Barb’s life is a mess. Her drinking problem is out of control, and her husband Ken refuses to cover for her anymore. Everyone around her sees Barb’s problem, but they all pretend like everything’s just fine, a classic case of denial. Every Sunday Barb and her family dress in their Sunday best and go to church as the perfect family. Everyone at church looks at Barb and her family as the model family...they look so…perfect.
Sitting in the row behind Barb at church each Sunday morning is Joe. Everyone likes Joe, especially all the guys, because he’s a man’s man. Joe played football in college for a PAC 10 school, and he’s filled with stories of athletic conquest. But when Joe’s all alone his heart is filled with emptiness because of his inability to sustain long term relationships. His marriage only lasted six months, and over the years he’s driven away everyone close to him with his sort fuse. But that Sunday when a friend asks Joe how things are going he quickly says, "Great…never been better."
Joe and Barb have both learned that church is a place for plastic people, a place for perfect people. So Barb’s become Barbie, complete with her husband Ken and her perfect plastic children. And Joe’s become G. I. Joe, a plastic action hero everyone admires but no one really knows. But inside Barb and Joe are dying, because they’re not made of plastic.
Churches throughout our culture today are filled with Barbies and Joes. We’ve learned that image is everything, that what counts is how you look, the impression you make. So we in the Christian community have perfected the fine art of faking it. In his book What’s So Amazing About Grace Christian author Phillip Yancey, talks about meeting a prostitute on the streets and sharing the message of Christ with her. When Yancey gently suggested that she might seek out a church, she looked at him and said, "Why would I want to do that? I already feel awful enough about my life?" In her mind, walking into a room full of perfect Barbie dolls and G. I. Joe action figures would only accentuate her own failures and inadequacies.
If being part of the Christian community is merely putting on a good front, pretending to be something we’re not, then we might as well sleep in. Last week we started a new 12 week series through the New Testament book of 1 John called A ROADMAP FOR THE JOURNEY. The book of 1 John was a letter written by the apostle John because of his concern that the Christians in Asia Minor were losing their way in the spiritual journey. John knew that the spiritual life was a difficult journey filled with danger, so he wrote his letter to help Christians navigate the unexpected twists and turns in the road. Last week we looked at "Joy In The Journey," and how we find authentic joy in our spiritual journey when we build it on the right foundation, share it with the right companions, draw truth from the right source, and focus on the right goal.
Today we’re going to look at God’s call to authenticity. When God’s people cease to respond to God’s call to authenticity, the church turns into a social club. In fact, many followers of Christ today have given up on the Christian church because of the lack of authenticity, as one person told me, "I find more honesty in one Alcoholic’s Anonymous meeting than in an entire year going to church."
Throughout church history you can see various low points in the church when authenticity has waned…and every time it resulted in spiritual destruction to the work of God in our world. Authenticity with each other in the context of the Church is absolutely essential to the spiritual journey. This morning we’re going to look at four reasons why this is true. Then after we look at these four reasons, I’m going to challenge you to take a step out of our comfort zone to respond to God’s call to authenticity.
1. We All Struggle (1 John 1:8)
The apostle John is going to give us a series of "if" statements to reveal God’s call to authenticity. Last week we looked at the fact that some people John was writing to who claimed to be living in intimacy with God yet they were living lives of moral and spiritual darkness. Here we find that some were claiming to "be without sin." This text literally reads "to have no sin." Since John uses the singular word "sin" instead of the plural "sins" it’s likely that he’s talking about having a sin nature, an inward disposition to do things our own way instead of God’s way. So to claim to have no sin is the equivalent of claiming that our inner lives no longer have that propensity to sin, claiming that our battle with sin is no longer raging.
You can find evidence of this sort of thinking today. Our culture’s view of human nature is that people are basically good, that rebellion and sinfulness springs from bad parenting and oppressive social structures. So to say that people have an inward disposition toward sin that they were born with--what theologians call original sin--cuts against the grain of our culture. Christian author Cornelius Pantinga says that today, instead of confessing our sins, we say, "Let us confess our problem with human relational adjustment dynamics, and especially our feebleness in networking" (Christianity Today "Natural Born Sinners" 1994). Look how long it even took our own president--who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ--to use the word "sin" to describe his own moral failure. You’d think that with all the moral chaos we read about each week that the illusion of basic human goodness would collapse like a house of cards, but our culture persists in it’s believe that as people "we have no sin."
Some Christians actually claim to have reached a point where they no longer struggle with sin. But by far the most common way we encounter this claim is the plastic veneer many Christians today put up to make people think that they don’t struggle with sin anymore. Sure, we may admit to having a past where we struggled with sin at one time, but the longer we’re followers of Jesus Christ the more tempting it is to abandon our authenticity, to give the impression that we no longer struggle with sin like we once did. Many Christians today are subtly claiming the very thing John is condemning.
John tells us that this claim is an example of self deception. It’s not just a matter of ignorance, but it’s a refusal to face up to the facts, a cover up job (Smalley 29; Burge 82). Plantinga says, "Self-deception about sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual central nervous system" (CT). Psychology has taught us a lot about "denial," and that’s exactly what John is talking about here. Denial is a deliberate refusal to face up to the facts, it’s choosing to live in a fantasy world of delusion, even though everyone else around us can see the truth. When we give the appearance of having no sin, the truth of God can’t live within us.
In this verse we find the first reason God calls us to authenticity. GOD CALLS US TO AUTHENTICITY BECAUSE NONE OF US ARE FREE FROM OUR STRUGGLE AGAINST SIN.
No matter how spiritually mature you become, no matter how far you travel in your spiritual journey, your battle with sin will not go away. This is God’s diagnosis of our hearts, it’s not my opinion, but it’s true for every follower of Jesus Christ. The more we put on an image that our battle with sin has ceased, the less God’s truth is living in us. In Alcoholics Anonymous every time a person speaks at a meeting, he or she starts with the statement, "My name is so and so, and I’m a recovering alcoholic." They don’t say that to wallow in the past, but to acknowledge the reality that they’re never free from the temptation to drink. This is a realistic admission of the fact that no matter how long a person’s been sober, they’re still just one choice away from relapse.
Maybe in the church we should force ourselves to say, "My name’s Tim, and I’m a recovering sinner," just to keep this reality before us. C. S. Lewis has said that it’s when we notice the moral filth in our lives that God is most present in our lives. Have you been pretending, putting on an image that your battle has ceased? Then it’s time for you to respond to God’s call to authenticity.
2. Confession Brings Cleansing (1 John 1:9)
Verse nine is another "if" statement. I hadn’t been a Christian for long before I discovered this verse, and ever since I came to Christ back in 1982 this verse has been my steady companion. The word "confess" means "to admit and acknowledge," literally to "say the same thing." We confess by naming our sins, by calling them by name before God. This whole notion of sin is so complex that there are 16 different words used in the Bible to describe different aspects of our sin problem. The word used here is the most general word, it’s an all inclusive word to describe all the different sub species of sin that infect our lives. Confession isn’t just admitting that we’re sinners, but it’s specifically naming our sins to God, what in the 12 step movement they call a searching and fearless moral inventory.
When we do that, God promises to forgive us of our sins. The basis of this promise is God’s character. God is faithful in the sense that he’s dependable, he’s dependable to keep his promises. This means that God isn’t going to change his mind about forgiveness, he’s not going to look at you and say, "Oh that’s a terrible sin, there’s no way I can forgive that one." God’s made a promise to always forgive any sin that’s confessed, and his character is such that he’s dependable to keep that promise.
God is also "just" or "righteous" to forgive us. Now we usually think of God’s forgiveness as an act of mercy, not as an expression of God’s justice. Yet John is telling us that it’s morally right for God to forgive our sins. Forgiveness is not a matter of God compromising his righteousness, but it’s an expression of his justice. This is only true because Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for all of our sins--as we’ll see in more detail in a minute--and because of the cross it’s just for God to forgive our sins.
When we confess our sins, God forgives and purifies. The word "forgive" is a legal term that describes God breaking down the barrier between us and God from our sin. The word "purify" describes a removal of the stain caused by sin, a washing away of the defilement caused by our rebellion.
So here we find another reason why God calls us to authenticity. GOD CALLS US TO AUTHENTICITY WITH EACH OTHER BECAUSE OUR CONFESSION BRINGS US CLEANSING FROM OUR SINS.
Notice that John is writing to people who are already followers of Christ. As we strive to live the spiritual journey we will sin, we will make mistakes and fail, and the remedy to that isn’t to cover up our failures and pretend like everything’s all right, but to confess our sins to God.
Now some people have thought this is talking about the Roman Catholic sacrament of confession to a priest. It’s certainly true that the Bible urges us to confess our sins to each other, but in this case there’s no indication that anyone else is involved except the person who’s sinned and God. There’s no need here to go through an intermediary, to do penance for our sins, but we simply confess and then trust God to keep his promise.
In 1818 one out of six women who had children died of something called "childbirth fever." A doctor’s daily routine back then started in the dissecting room, where he performed autopsies, and from there he made his rounds to examine expectant mothers. No one even thought to wash his hands...at least not until a doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis began to practice strict hand washing. He was the very first doctor to associate a lack of hand washing with the huge fatality rate. Dr. Semmelweis only lost one in fifty, yet his colleagues laughed at him. Once he said, "Childbirth fever is caused by decomposed material conveyed to a wound...I have shown how it can be prevented. I have proven all that I’ve said. But while we talk, talk, talk, women are dying.. I’m not asking for anything world shaking, only that you wash your hands." Yet virtually no one believed him. This verse is telling us to confess our sins, to regularly wash our souls before God, that it’s essential, that the failure to confess our sins will result in spiritual infection that will hinder our ability in the spiritual journey.
Proverbs 28:13 says, "He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy." Psalm 32:4-5 says, "For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD"-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin."
Like Dr. Semmelweis, God’s not asking for anything earth shattering, only that we confess--that we wash our souls--regularly. This is God’s call to authenticity.
3. God Knows Our Past (1 John 1:10)
At first v. 10 looks like it’s saying the same thing as v. 8. The claim in v. 8 was to have no sin (singular), but here the claim is to have not sinned, which puts emphasis on specific acts of sin that spring from our inner disposition to do things our own way. So if the claim in v. 8 was a claim to be free from an inward disposition to sin, the claim in v. 10 is to have never actually disobeyed God or have broken his laws. As these people look over their lives in evaluation, as they review the terrain their spiritual journey has brought them through thus far, they claim they have never actually disobeyed God.
Now, I don’t know anyone who actually claims this with their words, but I see it happen all the time when people forget where they came from. Somehow after we start living our lives for Jesus Christ, we no longer like to think about the things we did and the kind of life we lived before coming to Christ. "I’m a new creation," we say, "so I need to press on to the future and forget what’s behind me." Yet that mentality leads us to project an image of perfection, an illusion that our lives are perfect, that we’ve never struggled, and that image actually works against God’s work in the lives of non-Christians.
It’s very significant to me that as much as the apostle Paul regretted his sinful past, he never let himself forget it. In the book of Galatians--which is probably Paul’s very first letter--he calls attention to his past. In Galatians 1:13 Paul writes, "For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it." But then in 1 Timothy, one of Paul’s very last letters before his execution, he once again reminds himself and his friends of his past "Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-- of whom I am the worst" (1 Tim 1:13 NIV).
John is telling us here that if we deny the sinfulness of our past, we’re not just deceiving ourselves, but we’re actually making God a liar. This is because the Bible is filled with statements that indicate every human being has sinned. When we put forward an image of perfection, that our lives have always been characterized by obedience, we’re calling God a liar and saying that his book isn’t true.
So here we find the third reason God calls us to authenticity. GOD CALLS US TO AUTHENTICITY WITH EACH OTHER BECAUSE GOD KNOWS ALL THE DETAILS OF OUR PAST.
God knows every degrading detail, every humiliating mistake, yet he loves us anyway. That’s difficult for me to even comprehend, yet it’s true, that despite God’s thorough knowledge of the darkness of my soul, of the terrible things I have done, God loves me anyway.
Sometimes people have asked me about why I talk about my past during my preaching. It makes some people uncomfortable when I talk about my former way of life, when I abused drugs and alcohol, when I denied that God even existed. I share these things to follow the apostle Paul’s example, so I never forget where I came from. When I share where I’ve come from it generates hope in others, that God can transform them as well, and it magnifies God’s grace. The moment I forget where I came from is the moment I’m on the brink of repeating it.
God knows your story and mine, he’s intimately acquainted with every detail, and because he knows that he calls us to authenticity with each other.
4. Jesus Is Enough (1 John 2:1-2)
Although chapter one ends at v. 10, John’s thoughts on authenticity continue into chapter 2. John’s afraid that all this emphasis on authenticity might make people think that it’s okay with God if we sin. John wants to make sure he emphasizes that sin is still wrong, that even though we’ll keep struggling our whole lives, that’s not an excuse to give in. John’s writing his letter to help us lead lives that move us forward in the spiritual journey, not lives that stall us in our sins or move us backwards in rebellion.
But he also wants us to know that there is provision for our sins, that Jesus Christ is "the one who speaks to the Father in our defense." The word here literally means "advocate," and it was a legal term that described an attorney being called to the aid of someone who’s accused of a crime. Yet this isn’t a shady defense attorney who’s our advocate looking for a loophole, but it’s Jesus Christ himself, the righteous one, the one who never sinned, who never broke God’s laws or disobeyed God’s ways. He’s the one who stands as our advocate when we sin, he’s the only one who can qualify to stand as our advocate, the one who speaks to in our defense.
The basis of his defense is his own death on the cross, which is described here as "an atoning sacrifice". Now some Bible translations render this phrase "propitiation" (NASB), which would mean that Christ’s death is directed to God the Father to "propitiate" or "turn aside" God’s anger at our sin. Other Bible translations use the phrase "expiation" (NRSV), which would mean that Christ’s death is directed at sin, to "expiate" or "wash away" our sins. The NIV tries to convey both ideas, since "atoning" directs it at our sin, but "sacrifice" directs it to God. Either way, the idea here is that our advocate isn’t begging for our mercy, but he’s showing the Father that the price has already been paid for our sins, that his death has already taken care of whatever sin we happen to commit that week or that day.
Then John broadens his scope to emphasize the reality that Christ’s death on the cross is sufficient to cover any and every sin, even "the sins of the whole world." Now this doesn’t mean that everyone’s sins are automatically forgiven--each individual needs to personally receive God’s gift of forgiveness through Christ--but it does mean that Jesus Christ’s death makes it possible for God to freely offer forgiveness to any and every person who will come to him. There’s no limit on the value of Christ’s death, his sacrifice can open the way to God for any and every person who comes, no matter what a person’s done.
Here we find the final reason God calls us to authenticity. GOD CALLS US TO AUTHETICITY WITH EACH OTHER BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST IS GOD’S PROVISION FOR ALL SIN.
In other words, there’s nothing to be afraid of by being open and honest with each other because Christ’s death has made provision for every possible sin we might find ourselves tangled in. Our failures don’t take God by surprise, as if he didn’t know we were going to fail, but he knew all along, and he made sure that Christ’s death would be sufficient even for that sin.
Several years ago I was ready to give up in my spiritual journey. I’d sinned against God, and I was filled with shame and condemnation. It was my first year of seminary, and as I sat at home blankly staring at my apartment walls, I began to seriously consider other jobs than being a pastor. Surely I was unfit to ever minister, surely God’s grace was all used up on me, and even though I was sure that he’d still forgive me, I was also sure that my calling to pastor was gone. As I stared at my wall, it occurred to me that my failures hadn’t taken God by surprise, but that God knew all along I’d fail, that he’d made provision for it in the cross, that God even knew that I’d fail when he called me to ministry, and yet he called me anyway. Sure I had to deal with my sin, I had to confess it, to get accountability in my life, to find reconciliation and restoration, but God wasn’t through with me yet. I’m sure glad he wasn’t through with me, I’m sure glad I have an advocate who gave his life as an atoning sacrifice for my sins.
Conclusion
So God calls us to authenticity with each other. It’s to the modern day church’s shame that people go to secular recovery and support groups to find authenticity because they find more honesty there than with God’s people. God calls us to authenticity because we still struggle with sin, we need cleansing from our sins, we each have a past, and Christ is God’s provision for all sin.
Let’s face it: It’s too easy to fake it on Sunday mornings, it’s too easy to put on a Barbie or G. I. Joe facade with each other. Some people actually come to a church of our size to hide, to be anonymous and incognito, and I suppose that’s okay for a while, but there comes a time to let down our guard, to admit that we aren’t made of plastic like Barbie and Joe, that we are real people with real problems, with real failures. Our care groups, led by volunteer care pastors, are the ideal place to let down your guard, to honestly study God’s book, so the word of God can do it’s work of transformation. And when you do fail you have some people who are there, ready to help you get up, experience God’s forgiveness, and move forward once again. You’ve heard God’s call to authenticity today, are you ready to respond?
