Getting Back on Track Through Repentance and Purity
Part 4 of “Courageous Challenges for Contemporary Christians”
Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22
Thomas J. Boone, Ph.D.
Delivered at Central Presbyterian Church, July 29, 2007

Two people decided that they needed to talk to God. So, thinking God might hear them better at church, that’s where they went. Both were well dressed, and pulled up to the lot in nice cars. What distinguished the two was that one was an Elder, and the other a member who seldom attended. They both sat down in the sanctuary, but in different places. The Elder made sure he was sitting behind the other man, and the acoustics were as such that he could hear him pray out loud. “God, you know I don’t come to you often, but I just don’t know where else to go. My marriage has fallen apart because I’ve done a stupid thing. Please help me turn my life around. I just don’t know what to do. I’m sorry.” Not knowing anything else to say he turned and left.

The Elder was consumed by what the man had prayed, so, sighing to himself, and forgetting about his reason for coming to church to pray, he thought, “I’m so glad that things aren’t that bad for me. Poor guy.” And then he prayed, “God, I don’t know that man, but apparently he’s done a horrible thing that has put his marriage into jeopardy. Lord, help him. Lord, I thank you that I’ll never have that type of sin on my heart, and I pray that you bring that man to his senses soon. Divorce is a sin, and ... oh Lord, just thank you for the blessings you’ve given me. Thank you for my children, my wife, my job.” He went away feeling very good about the blessings in his life. The other went away feeling rather humble, and we hope turned his life around.

Maybe you’ve heard the biblical version of this story in Luke 18. “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other.”

It’s natural for humans to look at each other and balance our sins on a scale. Adultery, we say, is far worse a sin than not returning change to a clerk who gave us more money back than was due to us. Murder, we say, is far more grave a sin than expressing rage toward someone who hurt our children. Lying or cheating on a test: neither of these, we say, hold a candle to biggies like doing drugs, driving under the influence, or consuming pornography.

One woman I met at a small group told me that in her church it was common for people once they were divorced to be dismissed from teaching in Sunday School. Yet, she knew of people who were teaching who were addicts to alcohol and gambling. Weighing sins on human scales seems to elevate some while shaming others.

How very different from the way God sees and judges. “We’ve all fallen short of God’s glory” is how Paul puts it. Calvin put it like this: “All of us, who have descended from impure seed, are born infected with the contagion of sin. In fact, before we saw the light of this life we were soiled and spotted in God’s sight” (ICR, 1:248). It’s gut-wrenchingly true to say, but take the worst sin you can think of and there’s not a lick of difference between that sin and the slightest wrong we’ll do, at least in God’s eyes. To God, it’s not about our misdeeds, it’s about our heart condition. Sin isn’t something we do, it’s the way we are. We practice either virtue or vice, but sin is the condition of our heart, and the heart, for all of us, no matter what we’ve done or are doing, is in constant need of transformation.

Years ago I went to a mid-week service during which the pastor, a Presbyterian man who had followed a call in his career to a non-denominational church, said that yes, Jesus has forgiven us, but if we’re going to be transformed we’ll have to get our lives back on track with the Lord by turning away from the sin that bogs us down. God bears grace, we bear responsibility. Taking ownership of our sin, turning it over to God because we don’t want to be bogged down anymore, and living humbly in God’s grace is the portrait of a person transformed by the Spirit. That, in a nutshell, is John’s message to the Christians in Sardis and Laodicea.

In Revelation, Christians in Sardis and Laodecia had gone off track and needed to hear a message of repentance. In Sardis, Christians had become lax. They knew their history and so did John. He used imagery that reminded them about the time when they were at war with a neighboring power, and thought they had plenty of time to get ready for an assault, but instead their enemy tricked them and attacked them sooner than expected from the opposite side of the city. The result was devastating. Laodecia was known for its medical advances and lush calcium springs across the valley. They were a wealthy community and Christians had replaced Jesus with materialism as their source of assurance. John mentions no sin in particular, but both communities had surrendered their hearts for Jesus to softness with the world so it was time for them to turn back to the Lord. Now here’s what’s amazing. The message would’ve been no different had they been consumed by vice, and therein lies the point. Regardless of how “light” their sins may have been, God was looking at the condition of their hearts. They had gotten off track with the purity of Jesus.

You see, purity isn’t about doing the right things, it’s about what Christ already did. What these Christians needed to hear was that even though there wasn’t anything seriously foul afoot in their lives they’d traded in their pure state for an impure heart. It’s so easy to do, and it assumes many forms. Sometimes it’s choosing to remain in a lifestyle of vice. But, sometimes it’s less obvious, such as remaining in the prison of a sin we did long ago.

A woman sat in tears after church one day. I waited until I saw her later that evening to ask her if she was OK after the service. Since we were close friends, she admitted to me that she had had an abortion nearly twenty years earlier. She knew she was forgiven, but really hadn’t forgiven herself. Instead, it had become part of her identity and shame like an albatross around her neck. The miracle of that Sunday morning for her was not in her being forgiven, but that she was finally able to let that long-ago abortion go and accept her identity as a child of Jesus, pure in God’s eyes.

If we’re followers of Christ then God sees only Christ’s blood that covers us. That’s why Paul wrote so confidently that nothing will ever separate us from Jesus’ love (Romans 8:39). Through Christ’s death we’re already forgiven, and when we accept Christ as our Lord there’s nothing more we can do to earn His forgiveness than what He’s already done on the cross. The issue is whether or not we allow that new state of being to transform the way we live as heirs of God’s kingdom. If you’re a Christian then you’re already pure in God’s eyes because Jesus died for you.

Maybe you’re here today with something clinging to you from the past. The good news for you is that God has already forgiven you, but the challenge for you is to let that something go and get on with living as a pure man or woman in Christ.

But, perhaps the sin that weighs you down isn’t from the past, its one that you can’t stop doing right now. The world puts evil on a scale and weighs one bad deed against another. The suggestion is that if we stay away from the really bad things then we’re good people. But these letters to the Christians in Sardis and Laodecia suggest that’s not how God sees it. Purity isn’t about what you do, or don’t do, it’s about what Jesus did. If our purity were at all dependent upon our own efforts then we’d all fail at it miserably, which is why it took God doing it Himself on the cross. What we’re supposed to do is believe that good news, and then live as if we knew it were true. If there’s a particular sin that’s bogging your spirit down, making you feel guilty every time you see the church, or think about God, then the good news is that you’re already clean, so get off that train and get on track with Jesus. It’s time to stop it, and start living like the person God sees you. To do otherwise is a sign of great immaturity at best, and mockery over what God has done in your life at worst. So how do we live then?

“I desire a broken and contrite heart, not sacrifice,” is what God says to His people who thought that their righteousness depended upon the number and manner of sacrifices they brought to Him. “But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy,” is what Titus was charged to believe. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day,” (2 Cor. 4:16). To the Colossians Paul states that because we’ve been redeemed by Christ we ought to die to the world’s ways and live focused on the glory that God has given us through Jesus.

What does all this mean? Let’s go back to the story at the start of my message. In the case of the man who was praying and crying, it means that God’s done a good thing for you, so stop beating yourselves up, and get on with living your new identity. It means repenting, but then letting it go because the more we keep our focus on the sin, the less we’ll see Jesus. In the case of the Elder, it means remembering that even if we aren’t locked in horrific sin, we still have a heart condition that required Jesus to purify. We need to stop rating sin as if there was a scale from one to ten. Without Jesus we’d be lost, completely in sin’s control, so we need to keep our focus on Jesus. It’s all corruption and that’s how God sees it, but thank God that He sees Jesus’ blood instead! How humbling this should be. So like the Elder when we’re tempted to breathe a sigh of relief that we aren’t committing the sins that score ten, we need to preserve a humble spirit and recognize that we, too, could do even that were it not for Christ’s influence.

As we’ve been going through these letters to the churches of Revelation I may have disappointed some of you by not delving into some of the more fascinating mysteries in the language, but I do hope that the spirit has been feeding you with a summons to get back to the basics of our faith. Our faith, we’ve learned, is foremost a spiritual reality that proceeds unshakably into this world because of who Jesus is. Jesus is Almighty God, and as long as we have Him on our side there’s nothing that can destroy or diminish us. So, why waste our time focusing on the junky sideshows that the evil one uses to distract our focus from the Lord? If you desire a faith that’s unshakable during the times of trial that you have from time to time, then you’ve got to believe with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength that Jesus is Almighty and, no matter what, He won’t let you down. And then you’ve got to remember that it’s important not just to believe in Him, it’s important to really get to know Him by getting into the Word. In our culture and even among people who claim to be voices of Jesus there’s so much out there that’ll get us off track from the Lord, so if we’re going to stay on track we’ve got to get back to the Word. Finally, don’t let your past drag you down, because Christ redeemed it already. And, don’t let your present sinfulness keep you from the transformation that awaits you. Instead, live life as you really are: a pure child of God whom Jesus wants to transform. Hallelujah. Amen.