am right in this.  We feel compelled to ensure that our “right standing” is known to the world around us.  Yet, beneath it all, we need to ask ourselves the following question: “Are we fighting the issue because there is a life-altering issue of Biblical morality at stake, or are we concerned about our reputation and how people see us?”  When my wife graciously informed me that I didn’t need her to agree with me on the matter, I realized it was the latter and I struggled to let go of my idolatry of self.  Thankfully, I had 30 minutes left on my drive home to process and remember what Christ has accomplished for me.

     At the core of my being, I had forgotten the promise of God through Christ in which He tells us that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).  For those who are in Christ, no one can bring a charge against them because our righteousness is found in Him.  “Through one transgression, there resulted in condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness, there resulted justification of life to all men” (Rom 5:18).  We are justified by His blood, and through our Lord Jesus Christ we receive reconciliation (Rom 5:9-11).  So in the matter at hand, whether I was right or wrong was irrelevant!  I was more concerned about my “right standing” while I forgot about the fact that my right-standing before God had been secured in Christ Jesus.

     Now there is much to be said about the reality that sin is a legitimate issue that needs to be addressed and dealt with.  If there was a clear moral issue at stake, it must be addressed in the context of Gospel provisions.  But let the truth be known that we should to be aware of and counter our own self-preservational tendencies to argue for our own right standing, and instead, trust in the truth that Christ has interceded for us to make us right before God in all eternity.  It removes the burden of guilt (be it true or false guilt) and sets us free to trust in His provision and restore relationships such that they model the love of Christ.

     After wrestling with this on the way home, I walked into the house to see my lovely wife and precious daughter watching Mary Poppins.  Because of Christ’s provision, I realized that I no longer had to fight for myself.  I was able to hug and kiss both of them before I went about working on a school project.  At least for the moment, my faith in His provision of righteousness was greater than my fear of being found guilty.  Thanks be to God!

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What are we afraid of?

 “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”  (Eph 1:3-6)

I continue to be blown away by the reality of our justification and adoption through Christ.  In His epistle to the church in Ephesus, Paul made this reality absolutely clear.  But what does this mean?  I’ve been a Christian for years, and I already know this.  Why is this so significant to me on a practical level? 

It is of supreme significance.

The reality is that we want to feel like we are justified and accepted.  Some of us fight to find what we are looking for in our work, in our family, in our morality or even in our own independence from all of those things.  Our natural inclination is to seek out that significance.  Beneath it all, we think that we are on our own; ultimately, we are enslaved by the prospect of insignificance.  So we fight.  When we fear that we are not valued, we work harder in order to justify ourselves before others, ourselves, and even God.  Anything that calls our value or worth into question intensifies our fears of unworthiness.  So we often attempt to outperform whatever that fear is. 

Fear is manifested in a lot of different ways.  It can be manifested in anxiety, anger, frustration, jealousy, depression and more.  It is when our fears are greater than our faith that we act upon them.  We long for satisfaction and perfection (aka, a sense of being complete or whole).  After all, in our original created state, that was our condition.  We had all that we needed through God’s faithful provision; then there was the fall.  No we are not dissatisfied and we feel incomplete; so we fight.  We fight to achieve satisfaction in all the things under the sun.  We try to do good deeds to reach that “point”, and then we keep trying more.  Maybe we envy those whom we view as God honoring people, and strive to imitate them.  We think that we need to achieve a certain image of righteousness to be approved before ourselves, before others and before God. 

Maybe we deflect our own dissatisfaction with ourselves onto those around us, and complain about “this thing” they have done, or “that thing” they have said.  We easily make note of how messed up everyone else is.  We nitpick at the insignificant idiosyncrasies of those around us.  We think (but never say out loud), “Hey, if everyone else is on the defense, my own failures will not be so obvious.”  Inevitably, we fail.  We fail miserably to be satisfied.  Some people turn the misery of their failure onto themselves.  Others project their misery onto those around them.  When all is said and done, we are afraid of being left incomplete, insufficient, unjustified and unaccepted.  That fear impacts the way we relate to God, to others, and even to our own hearts.  But why?  I do these things in the deepest part of my soul.  I do not want to act this way.  I do not want to be selfish.  I do not want to do these things!  As a Christian, the Spirit of God is at work and in conflict with my flesh.  The Apostle Paul cries out, “Wretched man that I am!  Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom 7:24)

Paul then responds to his own heart by saying, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord… Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 7:25, 8:1).  Furthermore, he describes this frustrated state by saying, “the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.  For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.  And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body” (Rom 8:19-23). 

Paul got this!  He knew of man’s longing for wholeness.  The entirety of God’s creation long to be complete and restored unto God’s intended state.  But by His grace, God has subjected us all to futility so that we might fall on our faces before Him and cry out for our adoption and redemption.  That’s why Paul says, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  Through Christ Jesus, there is a promise and there is hope.

Brothers and sisters, let’s not forget that Christ has redeemed us and God has adopted us.  From an eternal perspective, we have no need to fight for our own significance, so why do we do it?  Because our fear of being unjustified is often greater than our faith that God has completed His work in Christ for our justification.  Our fear of being unaccepted is often greater than our faith that God has adopted us into His family and made us coheirs with Him. 

Remember His faithfulness.  Remember His promise.  When we let go of our own reputations and cling to His completed work, we are liberated to deal honestly with our own hearts in light of who God is.  What are we afraid of?  If you are in Christ, there is no need to be afraid.  “In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph 1:5-6).

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Any Christian would be a lying to themselves and others if they said that they have no struggle with sin.  No matter what stage of life we are in, if we are honest with ourselves, we can see our own sin and the sin beneath our sin.  Yet, because of our inadequacies in eradicating sin from our lives, we often avoid the reality of our deepest sin for fear of falling into despair on account of it.

Many of us have deep rooted pride and find comfort, pleasure, significance, and hope in how “God honoring” our lives appear to be.  At our core, we are Pharisaical; that is, we seek to derive righteousness and worthiness from our own doing.  This enslaves us to the fear of being known in our sin, and our so-called righteousness is sought through much toil and despair that is buried beneath the busyness of that “righteousness.”  We carry the weight of the world on our shoulders simply because, according to our world view, the weight is on our shoulders.  But our labor is vanity, for even our righteousness is like filthy rags.

                Paul proclaimed in his letter to the Galatians that when we carry this weight, we are fools!  If righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain!  Those who are in Christ have begun in the Spirit, and will be perfected by the Spirit; not by the works of the law!  Not by our own doing!  Not by our outward reflection of who we are trying to be in the flesh.  We need to stop thinking that our value is found in what we have accomplished or what we will accomplish, and instead, remember and believe that our lives are justified by the work of Christ and Christ alone.  The Scriptures tell us that we are justified by faith.  We are made righteous in Christ.  So once we stop worrying about our own justification before men and God, we are free to die to ourselves.  We are free to be who we are in our struggle with sin.  We are free to no longer be concerned about our own reputation, but instead, to cling to the completed work of Christ.  This liberates us in a way that is best understood when it is experienced.  It strikes at the root of original sin, which is man’s desire to be self-sufficient and independent from God.  That was the essential nature of the first sin.  Unbelief and pride.  Unbelief in the truth that our Creator is good and desires to give us all good things.  Pride in that we thought we could do better on our own. 

                Because our nature is corrupt with unbelief and pride, we must receive the Gospel of Christ daily.  For we easily return to the idols of our hearts that make us feel happy; be it acceptance, or fullness, or satisfaction, or love.  These, among other things, are things that the preacher in Ecclesiastes would call “under the sun”, which ultimately leave us wanting.  If we are honest with ourselves about that daily, we are left with two choices.  The first is to despair, with our backs to the wall and nowhere to go to avoid the pain.  To the natural man, this is the only choice.  The natural man is left asking, “what’s the point!?”, and is likely to discard God altogether.  But to he who has been justified, adopted and accepted into the family of God, our despair turns to hope if we defy the lies of the world and embrace the promise of God.  We walk into the courtroom awaiting a jury of our peers to declare us “guilty”; that’s what we deserve!  But the righteous and just Judge imputes the righteousness of Christ upon us and adopts each of us as one of His people.  Not only are we liberated from the punishment from our sin, but we are free of the fear of not being accepted. 

All of this liberates us to deal honestly with our sin; and as a means of grace, the Spirit of God works in us to sanctify us and make us more like Him.  But let that change not simply be out of our self-control, because self-control is still self-righteousness.  It’s foundation is in the corrupted nature of man and man’s motivation is to magnify the ego so that we feel better about ourselves.  Instead, let the magnitude of our sin wreck us to the point that we cry out to the Father, “Lord have mercy!”  And when we do, we are reminded that the Gospel is the truth that He has had mercy, and it was poured out in the blood of Jesus Christ.  When our lives become dependent upon the work that He accomplished, we realize that it is He that we ought to magnify, because our righteousness is in Him.  Having swung across the depths of our sin from despair to glorious hope, we fall on our knees and worship Him.  And as we worship Him, we are changed by an encounter with the living God that cannot be manufactured by our own doing.  The blood of Christ is absolutely at the center of that encounter, not the work of man.

                What more can be said?  The impact of this truth is deeper than I will ever know.  And my heart is to explore that impact with you.  Your reservations, agreements, disagreements and questions are welcome.