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What We Can Be

Life has its moments of defeat. There are times in the life of every person when failure seems to blight all hope. Indeed, the stranglehold of sin can be so strong that life seems hardly worth living, and that we ourselves are without any worth. Most people can identify with the agony in Paul's cry, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Rom. 7:4).

A great part of the beauty of the gospel of Christ is that it is a gospel of hope. However black our past may have been and however desperate we may feel about the future, in Christ there is the bright prospect of forgiveness and help in overcoming our sins. Jesus does not condone our wrongdoings, but He does see within each person something worth saving, something of infinite worth. He cares for us as persons, and is concerned not just with what we have been, but with what we can be.

No one might have been more justified in despair than the apostle Paul. Before he obeyed Christ, his life had been one of rebellious sin. But he could say, "I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life" (1 Tim. 1:16). Through Christ, Paul could put a shameful past behind him and begin each day with the hope of a good future. Discouragement is a tool of the devil, and we need to resist the temptation to indulge in despondency. Like Paul, we can learn to say, "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3:13,14).

There is, of course, a healthy sense in which we need to remember the mistakes we've made. Regret can be either good or bad, depending on whether it draws us closer to God or drives us away. If the remembrance of past sin humbles us and reminds us how grateful we are for God's grace, that's a good thing. Throughout life, it's entirely proper to remain "poor in spirit" (Mt. 5:3) and thus enjoy a closer, sweeter relationship with God. But we're not thinking properly about our past sins when they drag us down and defeat our efforts to live for God. There is a vast difference between "godly sorrow" and "the sorrow of the world" (2 Cor. 7:10). One moves us to seek forgiveness and rejoice in God's grace, while the other simply destroys us.

Judas, the Lord's betrayer, is a tragic example of what can happen when we let the devil dictate our thinking about the past. When he realized what he had done in betraying the Lord, Judas "threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed, and went and hanged himself" (Mt. 27:5). This devilish despair is very different from the attitude of Paul when he looked back on his sinful past. Having earnestly sought the Lord's forgiveness, Paul could ever afterwards remember his sins with humility and gratitude for God's grace: "For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me" (1 Cor. 15:9,10).

God's gracious intent is not only to cleanse us from the sins of our past, but, as in Paul's case, to strengthen us and reconstruct our character so that, as time goes by, we'll have fewer sins that need to be forgiven. These two different aspects of our salvation are reflected in the words of the hymn Rock of Ages: "Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in Thee; let the water and the blood, from Thy wounded side which flowed, be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure." The devil would like us to believe that the future can never be anything but a deadly replay of the past. But God knows the glory for which He created us, and He knows what He can make out of us -- even at this late date.

We need to meditate every single day on the value of our hope in Jesus Christ. Without Him, life can't be much more than a desperate struggle. But in Him, we can be confident that the future holds glorious possibilities. The very reason Jesus died was that our sins might be forgiven. His death and resurrection mean that we need not be enslaved to what we were, but uplifted by what we can be. In Christ, we are refreshed and encouraged knowing that the end will be better than the beginning. "Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" (2 Cor. 9:15). "Our salvation is nearer than when we first believed" (Rom. 13:11). For every truly penitent Christian, the very best is yet to be!

Gary Henry
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