I think we can look at and admire things in different cultures that we think are “better”-- a better way of life, a better way of treating people or governing people, a better way of interacting with the environment (this planet we all share).  And it is tempting to think, “Those people got it right.  They found a better way, a good way, to live.”  And then we might get to thinking that if we just adopted their perspective, their way of life, everything would be okay, everything would be good (more or less).

 

But, no matter how true it may be that some people and some cultures have gotten some things better or “right,” it is not true that any culture or group of people have truly gotten everything right.

 

Movies and books and shows on our devices will inevitably paint a better picture than reality.  There is, I believe, a messiness to life in every culture and people, and in every individual person.  We must be careful not to be swayed too much by the “presentation” of things that we see and hear and read.

 

In contrast, we can look at the world and see many glaring injustices that need to be corrected.  And they do need correcting!  Or, we can look at our families and our neighborhoods (and our own city, state, and nation) and see that changes are needed.  Things are not right.  And they are lopsidedly not right for some people more than others.

 

Lastly, we can even look (I hope) into our own hearts and recognize things that aren’t quite right– no matter whose “measure” we use.  Either consciously or intuitively, we recognize something is wrong.  Or, more accurately, multiple things are wrong.

 

Some we can change.  Some we want to change but don’t know how.  Or we know how, but we continue to fail time after time.  Or we succeed for a time, but then we fail again and then sometimes can’t make progress in that area for an indefinite amount of time.

 

And we can infer (if not see directly) that the same must be true for our neighbors and for the people that we pass on the street.  

 

Sin is real.  “Hamartia” is the Greek word used in the Bible.  From what I remember, it is a marksmanship term meaning “to miss the mark.”  Like an arrow that misses the bullseye (or in some cases the whole target).

 

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I did not come to this understanding of sin and messiness and brokenness solely by means of Scripture.  Rather, Scripture ended up confirming what I had come to know about myself on my own– that something was wrong that needed fixing.

 

And I think it is fair to say that I did not start with the Bible when seeking answers for how to “fix” whatever it was that seemed wrong.  I was open to pretty much anything that would help make sense of the world and my inner being and my desire for peace, well-being, and change.

 

I think I’ve always been (by personality) more of a “rules and order” type of person, so perhaps I more naturally gravitated toward wanting to find “rules to live by.”  Pick a religion; pick a philosophy.  Glean from multiple sources (and my own ideas too if necessary) and cobble together a set of rules to live by.

 

But, I came to find, rules don’t change the heart; they don’t change what’s on the inside.  They don’t fill what I experienced as an emptiness inside.

 

Rules can be good, and I think all societies and cultures need them.  But they are like guardrails.  They help us recognize where there are dangers to avoid.  They might also prompt us to help others when we may not “naturally” want to.

 

But they can also (if we’re not careful) become the means of self-justification.  We can feel good about ourselves for doing what we believe is “the right thing.”  “I did this,” or “I didn’t do that,” so “I am a good person.”  (Or at least better than “those” people.)

 

But if we are perceptive (and honest), we experience an underlying doubt that we’re not “good enough”-- that we fall short of what we think is the best way to live (by whatever “measure” we choose to use).  And if we can recognize this underlying doubt– this sense that something isn’t quite right– we should not ignore it or try to explain it away.  I believe it will do us more good, in the end, to follow it up– to seek an answer for why we feel that doubt, that uncertainty about ourselves.

 

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At age 19, in the midst of my young-adult-self seeking for answers (“rules to live by,” the truth about myself and God and the world) and desiring change, I found something I wasn’t expecting.  It wasn’t “rules to live by” (exterior) that I found, but a restored “relationship” with the God who made me.

 

I understood the gospel (literally “good news”) in a different way.  Not as a religious teaching, but as something new.  An invitation to something new.  An invitation to a relationship with God– a relationship that seemed evidenced by a visible Joy and an expressed Assurance of forgiveness in the lives of some college-age people I was getting to know.  I wanted what they seemed to have (the joy and the assurance), and what they claimed to have was a relationship with God, with Jesus.

 

It didn’t seem “religious” to me at all.  I didn’t really want religion.  I wanted a changed life.  I wanted something that (maybe, if possible) would fill or remove that empty feeling I sensed deep down inside.

 

The message of the gospel was not entirely new, but my experience of it was new.  The message is what I learned growing up in church, in Sunday school, and in the Confirmation classes that were part of my family’s church tradition.  Simply put, Jesus died for our sins so we can be forgiven.

 

But what was new, in part, was my understanding of Why– Why did Jesus die to forgive my sins?  And the answer, which I really don’t think I understood until that time in my life, was that the dying and the forgiveness were in order to bring me (us, all people) back into a relationship with God.  A relationship that had been broken (and became distant) because of sin.

 

I mean, as I understand it, we (that is, humans) are born with the condition of sin.  All humans, regardless of “race,” ethnicity, gender (or anything else) are born with an inescapable, natural tendency to sin, to do wrong, to make a mess of things.  It’s like a disease or a disability.  It’s sewn (somehow) into our DNA or some aspect of our being or “nature.”

 

My understanding is that if left unchanged or unhealed, we in our broken condition will make a wreck of the whole universe.  And my understanding of God is that he does not blame us, individually, for this condition.  But he is faced with a dilemma: 1) He loves us beyond what we can understand and 2) He cannot allow sin (in any form) to remain in the universe.  He must either destroy humans (contaminated with sin), or he must allow the universe to be destroyed, in the end, by allowing humans to remain unchanged in their capacity to make a mess of themselves and everything around them.

 

But God in his wisdom has made a way to both preserve (save) human beings whom he loves AND eliminate the problem of sin.

 

At the Cross, we are told, Jesus– the eternal Son of God– took the sin of all humanity upon himself and died.  A man without sin was allowed to die on our behalf.  And he was raised to life both as a confirmation that his death was accepted on our behalf and so that we, too, can experience new life.

 

It is a trade.  It is a healing.  It is an exchange with God.

 

We recognize, before God, that we are broken, that we are sinful.  We turn toward God of our own accord, our own willingness.  This is repentance.

 

Jesus says, “‘Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light’” (Matthew 11:28-30).  Jesus also said, “‘This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations’” (Luke 24:46-47).

 

We turn to God; we go to Jesus.  We accept the invitation and we trust that what he said is true.  Even if we don’t understand it fully, we believe it.  We accept it.  We take a chance on it.

 

We turn to God and admit, as best we know how, that we are broken, we are sinful, and we want to change.  We know that who we are at the deepest level needs to change.  And we recognize, perhaps with imperfect understanding, that what Jesus did at the Cross was both necessary and enough.  Enough for me.  Enough for everybody.  And even though all our questions are not answered about other people and the world, we know this is what we want, what we need.

 

“God, please forgive me.  Please change me.  I believe, somehow, that what Jesus did on the Cross– his death– has put things right for me.  I haven’t done anything 'good' to deserve this.  But Jesus did, somehow.  So please take me as I am and forgive me and change me.  I want a relationship with you.”

 

The Bible says, “That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).  The Bible also says, “If we confess our sins, he [God] is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

 

And for our assurance, so that we can know with confidence (free from uncertainty) that God has made this transaction real (sins forgiven, new life begun), the Bible tells us, “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.  He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.  I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:11-13).

 

We are loved.  We recognize something deep inside ourselves that we are not capable of changing on our own.  God recognizes this too and cannot let it go unchecked, unchanged.  He gave his Son, Jesus, to make a way for us– to exchange our contaminated soul for an uncontaminated one.  A soul that will be free of sin in the life to come– and one that can grow and be transformed now in the present life, this present Age.

 

The Bible tells us that God gives the Holy Spirit to live within us, and that God himself will work in us to make the needed changes (1 Corinthians 6:19; Ephesians 1:13; Philippians 1:6 and 2:13).  But we are to be willing participants.  

 

John the baptizer told his hearers, those who came to be baptized in the Jordan River, “‘Produce fruit in keeping with repentance’” (Luke 3:8).  And Jesus later told his disciples, “‘I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit– fruit that will last’” (John 15:16).

 

Later, the Bible tells us what the fruit of the Spirit consists of: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

 

This change, this evidence, this fruit will be experienced in the life of the believer– in those who put their trust in Jesus.  The “rules to live by'' will no longer be exterior guardrails.  The Bible says the rules will be written on our hearts (Jeremiah 31:31-34).  God rewrites the DNA of our hearts in such a way that “right living” becomes a way of life that we grow in– not because we are trying hard to “follow the rules,” but because God is changing who we are from the inside out.

 

Thanks be to God!