I’ve lived in the Washington area long enough now that I know the lingo. I understand what you do when you get caught doing something you are not supposed to do. I’ve discovered that if you cannot get away with a “no comment” and you don’t have a lawyer to send people to, you stand up and you apologize, but in a way that is not an apology at all. When caught with your hands in the cookie jar, you look your accusers straight in the eye and proclaim, in as sincere a tone as possible, “Mistakes were made.”
Mistakes were made? Yes, but by whom? And were they just mistakes, or were they outright lies and crimes? Mistakes were made! Doesn’t that have the ring of truth about it, without actually admitting anything? Richard Nixon’s press secretary, after Watergate: “Mistakes were made.” Ronald Reagan, in a State of the Union address in 1987, speaking about his efforts in Iran, “mistakes were made.” Henry Kissinger, reminiscing about his terms in office, “It is quite possible that mistakes were made.” And just this past week, after revelations about a number of things, our present Attorney General told a news conference the same old refrain, “Mistakes were made.”
And let me be bipartisan. Seems to me I recall, after Bill and Monica did their thing, the President of the United States went on national television, bit his lip, and admitted, “Mistakes may have been made, but …:” You know the rest. It’s kind of like the prayer a deacon in my home church in Louisville used to pray – every time he was called on, he would say, “And Lord, forgive us of any sins we may have committed.” May have committed? I think it’s a sure bet that we did!
We have a hard time, don’t we, admitting that we are responsible for what we do? You don’t have to be a politician to live out this fantasy. I’ve had students say, when asked why they did not complete an assignment, “I didn’t have enough time.” I’m sorry, but when it comes to a major assignment, you make the time. Or how about, “I really intended to visit you in the hospital, but it just never did work out.” I am afraid I tried that one a time or two in my pastorate, and even though folks will say, “Oh, that’s all right.”, what they mean is, “I hear you saying that I am not important to you.” It’s tough for me – and maybe also for you – to stand up, admit I did something wrong, and take the consequences.
And so when Paul cries out to the Galatians, he is crying out to us too. “Who prevented you from obeying the truth?”. Who kept you from doing what you knew to be right? I’m afraid we already know the answer. Who made mistakes? I did. Who prevented me from obeying the truth? I did. Who knows what is right and true and noble, but continually turns to what is wrong and false and tawdry? I do. We do. Why? What is wrong with us, that even when we know the way of Christ, we turn down other paths? What is wrong with us, that even when we understand the will of God and know it is best for us, we follow cheap nowhere trails?
Let’s explore this issue, with Paul’s help:
I
First, Paul identifies an issue called self-indulgence, and positions that over against love. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.” Self-indulgence – that’s one way to describe how I prevent myself from obeying the truth.
I have three grandchildren. Ages 6, 4, and five months. I love them dearly. When I get down in the dumps a little bit, all I have to do is look at the photos we have hanging all over the house – I don’t know what we’ll do if more grandchildren come – get a bigger house, I guess – more walls! I love them dearly, but I am not fooled. They are the most self-indulgent little creatures you can possibly imagine. Give them a few pieces of candy and then admonish them not to eat it now, it will spoil your supper, wait until you get home – and what happens? You turn your back and see nothing but chocolate smears and a guilty grin on young faces! Children see, children want, children take. That’s the nature of the beast. And while young Donovan, being only five months old, cannot understand about waiting and cannot yet handle a chocolate bar, I do see two chubby hands that grab on to anything that comes close and then pull whatever that is toward his toothless mouth! You haven’t experienced anything yet if you don’t know what it feels like for a baby to grab your glasses and try to suck the life out of them!
We start out life self-indulgent. We want what we want when we want it. And for many of us, that is a habit that is so deeply ingrained that it is most difficult to break.
My present ministry involves talking with people about what they will do with their resources when they no longer need them. In other words, what happens to your possessions after you die? Our Foundation looks for those members of our churches who will do something for their church and for the cause of missions after they pass away, just as they did when they were alive. I am amazed at how many people there are who don’t even want to talk about a will – it’s as if they think they are never going to die. Pastor Vallerie will know this man – he stood up in business meeting at Takoma Park church one day and said, “I’ve made a mistake” (In light of what I have been saying, that’s a pretty good start, isn’t it?!). “I’ve made a mistake. I am seventy years old, I have a wife and four daughters, and I am a retired tax lawyer. But I don’t have a will.” Then he said, “This week I am going to take care of that, and when I write my will, there will be something for the church in it. I hope all of you will do the same.” Thanks be to God for people who wake up in time – by the way, he’s still alive, in his middle eighties, and every chance he gets he encourages people to do what he has done.
But then, if people do write a will, how many there are who feel huge pressure from their families to leave every dime to the family! How many there are who stop short of sharing what they could because they think that what they have ought to be kept entirely within the family. That, friends, is self-indulgence. That is letting self-indulgence prevent us from obeying the truth.
A member of my congregation was dying from emphysema. She moved from her own home to her son’s home, and he put her in an upstairs bedroom with no air conditioning and very little shade. After I had visited her a couple of times and had seen how hard it was for her to breathe, I said, “You know, a room air conditioner wouldn’t cost very much. You could buy one and put it in here for very little.” “Oh, no”, she said. “I want my son to have all my money. He needs my money. Not going to spend good money for an air conditioner.” And so she lived out her last days in absolute misery, but her son got a few hundred more that way.
About two weeks after her death and funeral, I thought I’d stop by her son’s house just to see how he was doing. When I pulled up to the house, I saw two very telling things: a new car in the driveway and a new boat on a trailer out front. Not too hard to figure out where Momma’s money went. The irony is that about a year after his mother died, this brother got a galloping case of Alzheimer’s, died quickly, and the last I saw of his widow she was sporting a luxurious fur coat.
That may be an extreme case, but I suggest to you that many of us find it easy to fall back on our self-indulgence instincts rather than to share in love what we have. Who prevents us from obeying the truth? We do, because we have not heard Paul’s admonition, “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another.”
II
There’s another thing that gets involved when mistakes are made. There’s something else that we have to take into account when we are prevented from obeying the truth. And that’s competitiveness. That is our need to win. Our need to outdo one another. Our desire to be winners.
Now maybe this doesn’t affect you the same way it does me, but I confess that I have a need to be thought the best, or nearly the best, at whatever I do, particularly if I am competing against somebody. The flip side of that is that if I cannot be the best, then I don’t want to do it, not at all.
I’ve already told you my eighth grade story about thinking I should get an A in English, and how that turned out. But of course that need to be on top didn’t die in the eighth grade. Not only was there the usual anxiety that any student has when report cards are handed out -- and I nearly died, or though I did, when grades were less than A (and yes, there were plenty of times when they were less, even a lot less). Not only that anxiety, but also an insatiable curiosity to know what those I thought of as my competitors got. Did my friend John do better than I? I could hardly wait to find out. It was a lost cause, by the way, because John got straight A’s all through high school, all through college, and when we both went to seminary, he finally got a B – said it was a great relief because now he didn’t have to keep up his record any longer! Well, didn’t I feel sorry for him? NOT! I had this need to compete and to win.
But, as I have said, there was a flip side. If I knew I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to try at all. You are looking at about the least athletic person in the world. If you throw a baseball at me, I will drop it. If you ask me to swing a bat at it, I will probably hit your head instead. If you want me to dribble a basketball, I will trip over it. I cannot do athletic stuff! And so I quit trying! When the other kids were getting up a pickup game, I made up some lame excuse, like “my mother told me not to mess up my clothes” or “I don’t have time right now.” I never told them I just couldn’t do it. Why? Because I am a competitive person, I like to win, and cannot stand it when I lose. So just stay away from losing situations.
Now listen to Paul. Listen closely. “If … you bit and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.” Can I put that into my language? If you are out to win – or if you know you are going to lose – don’t let it eat you up! Don’t lose yourself and what really matters in your desire to win. Competitiveness kills! And competitiveness prevents us from obeying the truth.
Every time I prepare a couple for marriage, I give them a series of Scriptures to study, and then ask them to tell me which one they want read in their wedding service. Well, they dutifully read the passage in Ephesians about giving honor to one another – but they get hung up on the stuff about being obedient to husbands. They carefully plow through the material in Colossians about mutual respect – but they get scared of this thing of giving one’s self for the other. And so invariably they will ask me to read First Corinthians 13. The Bible’s “love” chapter – oh, they think it sounds so lovely. So warm and so sweet -- if I do not have love, I gain nothing. But let me tell you, they just don’t get it yet about the rest of the chapter, do they? My wife and I, as you know, endured – oh, I didn’t say that – celebrated – CELEBRATED 46 years of holy wedlock this past Sunday. We may read First Corinthians 13 in a way that does not quite match starry-eyed young couples at the altar:
“Love is patient” [even when he is so buried in his computer that I have to call him three times to come set the table for dinner]; “love is kind” [even though when you disagree with his sermons and say so, he reminds you that you didn’t go to seminary, you didn’t read the commentaries, and the Lord didn’t call you to preach]; “love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude” [but then if that’s true, why does he look with longing at our neighbor’s new car, why does he count and recount the books in his library?]. Oh my, do you see? Shall I go on? If my wife were to read this chapter for you, after all these years, she might read, “Love does not insist on its own way [but he thinks he knows how to do everything except cook], “love is not irritable or resentful [but don’t tell him he turned the wrong way at the Interstate]; “Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” [And Lord knows, she might say, I have endured a lot from this preening preacher]!
When you need to win; or because you cannot win, you won’t even get in the game – you consume yourself, you eat away at your spouse, you devour your children. And just who prevented you from obeying the truth? You did; I did; we did.
III
And so I come back tonight to our central theme. I come back to the one thing we must know and we must experience. The new creation. What is it we have been reciting, several times each night? “A new creation is everything”. A new creation is what? EVERYTHING!
Remember the issue: who prevented you from obeying the truth? We prevented ourselves from obeying the truth because we fell into a pattern of self-indulgence and because we let ourselves get caught up in competitiveness.
But listen: “Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want.” In other words, you and I are in a huge bind, aren’t we? We know what we want to do, deep down, but we can’t do it. There is something else in the way. What is it? Self-indulgence and competitiveness. These things the Spirit of God will not honor.
But – but – here is the heart of the whole matter. If Jesus Christ takes over your life, you will become a new creation. If the Spirit of God lives in you and is allowed to rule you, old things will pass away, all things will become new. It is not that you and I ourselves are gritting our teeth and are just going to try harder to do the right things. It is that in the power of God, in the Spirit of God, we can be enabled, we can be empowered, we can do all things through the Christ who strengthens us. And the life we now live in the flesh we can live by faith in the Son of God, who loved us and gave His life for us and puts His life-giving power right in us. And so, it is possible to say, with Paul, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. For me to live is Christ and to die, well, that would be more Christ. Mistakes were made; yes, they were, and I made them. But it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me!
It sounds difficult, maybe, but it isn’t hard to understand. Faith in Christ means I trust Him. I don’t have to indulge myself, because I know He will care for me. I don’t have to compete to make myself feel better, because He loves me unconditionally, just as I am. It sounds difficult, but it isn’t hard to understand.
And yet it also sounds too easy. Too simple. Too glib. Just believe and you will be saved? Too easy, too flip. Ah, but it’s not about believing ideas; it’s about trusting Christ for everything. It’s not about correct thoughts; it’s about laying down all this need to control things – to feather my nest and to be the best at everything – it’s about laying down those controls and letting the Spirit of God take charge. In fact, it’s just like being born again, like starting over. It’s like having a new creation take place right in the middle of your life. It is a new creation. And a new creation is everything! Everything worth having … everything worth knowing … everything worth feeling … everything worth living for. A new creation is everything! Will you receive it tonight? Will you let Christ make you over anew, create in you a clean heart, renew in you a right spirit, tonight?
