Come As You Are Series

We don’t have time to read the rest of the chapter today, but if you’ll skip ahead to verse 39, you’ll see that as a result of this one woman’s testimony, that many of the people there in Sychar believed in Jesus.

So while it is true that we don’t have to clean our lives up before we come to faith in Jesus, it is equally true that genuine faith will always make it impossible for us to remain as we are.

I love how Scottish theologian Dr. Sinclair Ferguson reinforces our gospel takeaway:

It is misleading to say that God accepts us the way we are. Rather he accepts us despite the way we are. He receives us only in Christ and for Christ's sake. Nor does He mean to leave us the way He found us, but to transform us into the likeness of His Son. Without that transformation and new conformity of life we do not have any evidence that we were ever His in the first place.

APPLICATION

I’d like to close by talking briefly about a couple important ways that this simple gospel truth ought to impact our lives.

How this truth should impact my life:

If I am not yet a disciple of Jesus:

• Don’t wait

First, let me speak to any of you here this morning, who may be reluctant to put your faith in Jesus because you think that you first need to clean up your life and to those of you who may have been putting off committing your life to Jesus until some future time when you think you might be more worthy.

Jesus knew everything about this woman and yet he still sought her out even when she was not seeking Him. Jesus is still in the business of seeking people out in the same way, even though He knows everything about them. And if this immoral Samaritan woman and many of the people in her town could believe in Jesus and put their faith in Him without first having to clean up their lives, then so can you.

Here’s the problem with waiting until you first clean up your life to come to Jesus. You can’t do it on your own. Again this January Mary and I encountered the same thing we see every year. Right after the first of the year the gym where we go was filled with all kinds of people we had never seen there before. But you know what? Now, only a little after a month later, most of those new people are gone. One study found that the average date people have already given up on their New Year’s resolutions is January 12 and another study found that by mid-February 80% of people have already failed to keep those resolutions. So if you think you’re going to clean up your own life, the odds are stacked against you.

But the good news is that Jesus is in the business of partnering with those who put their faith in Him to give them both the desire and the ability to become more like Him.

I normally don’t use a lot of different Bible translations in my messages, but the NLT does such a great job of getting to the heart of this familiar passage:

Dear friends, you always followed my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away, it is even more important. Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.