Preached · February 22, 2015
Series · The Cure
Text · Galatians 6
We are in the middle of a series called The Cure, and we are learning a lot about what grace and love is. You've heard from me, you've heard from Pastor John. Now, Pastor John keeps making this joke about starting a church in Arizona, and very suspiciously he has to go to this training this week that's in Florida, and I just find that highly unlikely. So that's where he is; you can pray for him, I guess. No, no, no — he is getting some much-needed, much-deserved R&R time down in Florida. He's getting some training from some leaders from Willow Creek and Bill Hybels and that gang. So, no joking, do pray for him — pray for his rest, his restoration, his connecting with God.
And for the next two weeks, we're going to continue talking about The Cure, continue talking about grace and love and its implications in our lives. And I just want to give you a brief review. So far we've talked about trusting rather than pleasing — trusting God's grace, trusting who God is, rather than trying to live a life of pleasing God. We've talked about revealing our true faces rather than hiding behind masks — revealing what we really are, flaws and scars and all, rather than hiding behind the masks that we put up in front to guard ourselves. And last week we talked about choosing to worship a God of love rather than a God of shame — essentially saying, if there's a voice in your life that's condemnation and shame-giving, that's not God. Don't worship that; worship the God of love.
But this all sounds great, right? This all sounds pretty fantastic. But there's of course this point where the rubber meets the road, when we are part of this community that believes in love and acceptance and taking down our masks and living in the implications of grace — but what happens when we fail? What happens when we screw up? What happens when we deal with temptation and sin, in my life, in your life, when we're part of this community together? What do I want to happen when I mess up? What do you want to happen when you mess up?
So if we are really, truly believing in this kind of community, this grace, this God of love, this choice to trust rather than to please, then we're faced with this tough question: what happens when we mess it all up? And we're going to approach this topic in two different ways over the next two weeks. This week we're going to focus in on a passage of Scripture that talks about how to deal with it when we are the ones who are tempted, when we are the ones that messed up. And then next week we're going to go to a parable of Jesus and talk about it from the aspect of: what happens when we are the ones who have to respond to someone else's sin or screwing up?
Galatians 6
So if you have your Bibles or your smartphones, I invite you to turn them on and head to the book of Galatians, chapter 6. Galatians chapter 6 — that's in your New Testaments. I still do this: "General Electric Power Company" — Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians. So, chapter 6, the last chapter of the book, and we're going to read from that. This comes from the NIV. I'm going to read it through just real quickly, and then we're going to go through it verse by verse. And this is what it says, on that highly legible screen:
Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person…
Let's pray together. Almighty God, we thank you that you have brought us together this morning, that you have gathered us together in this community of grace, by your grace, a gift. And Father, as we explore your word together, we want to be changed by it. We don't just want to hear it and let it go in one ear and out the other. We don't want it to fly over our heads. And so, God, we are asking for your Holy Spirit to illuminate your word for us. We're asking for your Holy Spirit to open up the Scriptures in a way like we've never seen them before, that they would become alive in our midst, and that your words — spoken and preached and heard today — God, would be transformational, that it would affect lives in such a deep and profound way that when we walk out of these doors and into the negative somethings, we won't be the same as when we walked in. And, God, we all know that this room this morning is representing a whole lot of needs and hurts and pains and aches. And when we talk about sin and temptation, we know that all of us are going to be able to raise our hand at some point and say, "Yep, I know what he's talking about." And so, God, we ask for your healing power in this place right now, God, that you would let people know that you do love them, you do forgive them. And, God, where there is pain and hurt and disease and sickness and death and bad memories, God, would you heal, bring restoration and wholeness? Thank you, Father, for these, my brothers and sisters here before me. God, would you show your love to them today in a way that affects them deeply? We pray all of these things in the power of Christ's name. Amen.
"Brothers and Sisters"
So what we want to do this morning, as we explore how the church is supposed to handle sin and temptation in our community, is go through Galatians chapter 6, verses 1 and 2, just kind of line by line.
And first of all, we notice that Paul is addressing this to "brothers and sisters." So what I want to emphasize here is that this message about sin, temptation, and how to deal with it, is for those of us who consider ourselves part of the community of Christ, part of this church, part of this body of Jesus. This is not meant to be intended or applied toward those necessarily outside of that community. This is not meant for our neighbors and our bosses and our co-workers that maybe we can't stand and who make us really angry, but who aren't part of the church. This is intended for Christians, brothers and sisters.
"If Someone Is Caught in a Sin"
"If someone is caught in a sin." There's a wonderful website called dogshaming.com — you should really check it out. This pooch has a sign around his neck. It says, "I break into the pantry and hide potatoes all around the house." And so the owner decided to post this on dogshaming.com.
"If someone is caught in a sin." Now let's talk about a few words here. "If." Now, just like in English, we use "if" in different ways. There's the improbable if — "if pigs had wings" — and there's the probable if — "if I eat too much at lunch today." Those are the two kinds of ifs, and in Greek it's the same way. What Paul is saying here is basically "when" — in the inevitable, likely condition that someone is caught in a sin. Because Paul knows that we will mess up, that our entrance into the life with Jesus doesn't mean this sudden, instantaneous "will never screw up, never make a mistake ever again." He understands that when he's writing to brothers and sisters, when he's writing to us, there's this if-slash-when, this inevitable condition, when someone is caught in a sin.
Now, when we read "caught in a sin," I think the image that we conjure up in our minds is catching someone — that we're the ones doing the catching, catching someone red-handed, catching someone in the middle of their sin, their mistake, their failure. But that's actually not really what's going on here. It's not us that's doing the catching; it's the sin that's doing the catching. If someone is caught by sin — or another way to put it is, if someone is caught up by sin. They're surprised by it, overwhelmed by it. It overtakes them, it surprises them, it sneaks up on them. I think we can all relate to this idea, where none of us plan on screwing up — not very often, anyway. None of us plan on messing up our lives. Sin kind of catches us, sneaks up on us, overwhelms us.
Sin Is Communal
Now, I want to focus in on the word "sin" for a second. There are a lot of different words that you'll come across in Scripture for sin — sin, iniquity, things like that. In this case, this is a word that the NIV kind of updates to "sin," but it might be the old word "transgression" or "trespass."
And if you're an ancient farmer in Israel, or even in the first century somewhere in the Greco-Roman culture — 95% of people were farmers; the way that you made your living was by agriculture in some way — and so if you're a farmer, what's the most important thing you have? It's your land. And so, in order to make sure that you had your boundaries set up correctly — they didn't have county surveyors and dickinsoncountyassessor.com to figure out where your property lines were — what you had were big boundary stones. And so if you ever bother to read through the book of Joshua, or Numbers, things like that, you'll see all these boundary stones being set up between property lines. So you'd put these boundary stones on the corners of your property.
Now, there were two ways that you could trespass, that you could transgress against your neighbor. The first way was to plant your crops, and then when it comes harvest time, you just ignore the boundary stone and you start harvesting on their side of the line. "Oops. What are you going to do about it? Fight me." Or the second way that you could transgress or trespass against somebody was the more brazen action: you could move the boundary stone. You'd have to get, you know, five, ten big strong people, and get that thing moved, but you could just move the boundary stone and pretend like nothing happened. "Over here? It's always been that way." Those are the two ways that you could trespass against someone.
And the reason I want to bring this up is because sin inherently is communal. We like to kind of deceive ourselves and make ourselves think that there are such differences between personal, private sins and public sins. Well, Scripture doesn't really see it that way. When you make a mistake, when you fail, when you trespass, it is always against someone else, or against the larger community. It's always a communal mistake.
Now, I'm sure all of us in our minds are thinking, "Well, not my sin. Mine doesn't really hurt anybody. It's just my little thing." But — I don't know — think about envy, or gossip. It's a dehumanizing act. When I envy somebody for what they have or what they do, or when I'm gossiping about some recent scandalous action that they've taken, I've dehumanized them. I've made them somehow less than a person, and into merely what they own or merely what they do. And so when I then talk about people in that kind of way, even if it's subconscious, even if I don't really realize it's happening, I'm causing other people to dehumanize them as well. When I reduce people to what they are or what they do, I'm affecting the community. When I look at those images on a screen, which I know I'm not supposed to, I'm contributing to a system that dehumanizes people for their bodies, that makes them less than a whole person and makes them merely pixels on a screen or inkblots on a page. All sin, all mistakes, all failure is inevitably communal. It's group sin.
"You Who Live by the Spirit"
And so Paul is writing to the church. He says, "Brothers and sisters, if — in the inevitable case that one of us is caught up, is surprised, is overtaken by some trespass, some communal mistake — what do we do?" Well, before we talk about the "what we do," Paul wants to remind us of who we should be. Before we focus on the doing, the action, Paul wants to remind us of the being, our character. And so he says this: "You who live by the Spirit."
Now, he's already said "brothers and sisters" — he's already said all of us, those of us who consider ourselves part of the Christian community, part of the community of Christ. But he's reminding us of our character: "you who live by the Spirit." And Paul has just identified what it is to live by the Spirit, in the chapter before, in Galatians chapter 5 — and that is by the fruit of the Spirit.
Now, for those of us who have maybe grown up in the church, the fruit of the Spirit is a very common thing, a thing that you're familiar with. But in the broader context of Galatians, the Galatians are struggling with the very same things that we're talking about in The Cure today. How are we going to be known? Are we really going to trust that God's love, God's grace is enough, or do we also somehow need to please God as well? And the way that they were struggling with this is by trying to please God with the Old Testament law. And so they wanted to affect their character from the outside in. They wanted to affect their character by their external actions somehow changing their internal character. And what Paul is saying is, no, that's not how it works. If you trust that God's grace is sufficient for you, then the way transformation happens is not by our external actions affecting our insides, but by our insides affecting our outsides — by the power of the Holy Spirit living and residing within us, individually and as a community, that our character will be transformed.
And so the way Paul says that this transformation happens is not by a list of do's and don'ts, not by a list of regulations of things we ought to do and ought not to do. Instead, he lists character traits. People — Christians, brothers and sisters, those of you who believe, who trust in the love and the grace of God — if the Holy Spirit resides within you and is affecting you, transforming you from the inside out, then we become loving and joyful and peaceful. We are people known by our forbearance, our long-suffering, our patience. Some translations might say we are people who are known by our kindness and our goodness and our faithfulness and our gentleness and our self-control. These aren't just actions that we can pretend to participate in; they're character traits that have to happen by transformation from the inside out.
"Restore the Person Gently"
And so if we are these kinds of people, these kinds of transformed people, the kind of people who live by the Spirit — brothers and sisters, in the inevitable case that one of us is caught up in some trespass against our neighbor — those of us who live by the Spirit, what do we do? We should restore the person gently.
Now, "to restore" — this word has a couple of uses in the New Testament. I think one of the most interesting ones is when Jesus is calling his disciples, and he goes to Peter and James, and they're fishermen. And what do fishermen have to do once they're done fishing for the morning? They have to mend their nets. So this is the word that Paul uses: when somebody is inevitably caught up in some trespass, some sin against their neighbor, they need to mend, restore, put back together, make whole, what was once broken.
And notice where the emphasis is. What are they restoring? Is it the behavior? When someone messes up, when someone has this trespass, this sin, this mistake, this moral failing — whatever you want to call it — does Paul say, "Restore the behavior, fix the behavior, make the behavior better"? No. He says, "Restore the person." Not the problem.
If my concern is someone's behavior, then my goal is to fix the behavior. If my concern is relationship, then my goal is to restore the person. Do you see the difference? If I'm fixated on the behavior, and someone's behavior goes wrong, then I become embarrassed by their behavior. They're part of my community and they mess up, and if I'm not concerned about the person as much as I'm concerned about their actions, then I become embarrassed by their actions, and my embarrassment becomes the focus rather than their restoration. And when I become embarrassed, or when the community becomes embarrassed, by someone's behavior or action, then what's our response? It's to cut them off, shut them out, shun them, send them away, ostracize them.
But if my focus is the relationship, if my concern, my goal, is a whole relationship with the person, it doesn't matter how embarrassing the action is — my goal stays the same: how do I keep the relationship whole, and how do I keep the person whole? How do I restore the person? Because godliness does not equal behavior fixed. Godliness does not equal behavior fixed. Why? Because that's all about my actions, my abilities, what I can and can't do. And that makes godliness this kind of secondary thing that we have to figure out for the rest of our lives — when in fact godliness comes from a gift from God.
Godliness Is a Gift
Second Corinthians chapter 5 puts it this way: Jesus, who had no sin, became sin for us. Stop and think about that for a second. God in the flesh, Jesus, had no sin, and yet somehow, in some mysterious way, not only took on flesh, but became sin on our behalf, so that in Jesus we might become the righteousness of God. Do you understand the power and the magnitude of what that statement says? Jesus, the perfect Son of God, God himself, God in the flesh, the divine incarnate Word, not only took on flesh — which we've been exploring through Christmas and Advent, our new song "King of Heaven" — not only took on flesh, not only became human, but became sin, in some mysterious but real way, on our behalf.
If we believe that that is real, if we believe that that is true — that Jesus really did become sin, which I think we should believe, because Scripture says it's true — then we also have to believe that the opposite is just as much true. He became sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God. Just as much as Jesus became sin, we become God's righteousness. Just as mysterious and weird and hard to understand and bizarre as Jesus becoming sin is, so is it mysterious and weird and bizarre — and true — that we become God's righteousness.
And so godliness can't possibly mean "behavior fixed," because that makes it about me and my actions and what I've done, when in fact it's the opposite: it's about what God has done on our behalf.
"Watch Yourselves" and the Cycle of Temptation
And so Paul says, "Brothers and sisters, when it inevitably happens that one of us trespasses against another, you who live by the Spirit, who are known by the character of being loving and joyful and peaceful and forbearing and all of these things — what do you do? You restore the person gently."
And Paul continues: "But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted." "To watch" means to take care, to contemplate, to consider — to know thyself, as it's been said before. What happens when we don't know ourselves? Temptation is sure to strike.
Now, is temptation sin? Is the tempting of us to sin, sin? No, that's not what we're saying. But for certain, we don't want to live our lives in this continual state of temptation, of fighting against sin crouching at our door. Because the longer we resist, the more pleasurable the thing that we're resisting is — or at least seems to be. This is the insidious, nasty thing about temptation: the longer we try to resist it, the more pleasurable the thing that we're resisting seems to become. That's why temptation is this vicious cycle, because we think that we're doing such a great job by resisting, by saying no to this thing again and again, when in fact the temptation just gets stronger and stronger.
The Cherry Pepsi Example
And so there's this cycle, and I want to kind of explain this cycle of temptation. It's explained more fully in The Cure, in our chapter this week, but I want to give you just a really kind of silly example. Maybe it's not silly; maybe I just want to tell you it's silly, I don't know. But I've told you on this platform before that I have a real hankering for Wild Cherry Pepsi. And for someone who sits behind a desk for like 40 hours a week, soda is the last thing that I need in my life. And for someone who hates exercise, soda is the last thing that I need in my life.
And so, you know, I have the soda some time ago, and then I say, "Nope, that's going to be the last one, I'm done. Okay." So then I start building defenses, like, "Oh, wow, I've gone a whole 12 hours without one, I'm doing really good." But, of course, by the very thinking of that thought, Wild Cherry Pepsi is suddenly on the brain. So then I start these unhealthy self-thoughts: "Why am I like this? Why am I always thinking about Pepsi? This is bizarre. Who am I? Why do I depend on this?" So then I find myself at Casey's with my Mazda, filling it up with gas, and there's that sign: "99 cents, 32 ounces of sugar could be yours." So the temptation strikes, but I resist. "I can do this. I can drive away."
And then — and this is the part where we might find it strange or silly — we hide it. And, you know, the smaller the temptation is, so we think, the more easy it is to hide. Am I really going to call up my accountability group and say, "Hey guys, I was at Casey's, I thought about getting a Pepsi, but I didn't do it"? No, of course I'm not going to do that, because I didn't do it — I have nothing to tell them. Right? What would I possibly tell my accountability group? "I didn't mess up, I did the opposite of messing up, I resisted."
And then, inevitably, hours, days, minutes later, I find myself with a Wild Cherry Pepsi in my hand, because the resisting makes it seem more and more pleasurable until I can't resist any longer. And then I'm like, "Wow, how did that happen?" And I'm on anthonyshaming.com with the sign on me.
So what happens once I act out? The cycle continues by withdrawing. And this is true, this really happens. I'll go to Casey's, I'll get the 32, or if I'm particularly naughty, the 44-ounce container, and I drink it all down, and I go home. And then, "Oh, look, there's the Lake News Shopper on the porch. Thanks, I never asked for one, but thanks for delivering it anyway." And, "Oh, okay, I'll just put the cup in the trash, and I'll put the paper on top of the cup, and Emily will never know. She'll never have to find out." This really happens.
And then the justification starts. "You know, I worked out last month, I deserve this." And then the blaming of people and circumstances: "Ah, it's been a stressful week. You know, I work at a church, I deal with people all the time, I deserve this." How many times have you ever said that to yourself — "I deserve this"? Which inevitably turns into shame: "I'm a big fat fatty, always will be." And then I lose hope: "I'll never change, so might as well go to Hy-Vee, buy the 24-pack, stick it in the fridge at church so Emily doesn't see it." And so the cycle starts again.
Now, of course, fill in your Cherry Pepsi with your own temptation of choice, and we see how the cycle kind of fits. We resist, and we build up defenses, and we hide.
Carry Each Other's Burdens
So when Paul says, "Watch yourselves, or you may also be tempted," how? How do we watch ourselves? What steps can we possibly take? And the answer is in the very next verse: carry each other's burdens.
"Watch yourselves." It sounds like this personal, individual thing, this thing that I have to do. But Paul gives us the answer. How do you watch yourselves? How do you individuals, how do you people, watch yourselves? By carrying each other's burdens. This "watching yourself" thing is not, again, individual. It is a communal activity.
Now, the word "to carry" has two scriptural images. From the Greek version of Isaiah chapter 53, it says, "Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases." And from John 19: "So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing" — or carrying — "his own cross, to a place called Golgotha." And so these burdens, this load, these faults, these consequences of our sin and temptation — Paul says, "Individuals, you want to watch yourselves in order so that you're not tempted? This is how you do it: community. Carry, bear, each other's burdens." No one should ever have to walk through temptation or sin or failure alone. Ever. Ever. Ever.
Your behavior is more important than our relationship. What you do is more important than who you are. Instead of loving you with my presence, I will fix you with my absence.
God Doesn't Fix Sin
Because this is all predicated on the lie that we can fix people. Friends, there's no behavior sinful enough that deserves our clumsy attempts at fixing it. There's not one on the list — we can't solve sin. As a matter of fact, God doesn't even really try to fix sin. "Fixing" implies that sin is some manageable problem, something that just needs a little tweaking, a little problem-solving, a little emotional manipulation to fix. But the way that God handles sin is by the Son incarnating himself into human flesh, becoming sin on our behalf, and that sin-in-the-flesh being nailed down, pierced down, crucified, and destroyed.
Sin can't be managed. It's like a rabid dog, unable to be tamed. The only solution is a bullet. And so God took that bullet on our behalf — which means that we don't need to go around shooting people for lame attempts at fixing their sin.
When Christ died, our sin nature died with him. And when Christ was resurrected, we were offered new life.
The Now and the Not Yet
And so now we live in this time of the now and the not yet. Sin is dead, but the rigor mortis has set in, so it flails about like a crushed spider twitching its dead limbs one last time. Is our response to fix it, to manage it? No. Rather, we live in the light of the love and life Jesus offers.
Was Jesus worried that we might all think that he was approving our sins because he dared to live among us and die on our behalf? Of course not — because Jesus knew that love transforms and withholding does nothing.
So does that mean that we can all just sit around getting high and reading Fifty Shades and gossiping about our neighbors and bosses and mothers-in-law? Of course not, because that still goes against the goal of wholeness and health and resurrection and mending, and those don't contribute to that at all. But neither does ostracizing, guilt-tripping, shaming, or withholding.
When we're tempted to sin, let's tell each other. When we really, really want to sin, let's tell each other. When we actually do sin, let's tell each other. And when we are handed the consequences of our sin, we carry those burdens, those consequences, together.
Telling On Ourselves
And so this cycle — building defenses, and unhealthy self-thoughts, of being tempted, of trying to resist, of hiding secrets, of acting out — it can be stopped. It can be broken. The Cure puts it like this: "The power of sin is broken simply in telling." Instead of hiding, instead of pretending like we're all okay — instead of all of that, we learn to tell on ourselves. Learn to confess the sin I intend to commit, so I don't have to confess the sin I've already carried out. This, friends, is how we watch out for each other. This is how we carry each other's burdens. If we begin the process, begin the habit, of telling on ourselves — of telling not just when we mess up, but when we want to mess up — the cycle is broken.
Fulfill the Law of Christ
And so the passage concludes, "And in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." Galatians is all about whether or not we still need to follow the Old Testament law in order to be justified before God. And the primary marker of those who follow the Old Testament law was circumcision. And those that said that even under Christ you had to follow the law — that meant circumcision. It became the marker. But Paul says this: "In Christ, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision" — these markers of being law-followers — "has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." Paul also says this: "You are called to be free, not to indulge your lusts, but to serve one another humbly in love. For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: love your neighbor as yourself." And it's in this way that we fulfill the law of Christ.
So, intriguingly, Paul says it's not in the Christian community's perfection, or lack of sin, or complete absence of failure that we fulfill the law of Christ. No. Rather, the way that we know that we are following the law of Christ, the lifestyle of Jesus — this lifestyle of love — the way that we know is that when we do screw up — because we will — we are there for each other, helping each other, bearing one another's burdens together. That's what love looks like: loving the person, not fixing the behavior; restoring the relationship, not managing the sin.
Love More, Sin Less
When I learn to love more, I will sin less. The opposite is not necessarily true. In other words, if I just try to sin less, I probably won't end up loving more. I'll probably just get bitter about not being able to do what I wish I could. The longer I resist sin, the more satisfying it seems. But when I learn to love more, to accept myself, my brothers and my sisters, and to restore relationships rather than fix behavior, then I will sin less.
Implications
So what are the implications of this?
First, communities of honesty. Now, this means a couple of things. One, that we are willing to share even what we consider the ugliest parts of ourselves — that we have the bravery, the courage, to tell on ourselves. And two, these communities of honesty mean that we have to be willing to listen and stay in relationship with people that anyone else would consider a lost cause.
Now, married folks, let me talk to you for just a second. If there is a sin or a temptation that you need to confess to your spouse, if you need to talk it through with a counselor, a therapist, an accountability group, that's fine — but when you do that confession, do it alone, just the two of you. Don't spring confession on your spouse in a group. That's not the way this should work. But, married couples, you have to be the model of what we're talking about today. If you don't have lives of transparency and authenticity within this marriage — that Paul calls the mystery of the union of Christ — then the rest of us have no example to look toward.
Now, single people — I know, because it wasn't that long ago that I was single, that us married folk can get really inward-focused, really inward-centered on our families, on our spouses, on our lives, and forget about the broader community. And so your challenge is that you get to call us to a higher standard, to show us what it looks like to live lives of authenticity and honesty, and in that way the broader community can be a community of honesty.
So that's big thing number one. Big thing number two, alluded to already: we need to tell on ourselves. We need to be willing to break the cycle of temptation — not to wait until sin has already happened, but to tell someone as soon as we feel the temptation creeping up on us, ready to sneak-attack.
And thirdly, we restore relationships; we don't fix behavior. When someone confesses to us, our instinct is going to be to fix, to get the person to change. Don't do that. Trust God to do the transforming. Our one job is love — restoring the person, mending relationships. And yes, I understand, sometimes that is hugely messy, and it takes time and effort and pain and tears, and we will probably end up trespassing in the midst of it. But the cycle of shame and guilt and failure breaks, and we love people.
So, brothers and sisters, those of us who belong in this community of Christ: when it inevitably happens that one of us trespasses against each other, you who live by the Spirit, who are known by your love and your joy and your forbearance — this is what I want you to do. I want you to restore the person gently. And in order to do this well, we need to be watching ourselves. How do we do that? By caring, by bearing each other's burdens — our temptations, our sins, our consequences. And in this way, that is how we fulfill this law, this lifestyle, of Christ.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
