BLESSEDNESS OF UNWORTHINESS

Christianity is pejoratively referred to as “Dirty Rotten Sinner Religion.” Christian friends have even called me negative for regarding myself in the light of this understanding.

However, this understanding is thoroughly Biblical. Although we have become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21), our fleshly self remains unredeemed (Romans 8:10-11):

·       For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. (Galatians 5:17)

Our flesh is so putrid that Paul had confessed:

·       For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. (Romans 7:18)

However, we don’t need the Bible to teach us these things. It should already be obvious. The late Oxford professor, C.S. Lewis, claimed that, although true, this understanding might be a tough-sell. However, this is an understanding that accompanies holiness:

·       I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact. (The Problem of Pain)

Let’s just take one aspect of this “horror.” Lewis write:

·       God has no needs. Human love, as Plato teaches us, is the child of Poverty – of want or lack; it is caused by a real or supposed goal in its beloved which the lover needs and desires. But God's love, far from being caused by goodness in the object, causes all the goodness which the object has, loving it first into existence, and then into real, though derivative, lovability. God is Goodness. He can give good, but cannot need or get it. In that sense , His love is, as it were, bottomlessly selfless by very definition; it has everything to give, and nothing to receive.

As Lewis and Plato insist, I too must admit that my love is a selfish love. Yes, I love my wife, but this is because she is a great comfort to me. Admittedly, she is more loving that I, far more. However, she too must struggle with her fleshly impulses.

As a young Christian, I had a friend who admitted to his own fleshliness. Since, at that time, I couldn’t face my own, his disclosure made me feel uncomfortable. I even thought that there must be something terribly the matter with him.

Now I see otherwise. I am also freer than I ever had been. I don’t have to make excuses for my fleshly impulses, because I know that I am beloved and forgiven. I also know that my Savior can remove my humbling struggles in a moment, but, in love, He leaves me with them.

Besides, I no longer regard myself as a “great catch.” Instead, He has enabled me to see myself and to be eternally grateful that He saves the unworthy.