This morning I have good news for you. Listen to this very carefully: None of us is good enough to be here this morning.
That does not sound good news. Maybe I should be more sensitive and express it a little differently. I have news for you this morning: God is not impressed with us this morning.
How is that? Is that better? Maybe this is not the way to start a column. Let me try again.
I have news for you: Every one of us is a complete and utter failure.
I know we do not want to hear this. We are here to be uplifted. We are here to rejoice and be glad. And here we are, being told that we are not good enough.
The letter of Paul to the church in Rome is difficult to preach. It is a dense and demanding piece of correspondence. Paul writes this letter to a congregation he did not start, to people whom he had never met. Right from the first sentence, he lays out chapter after chapter of his deepest theology.
He says in chapter 1. “It is possible for every creature in the creation to know God and to love God” (v. 19). Yet, this knowledge and love gets tangled up somehow.
By the end of the first chapter Paul says, “All of us have a tendency to exchange the truth about God for a lie, we worship the creature rather than the Creator” (v. 25), and “we have no excuse” (v. 20).
In other words, none of us here is good enough to be here this morning. God is not impressed with a single person in this room. Every single one of us is a complete and utter failure.
Or as Paul puts it, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
If I do not know any better, I would think Paul is telling us how bad we are. Yet, I know this is the beginning of the good news for us.
Yes, none of us is good enough to be here, God may not be impressed with a single person in this room, yet, God loves us in spite of who we are. Every single one of us is a complete and utter failure. But according to St. Paul, God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
If we let these words sink in, they can set us free. All of us have sinned, and no one is any better than anybody else. All of us have fallen short–that is the truth! So we can stop punishing ourselves for not measuring up.
No matter how good we are, we will never be good enough. In an ultimate sense, that’s okay, because life is not about us ever being able to measure up. Life is about God who moves toward us in Jesus Christ to bridge the distance.
That is the good news for the day. God is not bound by our limitations. God loves us not because of who we are, but in spite of who we are, before we even know who we are. “There is no distinction,” says the Apostle Paul, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Then in the very next breath, Paul says, “And they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus … (made) effective through faith” (Romans 3:22-25).
In theology, we call this “justification”. God-in-Christ justifies us; that Christ makes us right in God’s sight; that in our unacceptable state, God accepts us because Jesus has done all the necessary work on our behalf.
The point is, life is not about us and our long list of checkered achievements. Life is about God, and what God has accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus. For our part, all we need to do is believe.
Several years ago, I used to receive this letter which partly reads:
Dear Friend Jonathan Pia:
Congratulations! You’re a contingent grand prize winner, and you may now qualify for the final drawing to win the vacation home.
(Imagine having your own vacation home? Who would not be interested? Then at the back:)
P.S. You may need a van to go back and forth if you win the vacation home. If you find five stars, we’ll add a deluxe new van to the prize.
When I looked at the meaning of the word “contingent”, it means “dependent on” or “conditioned by something else.” I knew it was just a gimmick. But in spite of this, there is still a part of me that wanted to believe that someday, I would really win the grand prize. Of course, until now, all I have won is just a ballpen.
However, the salvation that God has given us in Jesus Christ is free. God in Christ has done all the things necessary. It is not “contingent” on anything. What we need is just accept it.
G. W. Knight wrote: When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day’s pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service or high achievements, that is an award. But when a person is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award, yet, receives such a gift anyway, that is a good picture of God’s unmerited favor.
This is God’s grace. As we come to the Table of our Lord, we are invited to a table laden with grace. As we usually say, “Come not to testify that you are righteous, but that you sincerely love our Savior Jesus Christ and desire to be his true disciple; come to this table not because you are strong, but because you are weak; come because in your frailty and sin, you stand in constant need of heaven’s mercy and grace.”
Thus, you may not be good enough, but I invite you, “Come to the Table of our Lord. Come to the Table of Grace.”
