Gift of Grace #4 - The Self-Help Lie
Description
In this message from Romans 2:1-16, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund dismantles the self-help lie that our goodness can earn God's favor, showing that even compared to the worst people we know, we all stand equally in need of grace. Discover why recognizing your desperate need for mercy—rather than comparing yourself to others—is the only path to experiencing the transformative beauty of the gospel.
Summary and Application
Have you ever compared yourself to someone else and thought, "Well, at least I'm not that bad"? If so, you're not alone—but according to Romans 2, you're also missing the point of the gospel entirely.
In his recent message on Romans 2:1-16, Kurt tackles what he calls "the self-help lie"—the dangerous assumption that our moral goodness, spiritual practices, or self-improvement efforts can somehow put us in right standing with God. It's a timely message in an age flooded with Christian self-help books promising that if we just unplug from social media, develop better emotional habits, or practice the right spiritual disciplines, we'll finally experience God in a more fulfilling way.
But Romans 2 offers a radically different—and humbling—perspective.
The Comparison Trap
Kurt begins with a provocative question: "Who is the worst person you know?" After considering names like Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, he turns to Romans 2:1, which declares: "You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."
The point isn't that we'll commit crimes as heinous as the worst offenders. Rather, it's that "before God, whenever you start to look and say, 'Well, compared to somebody else, I'm really not that bad,' on some level, you're missing the point of Romans and you're missing the grander point of Christian theology, which is: all of us stand before God in incredible need."
Kurt illustrates this with Jesus' parable from Luke 18 about the Pharisee and the tax collector. The Pharisee prayed, "God, I thank you that I'm not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector." The tax collector simply beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Jesus declared that the tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified before God.
Why? "Because what Romans is saying is: it's only when we recognize our need for God that we experience grace. And as long as we don't recognize it, that is when we miss grace, because we don't think we need it."
There's a memorable phrase Kurt shares: "If you're not the worst person you know, you don't know yourself very well." It's not that we're as bad as we could be, but that our standing before God isn't determined by comparison to others. At the foot of the cross, the ground is level.
Three Myths of the Moralist
Kurt identifies three dangerous myths that keep us from experiencing God's grace:
Myth #1: Since I'm Better Than Most People, I'm Okay
This is the comparison game. We draw a mental line from "your nana" (the best person we know) to someone like Epstein (the worst), place ourselves somewhere in the middle, and assume we've cleared the bar. But Romans 2:3 asks pointedly: "So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same thing, do you think you'll escape the judgment of God?"
The reality is that nobody stands before God able to say, "I've cleared the line." Not even your nana. "All of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And each one of us needs a savior."
Myth #2: Since I Haven't Had Judgment Yet, I'm Okay
Romans 2:4 challenges this presumption: "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that it's God's kindness that's intended to lead you to repentance?"
Kurt quotes C.S. Lewis from The Screwtape Letters: "It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and out into the nothing... Indeed, the safest road to hell is a gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
The absence of immediate judgment isn't evidence of God's approval—it's evidence of His patience, which is meant to lead us to turn toward Him, not away.
Myth #3: Since I Basically Know What God Expects, I'm Okay
Some people assume that knowing the right things or even doing relatively good things is enough. But Romans 2:12-13 clarifies: "All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it's not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous."
Kurt addresses the modern trend of religious pluralism—the idea that all religions are just different languages pointing to the same truth. He quotes a recent interview where a Christian political candidate claimed that Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity are all "circling the same truth about the universe."
But here's the critical difference: "Other religions say you improve yourself and then you can have eternal life. It's the self-improvement lie." Christianity says the work is done by Jesus Christ, not by us. Other religions present a line we must cross through our own effort. Christianity declares we'll never cross that line on our own—we desperately need a Savior.
A Perfect Example of a Christian
Kurt shares a story from The Amazing Race about a contestant named Kelly who read 1 Corinthians 13 in the morning, replacing "love" with her own name: "Kelly is patient, Kelly is kind." Later that day, she called her boyfriend a "redneck piece of trash" on national television.
Rather than seeing Kelly as a horrible Christian example, Kurt notes: "She is a perfect example of a Christian. We're just like Kelly on The Amazing Race. We can't hold to our good plans. Our lives spin out of control in a matter of minutes."
And that's precisely why grace is so beautiful. "It is Jesus Christ who intervenes with his own great love. He gives his love to us when we are unloving and unlovable. And it is because of Jesus, not our own efforts to love or the quality of our loveliness, that God loves us forever."
The Beauty of Grace
Kurt concludes: "The gift of grace is such a great gift because self-help doesn't get us any closer. Comparison doesn't get us closer. Our knowing what to expect doesn't get us closer to it. Our sense of being able to say, 'Since I haven't been judged,' doesn't get us closer."
The only posture that leads to grace is the one the tax collector took: "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
Two Questions for Reflection
Where are you tempted to compare yourself to others to feel better about your spiritual standing? Is there a "line" you've drawn where you think, "At least I'm not like them"? How might this comparison be keeping you from experiencing the full depth of God's grace?
What self-improvement strategies or spiritual practices have you unconsciously turned into a way to earn God's approval? Are there areas where you've fallen into the self-help lie, believing that if you just do the right things, you'll finally be "good enough" for God? How would your relationship with God change if you truly believed that Jesus has already done everything necessary for your acceptance?
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C.S. Lewis (from The Screwtape Letters):
"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and out into the nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed, the safest road to hell is a gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
Ezra Klein/James Talarico Interview
Klein: "How do you think about the competing claims of different religions? Do you believe Christianity to be more true than other religions? Do you believe there to be exclusivity in these beliefs that they're incompatible with each other?"
Talarico: "I believe that Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages. So you and I could sit here and debate what to call this cup. And you would call it a cup in English, or you would call it something else in Spanish and French, but we're talking about the same reality. I believe Jesus Christ reveals that reality to us. But I also think that other traditions reveal that reality in their own ways with their own symbol structures. And I've learned more about my tradition by learning more about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe and about the cosmos. And the truth is inherently a mystery."
Books Referenced
John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way
Lisa TerKeurst, I Want to Trust You, but I Don't
Kyle Idleman, Every Thought Captive
Levi Lusko, Blessed Are the Spiraling
Jennie Allen, Untangle Your Emotions
Max Lucado, Tame Your Thoughts
Scrolling Ourselves to Death
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
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Well, it's great to be together. I think in over 20 years that I've been pastor here, there is one other time that I remember that we actually did not hold a weekend service that was scheduled. It was—some of you might remember—the snowstorm where we got about 20-24 inches around here. We didn't have Saturday night, but we went ahead and had Sunday.
We've never preemptively called it. And so you're witnessing history at Orchard Hill here today. For those of you who are online today, I especially want to welcome you.
I want to just take a moment and pray. In addition to the storm that's bearing down on our region, if you've paid attention to the news, the unrest in the streets of a few of our cities, specifically Minneapolis, is concerning.
So let's just pray together. God, as we gather here, we know that you hold things in your hands, and we ask you to work in our nation to bring some unity around what has been a divisive issue concerning immigration. Lord, we pray for peace in our streets. And God, we ask that as we're gathered here in this moment and as we watch online on Sunday as well, that you would speak to each of us. We know that some of us come with just heavy hearts from things that have happened in the last season in our lives. We pray that you would be near. And God, I ask that you would speak through my words. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
The Worst Person You Know
So let me ask you today: who is the worst person that you know now? Don't elbow anybody. Don't lean over and say, "your mother," you know, nothing like that. Now your answer might be, "it's my ex" or "it was somebody in my life." But let's just back out a little bit. Let's go a little more global.
Let's take any polarizing political figures out of the equation and say, who can most people agree belongs on the worst person we know list? Well, who would we come up with? Harvey Weinstein? Jeffrey Epstein? Those are probably some of, in our era, the worst people that any of us could think about.
And when we come to Romans chapter 2, verse 1, it begins with a very striking statement. Now, we've been in Romans for several weeks here, and Romans, we said at the beginning, is about the gift of grace. But in order to establish the incredible gift of grace that God has for us, he begins with really some things that feel almost insulting. And this is one of those sections.
Romans 2, verse 1 says this: "You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."
So Romans leaves us no room to look at somebody else and say, "I am better than they are," including Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. Now you may say, "Well, come on. I mean, those guys, they really did some bad stuff." And this idea does not mean that you will do things that are equally as bad. But what it means is that before God, whenever you start to look and say, "Well, compared to somebody else, I'm really not that bad," on some level, you're missing the point of Romans and you're missing the grander point of Christian theology, which is: all of us stand before God in incredible need. And that's what makes the gift of grace so great.
The Self-Help Lie
Now, we've alluded to this controversy about how some people read Romans. Romans 2 is one of those sections that, again, is kind of at the core of this. There was a podcast that we put out this last week where Pastor Bryce and I talked a little bit about this controversy. I'm not going to go into that a lot here, but I've called this "the Self-Help Lie."
And the reason I've used that title is because there are a lot of books in the Christian arena today that are basically self-help books. And I'm going to just give you some of these books. And I want to preface this by saying: this is not to say these books are not helpful or good, but what I'm concerned about is the cumulative effect of self-help Christian books on the mindset of Christian thinking and theology in our day.
Okay, so this is not about these books in particular, but here are just some of the bestsellers of our day:
John Mark Comer, Practicing the Way
Lisa TerKeurst, I Want to Trust You, but I Don't
Kyle Idleman, Every Thought Captive
Levi Lusko, Blessed Are the Spiraling
Jennie Allen, Untangle Your Emotions
Max Lucado, Tame Your Thoughts
And so I asked AI to summarize these books for us. Here's what they came up with:
First, you have a mental health surge in these books. In previous decades, Christian self-help focused on victorious living or financial success. Today the focus is a clinical-spiritual fusion.
Then they talk about digital minimalism in a hurry epidemic. Led by John Mark Comer, there's a massive movement toward unplugging. Books like Scrolling Ourselves to Death are trending as believers look for self-improvement strategies to combat the psychological toll that social media and constant connectivity have.
Emotional intelligence is another theme. We've shifted from simple morality to complex emotional awareness as being the key to our spiritual well-being.
Now, again, my point here isn't to denigrate any of these. It could be helpful to develop microhabits, to digitally unplug, to not hurry as much. But the cumulative effect of all of these books is basically this: if I do the right things, then I'll experience God in a more spiritually fulfilling way. And when I do, then that will somehow make me feel better about my spiritual journey.
And again, what Romans 2 does is it takes us to a place where it says: if you want to feel good about yourself, you don't have a lot of room for that when it comes to the gospel.
Now, I realize that's not the message that is popular in books or even in churches today. It's a lot more popular to say, "You're awesome. God made you awesome. Go conquer the world, find your dream destiny thing, and go do it." But the message in Romans is: if you want to feel good about yourself, you may miss the actual grace and beauty that God wants for you in your life.
Three Myths of the Moralist
And so I want to just show you three myths of the moralist in this passage.
Myth #1: Since I'm Better Than Most People, I'm Okay (vv. 1-4)
The first shows up in verses one through four. And the myth is this: thinking that since I'm better than most people, I'm okay.
Again, verse one: "You therefore have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you're condemning yourself because you who pass judgment do the same thing. Now, we know that God's judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same thing, do you think you'll escape the judgment of God?"
You see, sometimes what we tend to do is we think, "Well, I may not have done everything right. Like, compared to the people in Romans 1 or people that I know, compared to that Epstein guy, I'm okay."
Here's how The Message puts it—an old paraphrase: "These people, verse one, are on a dark spiral downward. But if you think that leaves you on the high ground where you can point your finger at others, think again. Every time you criticize someone, you condemn yourself."
I like how that puts it, because he says we are without excuse. And the point of this—and the reason I allude to the self-help books just a moment ago—is because when we say, "Well, I come to Jesus to get forgiveness for my sin and then I go on and make myself better through all of my own effort," we start to get this little idea that says, "I'm okay and God likes me because I unplug from social media, because I conquer my emotional well-being or my emotional habits in such a way as to have emotional well-being." And we go on and fill in the blank with whatever it is that we think somehow gives us that idea.
The Parable of the Pharisee and Tax Collector
And Jesus spoke about this. He tells a story. It's in Luke 18 about the tax collector and the Pharisee going up to the temple to pray. And the way the story unfolds is striking because it says this right before it starts: "To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this story."
So who is he addressing? People who say, "I feel better about myself than others, and that's why I feel good before God."
And by the way, I've said this a few times in this series already: you don't have to be a churchgoer to be a moralist. In fact, some of the biggest moralists are people who stay away from church because they think they're better than all the church people.
But here Jesus tells this story, and here's how he tells it:
"Two men went up to the temple to pray. One a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, 'God, I thank you that I'm not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all that I get.'
But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
And Jesus says this: 'I tell you that this man rather than the other went home justified before God.'"
Now think about this. The Pharisee comes in and he says, "God, you know, thank you that I'm not like these other people—people who do bad things—and I do good things." And it's not like he was wrong about that. Because in that society, the Pharisee and the tax collector would be like saying you've got the person who volunteers at charities and is a good upstanding citizen, and then you have the drug dealer to kids kind of a thing.
And then Jesus says, "But the tax collector comes in and just simply says, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.' And then he says, this person went home justified."
Because what Romans is saying is: it's only when we recognize our need for God that we experience grace. And as long as we don't recognize it, that is when we miss grace, because we don't think we need it.
Church Cultures and Self-Righteousness
And by the way, whole church cultures grow up around this. I want to be careful how I say this, because in saying it, I can produce the same idea of what I'm going to talk about right here. Okay?
But a lot of times the reason people go to church or a particular church is because that church makes them feel good about themselves. And the subtext of the church culture is: "We are the people who get it right."
Sometimes it's about doctrine. It's like, "We're the doctrinal church. We think right, we study right, we know truths." Sometimes it's the experiential church: "We worship with abandon. We're the people who love God, not like those stuffy doctrinal people." Sometimes it's the social action church that says, "We're the church that's involved in the community and cares about the least among us. So that's what distinguishes us."
And you can go through all kinds of things that give people that sense of right being at our church. It can be kind of our own mindset that says, "We're the church that believes the message of grace." And if we're not careful, it becomes a means to say, "It makes me feel good about me."
And what Romans 2 does is it says: you don't have an excuse because think about the worst person you know—you're not better.
There's a phrase that I heard somebody say years ago, and it stuck with me, and the phrase is this: If you're not the worst person you know, you don't know yourself very well.
Now, that doesn't mean you're as bad as you could be. But what it means is that if your approach to worship is to say, "God, I thank you, I'm not like them," instead of "God, have mercy on me, a sinner," you don't understand your real need before God.
The Comparison Trap
Now, beyond this, some of us can miss God's grace altogether because of this. And what I mean is: some of us in church, outside of church, can get the mindset that says, "You know what? The way that I think about myself is, I think about myself in comparison to others."
And so if you were to think about this—I have a little illustration here, and I've seen this done by others before—but if you were to, say, draw a line at the top and at the bottom: who's the best person you know in the world? And I just put in "your nana," okay? You know, everybody's got somebody in their family that they're like, "They were a Jesus worshiper, follower. They're awesome." So, your nana. (If your nana was a bad nana, you know that doesn't fit. But you get my point.)
Who's the worst person? All right, we agreed earlier: Epstein.
And if you ask most people, "Where do you rank in this?" Do you know what most people would do? "Well, I'm not the worst. I'm not the best. I'm somewhere in the middle." Some would put it a little higher, closer to Nana. Some would put it closer to Epstein.
But wherever you put that, if your basis of saying "my standing before God is in relation to this," you're missing, again, his big point here, which is: nobody stands before God able to say, "I've cleared the line."
And for most kind of moralists in the world, there's a line, and it's somewhere below where I am, that I have to cross. And then I feel good.
And again, all Romans 1 or 2 is doing here is saying, that's not how you should be thinking about this.
Myth #2: Since I Haven't Had Judgment Yet, I'm Okay (vv. 4-11)
So here's the second kind of myth, and that is in verses 4 through 11: since I haven't had judgment yet, I'm okay.
So verses one through three: since I feel like I'm better than most people, I'm okay. The second myth of the moralist is: since I haven't had judgment yet, I'm okay.
Verse four: "Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance, and patience, not realizing that it's God's kindness that's intended to lead you to repentance?"
So here his simple statement is that your idea or your experience is that you're experiencing the kindness of God, the patience of God, the forbearance of God—meaning you're not getting everything you deserve in real time.
Now, this does not negate what Romans 1 talks about in God giving them over, which I think ultimately is about a seared conscience, about a way of just saying, "I'm going on my own path." But here he's saying: you show contempt by not turning toward God, because his kindness, forbearance, and patience is intended to lead you to turn.
Verse 5: "But because of the stubbornness of your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself, for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. God will repay each person according to what they've done. To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger."
So the word "wrath" here is the same word that's used in chapter one, verse 18: "The wrath of God is being revealed." And we said that that wrath is basically God's settled indignation against things that are against what is good and right, against his revealed will.
Here when the word "anger" is used in addition, it's a word that speaks about an emotional reaction. In other words, God doesn't just stay in the wrath zone of saying, "I have a settled indignation against the things that aren't for me or of me," but there's actually an emotional reaction. And he ties it here to people walking away from his kindness and his goodness in their lives.
And so the myth is: "Well, since I'm basically living life the way I'm living it and things are going okay, I don't need to consider the mercy and the kindness of God or the wrath of God. I'll just keep doing my life."
C.S. Lewis on the Gradual Road to Hell
I had a friend send me a C.S. Lewis quote that ties to this. Here's what he said. This is from The Screwtape Letters, which is a demon writing to a junior demon about how to get people off track. So it's tongue-in-cheek. He says:
"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the light and out into the nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick." (Now cards, I'm not sure exactly his perception of that being sinful in this, but murder is no better than some small sin if they can do the trick.) "Indeed, the safest road to hell is a gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
In other words, just simply saying, "Well, I haven't had a problem yet. Maybe God's judgment isn't a thing."
So a moralist says: "Since I'm better than most people, I think I'm okay." And a moralist says: "Since I haven't been judged yet, I think I'm okay."
Myth #3: Since I Basically Know What God Expects, I'm Okay (vv. 12-16)
But there's one more myth here, and this is in verses 12 through 16, and that is: since I basically know what God expects, I'm okay.
So verse 11, he says that God doesn't show favoritism, saying that God works in everything. Then verse 12, he says: "All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it's not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous."
Do you have it now? Do you get it? I mean, it's a little sing-songy here, right? The law, obey the law, don't obey the law. What's he saying here?
Here's what I believe he's driving at in this section. He's saying that there is a group of people. There are people who have the law, and when they have the law, they are judged by the law. And there are people who don't appear to have the law, and they're judged by what they know—conscience.
This goes back to chapter one again, where he says that what may be known about God is plain to them because God's made it plain to them. So they're without excuse.
See, your thinking here could be: "Well, if God judges me based on how much I know, then maybe I should just stop learning. That way I'd have less judgment." But what he says is: "No, you actually know plenty, and you'll be judged based on what you know."
And then what he does is he takes this whole argument and says: you knowing just a little bit and thinking, "Well, I know and I've lived up to what I know" is not how you actually put yourself in right standing with God.
In fact, he goes so far in verse 16 as to say that "this will take place on the day when God judges people's secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares."
And so what does he do? He says everything will one day come out, and you will not have an excuse for saying, "Well, I kind of knew and I kind of did."
But the moralist says: "I think I'm okay because I'm better than other people, because I haven't had any really negative God consequences yet. And I think I'm okay because I kind of basically know what God wants and I kind of do it."
And he says: "No, what you need ultimately is to come to a point where you recognize that your salvation is found in Jesus Christ and not in your efforts. And without that, you are hopelessly lost."
The Problem with Religious Pluralism
There was an article in the New York Times recently, and it was basically a transcript of an interview that Ezra Klein did with a man who is running for public office named James Talarico. And I sometimes will listen to Ezra Klein's podcast. And he asked this guy who was running as a Christian for office and was basically standing and saying, "So much of what the Christian community has taken as a political view, especially on the right, is wrong. And I take it kind of from the left, kind of a more progressive stance."
And so I found that interesting, which you might expect. So I read the whole thing. And buried deep in the interview, he asked this question (this is Ezra Klein):
"How do you think about the competing claims of different religions? So this guy has talked now at length—and sometimes makes really good points, sometimes points where you're like, 'I don't know about that'—about how Christians should view politics. So how do you think about the competing claims of different religions? Do you believe Christianity to be more true than other religions? Do you believe there to be exclusivity in these beliefs that they're incompatible with each other?"
Okay, age-old question. Do you believe that Christianity is the only right religion? Basically is what he's asking.
Okay, here's this guy's response:
"I believe that Christianity points to the truth. I also think other religions of love point to the same truth. I think of different religious traditions as different languages. So you and I could sit here and debate what to call this cup. And you would call it a cup in English, or you would call it something else in Spanish and French, but we're talking about the same reality. I believe Jesus Christ reveals that reality to us. But I also think that other traditions reveal that reality in their own ways with their own symbol structures. And I've learned more about my tradition by learning more about Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. I see these beautiful faith traditions as circling the same truth about the universe and about the cosmos. And the truth is inherently a mystery."
So here's what he's saying: Christianity and other faiths—it's all like pointing to the same cup. We just use different words.
But here's why this is what I'm talking about right here. Basically: "I know what God expects, so I'm okay."
Because what somebody does who says that is they basically say there is no ultimate truth claim. And even though these world religions see things very differently, they're all just the same. So I stand above the religions and I see truth that they don't even see in themselves.
But here's the real problem. Other religions may point to some ethical behaviors that should be the same—love one another, don't steal, don't kill, these kinds of things. But at the end of the day, other religions say: "Improve yourself, and there's a line somewhere that you have to get across. It's somewhere above the Epstein line."
And what Christianity says is: you'll never get above the line. Your nana is not above the line. Even your nana needs Jesus, because all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God. And each one of us needs a savior.
So the difference is that Christianity says the work is done by Jesus Christ, not by us. Other religions say you improve yourself and then you can have eternal life. It's the self-improvement lie.
The Amazing Race Illustration
And by the way, this doesn't mean that you'll get everything right. I saw something a while ago. I never watched the show The Amazing Race, really, but I saw what somebody wrote about this from a show years ago.
On an episode, years ago (this is what this person wrote), on an episode of The Amazing Race, a contestant named Kelly was interviewed. She tells the camera, and therefore millions of people watching, that when she woke up in the morning that day, she read the love chapter in the Bible, First Corinthians 13. And instead of the word "love," she put her name into the chapter.
So instead of saying, "Love is patient, love is kind," she said, "Kelly is patient, Kelly is kind," and so on. She did this into the camera for all to see. She said that she was going to try to be those things to her boyfriend that day. His name was Ron.
Now, in The Amazing Race, things can get a little tense, and sometimes team members can get frustrated with one another. At one point near the end of the day, Kelly got so annoyed with Ron that she ended up calling him a "redneck piece of trash." And this in front of the same millions of people that she had told she was reading the love chapter that morning about how Kelly is kind and Kelly is patient.
Now, I'm not from the south, but Ron is. And from his reaction, I don't think that calling him a redneck piece of trash was an expression of love.
So Kelly has a problem. She's not showing love. And my first instinct after hearing "redneck piece of trash" come out of Kelly's mouth was, "Oh, no, what a horrible Christian example. She told everyone that she was reading the Bible and now she's saying this awful thing."
And then this person writes this:
"But listen, though she may not be a great Christian example, she is a perfect example of a Christian. We're just like Kelly on The Amazing Race. We can't hold to our good plans. Our lives spin out of control in a matter of minutes. We go from 'I will be patient with my loved ones' to calling them whatever our sinful hearts have assigned to them.
And when everything seems to be falling apart, when we feel at our worst at loving each other, it is Jesus Christ who intervenes with his own great love. He gives his love to us when we are unloving and unlovable. And it is because of Jesus, not our own efforts to love or the quality of our loveliness, that God loves us forever."
Conclusion: The Beauty of Grace
You see, the gift of grace is such a great gift because self-help doesn't get us any closer. Comparison doesn't get us closer. Our knowing what to expect doesn't get us closer to it. Our sense of being able to say, "Since I haven't been judged," doesn't get us closer.
And when we misjudge our goodness through our self-righteousness, we miss the beauty of the grace of God.
Because where is the grace of God found? Luke 18: Jesus said the person who went home justified was the tax collector who came into the temple and didn't even look up to heaven and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner"—not the person who came in and said, "God, I thank you. I'm not like these people or like that guy. I don't do the bad stuff and I do the good stuff."
He said, "No, no, it was the person who said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'"
Communion Invitation
So today we're going to celebrate this reality with communion. And so here at this service, there's communion here at the front, to the outsides, in the back of the balcony, in the lobby as well.
And what I want to just invite you to do if you're here in the room is to come if you're a follower of Jesus—we invite you. And when you partake of the communion, you can dunk the bread in the wine and say, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner," or "Thank you for having mercy on me, a sinner." But celebrate the grace of Jesus, because at the foot of the cross the ground is level. It's level in our need and it's level in what God does for us. And that is a beautiful thing for us to celebrate and commemorate.
If you're here today and you're somebody who says, "You know, I'm kind of just hanging on to life and I'm not sure about this Jesus," even this is a moment for you just to consider: have you counted on your own morality? Because what the communion table represents is what Jesus has done—that he did it, we don't do it, and that you come because of what he's done, not because of what you have done or will do.
If you're at home and there's not probably an appropriate way to take communion, I just encourage you, as this song plays, to take a moment and say, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Name any of the sins that you're aware of and the ones you're not, and say, "God, I come to you for grace today in a fresh way."
Closing Prayer
God, we pray in this moment that you would help each of us who's gathered to not fall into the trap of morality, comparison, presuming on your grace and your patience, or our past knowledge, but instead, we would come to you fresh in your mercy and experience your grace once again. And we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
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Disclaimer: This transcript has been edited from the original audio recording for clarity and readability. While every effort has been made to preserve the speaker's intended meaning, some minor adjustments to grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure have been made. This is an AI-assisted transcription and cleanup.
