If I were to take you to my home this afternoon, I could show you a parable of the human condition. My house would tell you a whole lot about our family, of course, but it also would tell you about the whole human problem.
You see, our house is unfinished. It is incomplete. Oh, it was built in 1965, more than a quarter century ago. And we have lived in it for nearly 21 years. But still, it is unfinished; it is seriously incomplete.
Enter the living room and take a look at the paint on the woodwork. A nice fresh creamy off white. But move the couch or look around the corner into the closet, and you will see remnants of something called Aztec gold. I think it was one of the popular colors in the 70’s, when all the men were wearing deep-toned shirts and their wives were painting rooms in even deeper, even more intense tones. We got tired of Aztec gold and painted over it, where it shows. But we never quite got finished behind the scenes, where it doesn’t show. Take heart; it’s only been fifteen years. We’ll get it done.
Turn the corner into the kitchen and look at the door that leads out to the back stairs. Up around the deadbolt lock and here and there around the other latch you will see patches of a whitish substance. It’s not lime green, like most of the door. It’s not smooth, like the wood. It’s wood filler and patch plaster. When in the 80’s there was a sudden concern about security, I bought a hole saw attachment for my electric drill, cut holes in the door, and installed a deadbolt lock. But these hands were made for preaching, not for precision carpentry, and so I managed to mangle the wood and ended up patching it, sort of, with wood filler.
I cannot exactly tell you why we’ve never gotten around to sanding that and finishing it off. It remains incomplete. But take heart; it’s only been five years. We’ll get it done.
Then come with me downstairs to my study, where I sit surrounded by about 3000 books, some of which I have actually even read. Many of them, however, have markers jammed in them at the point where I stopped reading, promising myself I would finish this soon. And when you have climbed over the books, watch out that you do not knock over the stacks of periodicals, skimmed but not assimilated, glanced at but not studied. In the 90’s the demands on my time leave little energy for reading.
Unfinished, incomplete. But take heart; there is not a magazine there that’s older than three years, and one of these days I’m going to find out how that Dukakis fellow did in the last election!
As you can see, I’ve got an unfinished relic from three different decades now. Might get them finished in the retirement years; but then, why bother?
The truth is that every human life is cluttered with incomplete tasks; every one of us sets off down roads we think will be productive, only to be sidetracked or stopped. And those incomplete tasks, those life sidetracks, are a whole lot more important than the condition of my study or the out of date colors on my woodwork. Most of us, I say, live with incomplete lives, unfinished personalities, and that is more serious by far than patched-up deadbolt locks.
If today, then, you feel a certain futility; if you sense a certain loss of direction; if you think you’ve really never accomplished anything worthwhile and certainly never finished anything noteworthy, then listen to what the apostle Paul suggests about getting something completed.
"In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church."
"I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions." That’s a strange turn of phrase! And yet what possibilities it holds out for us! It says that even God has unfinished work, even God has not yet completed all that He set out to do. And it also suggests that you and I can find satisfaction and some sense of closure, some sense of completeness. How do we do that?
I
Notice first that who we are and what we are about can be founded on what God has already accomplished. We don’t have to do this living thing all by ourselves; God has already begun the work and has put it on a solid foundation. The purpose is clear and the fundamental work has been done. The major problem has already been solved.
"You who were once estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him."
You who were once estranged and hostile and evil, he has now reconciled. God in Christ has already taken the first and most basic step necessary to give meaning to your life and mine. He has reconciled us. God in Jesus Christ has approached us, He has come alongside us, and more: he has paid the one, full, ultimate price, giving His life on the cross, so that we could be brought into partnership with our God.
Friends, this is where meaning in life starts. This is where you begin to get a sense of direction and purpose. To know that the love of God for us has driven the very Son of God to a cross, there to suffer and bleed and die for us; to know that reminds us that we are of value. That teaches us that we are worth something. That grand fact alone teaches us that built into our very fabric there is purpose. Our God has an intention for us, a plan for us; and out of that knowledge we can get plenty of motivation. To know that God is at work in us, forming us and shaping us – we don’t have to do all of this by ourselves. We can trust our God to work His plan in us.
I saw a T-shirt on a young teen boy a couple of months ago. This young man was coming out of a run-down-looking house in one of the poorer sections of our city. His jeans looked as though they were about to fall apart, and, in fact, one of his shoes did fall apart as he came down the steps. That’ s what drew my attention as I was sitting in my car waiting for the red light to change. His jeans were about to fall apart, his shoe did fall apart, his house looked shabby; but his T-shirt said it all: "God made me, and God don’t make no junk."
I can forgive bad grammar when good theology is involved! God don’t make no junk. The redemptive work of God in Christ has been done, and God’s plan is clear. Listen to it: "You who were once estranged … he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death, so as to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him". God has been at work in every one of us, and in the cross of Christ has started us on the path to being holy, blameless, irreproachable – in other words, complete. Do not forget the work of Christ! Do not presume to think that Christ would die for a nobody! He did not; He died for you, and so you are valuable.
We can at least begin to find direction, purpose, and completeness in our lives if we simply look to what Christ has already done, which will never be undone, and build on that. “God don’t make no junk."
II
But now there is not only what God in Jesus Christ has done in and for us; there is also something we must do in order to keep alive this sense of purpose. There is something we must feel and think and hold to in order to retain our focus. There is a response we must make.
Paul says this comes about "provided that you continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel that you heard."
Let me repeat the core of that: "Continue securely established and steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the gospel …"
I grant you that it takes a lot of faith to stay hopeful in the kind of world in which we live. In a world where young wives can have their lives snuffed out by somebody who just felt like shooting; in a world where politicians can callously play word games with civil rights gained at such tremendous cost; in a world in which bright young minds are being destroyed by alcohol and narcotics. In such a world all some of us want to do is to lock our doors and pull the shades and barricade ourselves.
But I guarantee you that if that is your response to the challenge of an unfinished world, if hiding is your reaction to an incomplete humanity, you will end your life in frustration. You will find everything over with and nothing finished, everything stopped but nothing completed.
Hear the apostle, "Continue … established, steadfast in the faith, without shifting from the hope promised by the Gospel.” What is the hope promised by the Gospel?
The hope promised in the gospel is the hope that people will change. The hope promised in the gospel is that when you invest heart and soul and mind and strength in another person, that person will be changed. I have often said that the only thing that has ever kept me going in ministry, through some times that were not very rewarding in other ways, is to see people growing. In fact, if I can see at any given moment, at least one person … one person … making some progress, then no other disappointments really devastate me.
Now the cynic says, "That doesn’t last either. People will disappoint you. They are fickle and they will turn against you." Yes, maybe, for a time. But I personally refuse to give up on anybody. I refuse to surrender to the notion that God’s power cannot reach everyone.
Never, never, count anyone out! Never, never write anyone off as beyond redemption. Never, never paste the label of hopeless across anyone’s life! That’s one of the reasons I am opposed to capital punishment; when the state takes somebody’s life, it says he’s hopeless, and as a Christian, I do not believe that. I believe in the hope promised by the gospel. I believe that the Spirit of God can enter the toughest and the most hardened and make a difference. I believe that there is no human soul beyond redemption.
You and I can live with incompleteness in our lives if we can remain steadfast in our faith and secure that the hope promised in the gospel means that human lives will be changed.
III
Now, all of this Paul has put in a pungent phrase, "I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body … to make known the mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory … For this I toil and struggle with all the energy that he powerfully inspires within me."
"I am completing what is lacking Christ’s afflictions.” The apostle has found the secret in being complete. Paul has learned what it is to round off and finish your life. It is so to align yourself with the purposes of Christ that everything you are and everything you have is devoted to that one great shining cause. Paul has a magnificent obsession, completing the work of Christ even though it means suffering, teaching others of Christ in them, the hope of glory.
Oh, men and women, don’t you see, our problem is that we have given ourselves to little tasks, to little challenges, and when we do not finish them, we find a great big emptiness.
But if we would give ourselves to great tasks and to grand challenges, then, no matter how incomplete they might seem, at the end of the road we would feel fulfilled. We would feel that we had lived out our destinies. We would feel complete.
Here is a man for whom filling up the bank account is everything. He wants to be a millionaire by age 30 and a zillionaire by age 40. But when it is done he still feels himself a failure. Like Willy Loman in Death of a salesman, he still feels kind of temporary about himself. He thinks his life didn’t matter much. And he’s right.
But here is another, a poor man, William Carey by name. A shoemaker, sitting at his cobbler’s bench and studying the Scriptures. It comes to him that he must sail for India, there to teach the good news of Christ to those who have never heard. And so in the indifferent, rationalistic 18th century, ridiculed even by fellow believers, William Carey goes to the millions of India. He invests years just learning the language, then he translates the Bible into Hindi, and invests yet more years, eight long, lonely years, before even one person comes to know Christ. It looks ridiculous!
And yet I tell you that William Carey, because he chose God’s greater purposes and made no little plans – because of that William Carey died a full, complete human being. He had completed what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions: to make known “Christ in you, the hope of glory." He wrote his own best epitaph, "Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God."
And there are others. You may sound the roll call of history. Dr. King with his dream of a land in which all of God’s children might walk side by side in freedom, crying out in what were to be his last moments, "I’ve seen the mountain top." Christ in you, the hope of glory, completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.
And in a thousand thousand otherwise nameless students, missionaries, teachers, social workers, counselors, and yes, lawyers, scientists, housewives, even government bureaucrats who saw behind the facts and figures and the everydayness of their lives the faces of people, the faces of children and mothers and the handicapped and the elderly in whom there was Christ, the hope of glory.
And when they remembered how Christ had valued them enough to die for them; when they held fast to the hope that people can be changed; when they gave themselves to God’s redemptive purpose, grandly conceived, far beyond their own little self-centered. Thoughts, then they completed Christ’s afflictions. And more. They completed themselves.
