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Last year, I learned a little something about weeds. Rach and I have a
modest vegetable garden by the house. Every year we grow some green beans
everything from corn to okra – but it seems that only beans and tomatoes end up
doing anything. Well, and spinach. We usually get a good crop of spinach.
Last year, we had a weed infiltrate our garden that caused me to just quit
trying to weed out the weeds altogether. This weed was a real aggressive sort –
popping up overnight. I would pluck out the pesky thing on one side of the
garden and the next day it would reappear on the other side. I kept wondering
how plentiful the spores must have been to scatter so far a field. Okay, my
garden isn’t big enough to use the term “far a field,” but the point is the same. To
have so many plants push out of the ground in so many different locations surely
meant that the parent plant must have heaved gobs of seed into the summer
breeze.
made a startling discovery. I wasn’t fighting weeds, I was fighting a weed; one
weed, not two or three; not even close to the aforementioned “gobs.” But this
weed was especially devious. So devious, it didn’t actually live in my yard at all,
on the other side of the fence and then from that knot it sent out tentacles
pushing through the soil beneath the surface, every tendril having the potential of
forming a new weed.. The only way to eliminate the weed was to dig up our
entire garden. It was an all or nothing effort – either learn to live with the weed or
go radical, purge the soil of its presence and start again next year.
economically, it was the right choice. All the labor, water and fertilizer that had
gone into the garden would have been wasted if I had ripped up everything in an
effort to destroy this one ubiquitous weed – this “everywhere” weed. But, was it
the best choice? I am likely to have to deal with this weed again this year – so
I guess the real rub is that making the choice that I did means I am willing
to settle. Rather than do the hard work and having soil that is properly prepared
and cleared of all weeds, I chose to live with it. Ignore it where I could and work
around it where I had to. Meanwhile, the weed robbed what we planted of
nutrients – it grew fat on the water and fertilizer meant to fatten our tomatoes. I
I sometimes wonder if we don’t do the same thing with our lives of faith.
Settle, I mean; settle for what is serviceable instead of striving for what is best.
– instead of listening for my God to speak to me, I found myself doing a job, not
developing a relationship.
Rather than just hearing it for what it says, I hear it within a framework –
my mind recalling details of the history behind the passage. I remembered that
2nd Corinthians was actually the fourth letter Paul had written to the church and
that the letter writing campaign began because false teachers had come into the
church charging Paul with being a huckster – a scam artist. I remembered that
he had actually made a trip to Corinth after his second letter – what we know as
1st Corinthians – and that he was not treated well by the church there. They
laughed him out of town and refused to recognize his apostolic authority. I also
recalled that the third letter – the one this passage references was a hard letter, a
sent that letter with Titus, a tough-minded, no nonsense sort of guy – an enforcer,
if you will. In love, he brought the hammer down on the Corinthians and when
they finally saw the error of their ways, returned to Paul to share the good news.
But as I read the passage, something struck me. Paul says something
rather remarkable in this passage – something that really grates against our
sensibilities. In vv.8-10
God intended to make the Corinthians sorrowful? Does that sound like the
God we know? Such a notion sort of shocks the system, doesn’t it? God wants
universe. That is what a loving God would want, isn’t it? Isn’t that God’s plan for
us – in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, “to prosper, not to harm us; to give us
Quite frankly, the answer to that entire litany of questions is “Yes.” The
Babylon, “I know the plans I have made for you, plans to prosper you and
not harm you…” is the same God who brought sorrow on Israel in the first
place. He was the one who brought exile upon them. Why? To instruct them in
the ways of righteousness and justice. To unveil his holiness, how intensely he
hates sin among his people. To bring them to repentance – the prelude to
holiness.
And really, that is what Paul is talking about when he says that he was
made happy by the Corinthian’s sorrow – not that he hurt them, but that their
sorrow led to repentance. He was happy to know that their consciences were not
so seared with pride and sin that they could no longer see how poor a state they
were really in. He was happy to know that they could still recognize grace, even
When was the last time you recognized God’s grace through sorrow? I am
not talking about the calm assurance that helps us weather the storms of life –
the death of a loved one or a major upheaval in the fabric of our existence. But
the sorrow that comes from realizing that you – that I – have fallen short of the
glory of God and it is only grace that can make up the difference? The sorrow
that comes when we realize that we have been called to holiness and we are
anything but?
I ask this question because I see something in the text that suggests to me
that there is a lot more to repentance than is often taught in the Christian church
today. Note again what Paul says their sorrow has led to – “…a Godly sorrow
[which] brings repentance that leads to salvation….” I find that an odd thing
to say to a bunch of Christians – people who have already been saved! Why
does Paul use such language? I thought the sequence was repent, salvation,
reveals this when he tells the Philippians to “work out their salvation with fear and
indeed saved once we have believed on the name of Jesus Christ – what Pauk
would refer to as justified. There is no question that once Jesus has laid claim to
your heart and you have laid hands on the grace and mercy his sacrifice affords,
you are saved. But your salvation is not complete – it is sure, God will finish
what he started, but it is not complete. We are saved and we are being saved.
And what leads us deeper into the salvation Christ has purchased for us on the
holiness begins with repentance. That being the case, then maybe we should
start thinking about repentance differently. Maybe we should start thinking about
answers of the Christian faith – saying we are sorry to God and agreeing with
him that he is just in being angry with us and our sin. It is recognizing that what
we are doing is damaging our relationship with God and so turning away from the
behavior, the attitude, the habit – whatever it is – and taking up a new way which
The classic example of repentance in the Bible is that wee little man
Zacchaeus. Zacchaeus was real snake of a man – if I may say so. Tax
collectors in Israel got the job by bidding on it, in essence selling out their
countrymen for their own personal gain. Rome didn’t care how much tax was
collected – just so that they got their fair share. So tax collectors were notorious
extortionist and ol’ Zacchaeus was no exception. But when Jesus ate with him –
stop what he was doing – a legalized form of stealing – he also gave half his
possessions to the poor and even made restitution to people he robbed through
taxation. So what can we learn about repentance from our man Zacchaeus?
God. We have violated his law, offended his moral purity, tried to cast off his
yoke of authority. This only happens when we stop deluding ourselves that what
we are doing really is not so bad when compared to others. God is not
guilty in the eyes of God as the murderer. The pornographer is just as bad as the
adulterer, the fornicator and the practicing homosexual. The tax-fudger is just as
much a thief as the armed robber. I think you get the drift here. We have to get
past our tendency to relativize our sin – which, by the way, we do so that we can
live with it more comfortably – and admit that we are doing wrong instead of right.
regret that what we have done has dishonored God. This only comes when we
take seriously that God hates sin. He does not hate it as a preference – like
some hate Coke, but love Pepsi. If your thirty and Coke is all you can find,
doesn’t matter how loyal you are to Pepsi, you will drink the Coke. No God hates
sin at his very core, he cannot tolerate it, he must judge it, punish it, purge it! If
the cross tells us nothing else – and it certainly does – but if nothing else it tells
us how much he hates sin. And when we realize how much he hates sin and
how nonchalantly we engage in it, we suddenly become aware of how unlike
Christ we really are! We become saddened, not because we are busted or fear
of punishment. But because we see the price God in Christ paid for us – for us,
he didn’t need to die for himself – he died for us. We see the price he paid for us
fervent prayer for God cleanse our conscience and the power to not fall back into
the same thing again. Now, let’s understand something here, just because we
pray for God to give us the power to not fall back into the same ol’ sin doesn’t
mean that we just get to cruise and if we fall again, well it must be God’s fault
because we prayed. Oh no. Our part in this thing is to give deep and deliberate
thought about how we are going to keep clear of the sin. What triggers the
action, what leads down the primrose path? We must “[p]roduce fruit in
don’t walk willingly into what we know is a field of reproach for us.
hates sin. How? By the consistent study and meditation upon God’s Word. By
continued prayer that God will change your heart to be like his, to hate what he
hates and love what he loves. By confessing your sin not only to God, but to a
you to hate your sin more than having to admit in front of another.
On the lintels going into our computer room, Rach and I have a running
scale of our girls’ growth. We have been talking about what to do when we
repaint because it has been exciting for us as parents to see how our girls have
grown up. We have also talked seriously about putting rocks on their heads to
We like things to grow, don’t we? We mark the growth of our plants, our
animals – we’ve already mentioned kids. We mark the growth of our checkbooks
– at least we want to, sometimes that doesn’t work out so well. We mark the
growth of our reputations, our businesses, our knowledge. We tend to think that
radical – we must grow smaller. John the Baptist said of his own ministry in
reference to Christ, “He must increase and I must decrease.” In other words,
we must become less and less like ourselves and more a reflection of Jesus
Christ. We must stop seeing ourselves as central to the existence of the cosmos
and just get real – we are insignificant, dispensible and not nearly as nice or as
with what weak and despicable creatures we really are. I know this flies in the
and sounds like I am calling for a life of being miserable. But I am calling on us
to think much less of ourselves. Why? Because when we realize how small we
really are, how wanting we are of anything good, the immensity of grace
suddenly becomes just as real as our smallness. And when the immensity of
grace becomes real to us, gratitude and love become our primary motivators for
a holy life. We don’t settle for a life that is serviceable, we want the best – to be
So what’s it going to be? Will you settle for a life that is serviceable,
ignoring some sin where you can, working around it where you must or will you
go for what is best, uprooting everything so that you can start clean – confess
your sin and then purge your life of circumstances or influences that draw you
into it? Only one way will lead to the holiness God desires from all of us.