1 Thessalonians 3.11-13 11 Now may our God and Father
himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, 12 and may the Lord make
you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you,
13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God
and Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. (ESV)
I looked it up this morning: the word sinner occurs eight times in Paul’s
writings and was never used in context toward those chosen by God except by
implication (or downright libel) from those who had something to lose: the religious.
We, the people of God, are never called sinners
in the Bible. We might sin, we might fail, we might turn and high-tail, but we
are never called sinners once in Scripture.
We’ve hung the name sinners upon
ourselves.
The most heinous sin in the entire universe is simply the
sin of unbelief. Many would like to put murder at the top of the list, but it
isn’t. Nor is adultery, nor is theft or idolatry or a whole host of other “sins”.
The only sin that will keep a person out of heaven is unbelief. Jesus blasted
the Pharisees for accusing the Spirit of God for being a spirit of Satan. The
crime there was the Pharisees, in unbelief, accused God of being unholy. But
the real deal there was unbelief
because someone had to really not
believe to arrive at such thinking. And to arrive there is to close the door on
everything else.
Paul prayed this benediction over the Thessalonian
church: Now may our God and Father
himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you
increase and abound in love for one another and for all, as we do for you, so
that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and
Father, at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. Was Paul
offering this benediction to unbelievers?
Were these people a bunch of sinners?
Of course not. Saints are not sinners. Paul’s words were a smackdown in gentle
love.
The hardest part of our Christianity as I see it – and I
see it everywhere – is the belief that God
sees us way differently than we see ourselves.
God sees us as His children and His saints. We don’t. We can’t believe God can/will
love us when we do some of the most unlovable things. But if behavior is such a
big issue, then proper behavior is founded upon proper belief: I am not what I
do, I am what I believe. The issue is not performance but belief.
That’s why the smackdown: it focused upon what God would
do, not what they had done. God is in charge of our spiritual formation and
maturity, not us. That’s why He keeps at us. Trying to earn our way to heaven
and into God’s love by being good is just the Christianized version of Pharisaism
– the spirit of unbelief. The smackdown helps us quit believing the wrong things
about us, and believe the right things.
Father, keep at me until I get it. May this benediction
be mine today to truly believe and to believe truly “…that You will make me
increase and abound in love for all… so that my heart will be established blameless
in holiness before You, looking toward the coming Jesus Christ with all his
saints – the ones You love. Amen.
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