Running Over People So As Not To Be Late

There is a sensitive situation at a Christian college in which a student was involved in a hit and run in an attempt to make curfew (or so the rumor goes). Whether that was the case or not, it hits home to me and I have compassion for the student, for I have come close enough personally to doing this very thing literally (I wrote about that here) to recognize that it happens, both literally and figuratively. In my case, it pointed to some significant theological/gospel issues. It can powerfully illustrate how our efforts to move from sin to righteousness apart from the gospel can go desperately wrong. For me, the incident of breaking the law to get to preschool on time indicated something much deeper going on in my psyche. I wanted to be on time, because I perceived that would mean I was good (or at least make me look good), that I could keep the law and meet other’s expectations of me. Instead, I broke the real law (of God and the land) because I let lesser expectations of me rule my own view of myself. I had to examine myself – why do I feel SO BAD about myself when I show up late? And it was eye opening. It reflected on a lot more than just being on time to school. Without the constant application of Christ’s finished work for our righteousness on the cross, we are all capable of sacrificing the physical, spiritual, or emotional health of someone to preserve others or our own inflated image of ourselves.

I praise God that he’s protected me from physically harming someone when my self-righteous agenda trumped common sense and love for others. But I have definitely run over people in the figurative sense, leaving them wounded on the sidelines, in pursuit of my own warped view of personal righteousness. I recount a specific incidence here. I misplaced the object of true righteousness and substituted it with a lesser version. And it destroyed much more than it preserved.

In God’s paradigm, it’s SIN --> GOSPEL --> RIGHTEOUSNESS. And by gospel, I mean the daily application to every aspect of life all Christ has accomplished for us on the cross, God’s lavish grace on us completely without any work of our own. When you remove or distort the gospel, our efforts to move from sin to righteousness ONLY INCREASE THE SIN. Every last time. You can count on it. We become people who figuratively run over someone as not to be late. It’s why the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to strive to enter His rest. Because striving to maintain our own warped views of righteousness is natural. Instead, strive to rest. Rest in His finished work. Ease our foot from the gas pedal recognizing that showing up on time is not as important as loving others around me. Slow down to love and maintain peace and preserve unity along the way because the goal that I was aiming for was more about making myself look good and maintaining my own self image. But Christ has made me look good once and for all, and now my self image is maintained by Him in the heavenly places. He shows His wounded hands and feet and says I was worth THAT. And running in late to preschool or getting demerits for missing curfew are irrelevant to this eternal fact.

In the corporate sense, we do this as well. We sin to get away from sin. The church excommunicates the couple who moved in together a month before their wedding long before they have dealt with their sin using the appropriate Biblical instructions (Matthew 18, Galatians 6). We send away our daughters who get pregnant out of wedlock. Or they have an abortion to cover the fact they got pregnant at all. The Christian college immediately ships the student caught in sin. Removing them from our presence seems so much more palatable than walking with them through the process of repentance and reconciliation. We hate sin, and especially hate sin that we can SEE. But we step on the neck of others in an effort to rid ourselves of sin’s poisonous influence. We sin to get away from sin.

But that never works. It just makes me dirty in new ways. I show up on time. I look prompt. I appear righteous. But I left a trail of wounded bodies on the side of the road in my quest for righteousness. The quest for righteousness apart from a thorough, constant fleshing out of the gospel at every point is the dirtiest path of all.

That may be painful to read if you, like me, have done that very thing. But the gospel meets us there as well. I feel woe for the stumbling block I put around someone’s neck. I feel it deeply! And yet I find hope, as Paul and Peter did, that the gospel transforms even legalists. I can face my sin head on, call it what it is, and walk forward with humble confidence that it no longer characterizes my life through Christ.

I continue to work slowly through Counsel from the Cross by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Dennis Johnson. I THINK I know the remedy that keeps me from sinning as I attempt to deal with my and others’ sin. But Dennis and Elyse are exposing to me many ways the gospel has not yet transformed how I view my own attempts at righteousness and my responses to others in sin, be it my children, husband, friends, or other public people with whom I don’t have a personal relationship (sometimes I care about their sin and righteousness a bit more than I should, often with no thought of the gospel).

I have particularly found the chapter on the gospel and my sanctification very informative. In some sense I knew all this, but they have worded it in ways I find very helpful with useful illustrations. You can read it here and buy it here.