“My name is Aled and I am a sinaholic.”
The vital beginning to dealing with addiction is awareness. Admitting the problem is there is key to dealing with it. After all, if a spy has hidden themselves inside or beneath the watch tower, and the sentry is unaware of the problem, it will not be dealt with.
The slight wordplay at the beginning of this post takes the helpful wording from Alcoholics Anonymous but replaced it with the greater addiction: sin.
If we believe the Bible to be the inerrant word of God, we know that humanity is sinful. We are ‘of Adam.’ That is our status. However, not only is this a forensic status bestowed upon us by our first covenant head, it is also something we naturally want to do. We like to sin. It is seductive and addictive, and no less so post-conversion.
When I was signed off from ministry work last year, I read Dane Ortlund’s Deeper. It’s central idea, that changed my entire outlook on sanctification. Far from sanctification being a growth measured by increasing holiness, but going deeper into who Christ is. Relying on him, as we realise more and more, the depths of our sin.
Some may see this and see this as a dangerous acquiesce towards antinomianism: in that we passably accept the state of our sin, and therefore do nothing to fight it. However, I think it is the precise opposite. It is by seeing sanctification as growing in Christ, rather than behaving better, that allows us to maintain the picture of the whole Christ: that stands against cheap grace and legalism, as well as antinomianism and passivism.
I think this precisely because the more we see our sin, the more we run to the grace and forgiveness of Jesus. It guards us from a cheap grace. Furthermore, running to Jesus, going deeper into him, changes the motivation for increasing holiness: it is no longer out of fear, but love. As the apostle John writes: “…love drives out fear.” Laying aside for one moment the butchering of said verse that implies a conservative definition of marriage is acquiescing to fear, John tells us that love, not fear, is the heartbeat of the Christian life. Love, in truth. Truth, in love.
I like to sin. That should not be a surprise. Yet, the idea of a fearful obedience and striving for personal holiness, makes me think more about me, and less of God.
The grace of God is a scandal, and an overfamiliarity with it at a theological level does indeed lead to a passivity. However, I do not think this passivity issue is presented in not fighting the battle against sin. What this passivity issue does do, is make me passive towards grace.
How often, when I have sinned, in accidental or deliberate ways, do I see God as now “out of bounds”? That a police crime scene that cannot be crossed, or indeed perhaps a curtain in a temple, now blocks the face of God from me? The answer is: too often!
Let us look at this inversely: by thinking that in those moments, I must then be thinking the opposite at times. I presume to come to God, trusting in my own righteousness, because when that unrighteousness is exposed, shame and guilt drive me from God. Up come the fig leaves of my insecurities, and together with Adam and Eve, I hide from the presence of God.
That is a cheap grace! Ironically, in trying so hard to not presume to come to the Table of the Lord, we can inadvertently presume to come, when we don’t feel the weight of our sin!
Make no mistake, I am not advocating a dour, Medieval Catholic theology of self-flagellation. Instead, to illustrate the balance of non-presumption, with fleeing to the arms of our loving heavenly Father as he runs to meet us in the midst of our sin.
I love the incident with Levi in Luke’s gospel. It goes like this:
“After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow me.” So, leaving everything behind, he got up and began to follow him.” – Luke 5:27-28, CSB.
Jesus has healed a paralysed man, which visibly demonstrates his divine status as able (and brilliantly for us, willing) to forgive sins. This incident also demonstrates it. For, where does Jesus find Levi? He’s sat in the tax office. In other words, he is steeped in the midst of his sin, caught red handed as it were. There was no time for him to make himself fit to receive the call of Jesus Christ. That’s the second shocking thing: when does Jesus call him? In the midst of his sin. Already, our cheap grace/legalistic sensitivities are on the rise. Surely we’re saying therefore that it doesn’t matter how sinful we are, that we don’t have to repent to come to Jesus as if that’s our magic stepping stone of salvation?
That’s what Jesus demonstrates here. For that is not how the story ends. If we just had v27-28, we could arguably find ways to presume to come to Christ. Because of course, why wouldn’t he call Levi?
But God in his grace tells us what happens next in v29-30:
“Then Levi hosted a grand banquet for him at his house. Now there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were reclining at the table with them. 30 But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” – Luke 5:28-29, CSB
Levi’s response to the gracious call of God is by bearing the fruit of repentance. That’s the change. That’s why this isn’t a self-bestowed cheap grace. His awareness of sin magnifies his marvel at forgiveness. So, he celebrates. As such, awareness of sin is not necessarily a call to don sackcloth and ashes – though that may have their place.
The Pharisees embody cheap grace. They see the presumption of tax collectors and sinners hanging out with Jesus, and they blame Jesus for debasing himself by deigning to be in their company.
Yet, our Lord Jesus Christ says (to all who truly turn to him): “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” (Luke 5:31, CSB)
Losing awareness of sin, be that through cheap grace entitlement, or a shamed self-exile from the grace of God are ultimately two sides of the same coin. The latter is harder to spot, because contrition and sorrow are part of what it means to repent.
So this brings me on to the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
There has been lately one or two patterns of sin in my life that I haven’t addressed. I was aware, yet unaware of the problem. I knew/know what is right and what is wrong in these areas. However, I hadn’t realised that I’d given up battling them. In some perverse self-harm, I was allowing the cynical inevitability to happen. And therefore, felt ashamed when the (gracious) conviction of the Spirit came.
I had heard of the so-called Sacrament of Reconciliation, as an Anglican alternative to the Roman Catholic confessional. A friend of a higher church tradition graciously allowed me to receive this service from him.
And, thankfully, it is not a service designed as the stereotype would have us believe. It is not a self/priest-bestowed ‘cheap grace.’ The absolution is not an effective actual absolution. It is a sacrament, and therefore a visible word. Just as we as confessing BCP 39 Article Anglicans do not believe baptism actually saves, and that in communion we are not physically feeding on the body and blood of the Lord Jesus, for his sacrifice was made there at the cross, once for all.
Sacraments as well as visible words are means by which God ministers to us by his grace. With this definition, there are more than two, but I’m not going there!
So the service of the Sacrament of Reconciliation was a benefit. It’s liturgy is doused in scriptural contrition and assurance, therefore walking well the balance of not falling into cheap grace via legalism or antinomianism. There is space for one to list one’s particular burdens in confession. The absolution points back to Christ and gives pastoral reassurance.
Do I therefore now, feel like I have checked enough boxes to be free to read my Bible and pray?
No.
For to go down that line of thinking; is to remain in cheap grace: a self-bestowed works righteousness. Instead, I need to continue to walk the tightrope: I am a forgiven sinner.
Martin Luther had a phrase to describe this seeming contradiction within the Christian life: simultus Justus et Pecator, which means: simultaneously justified and a sinner. Theologically, I am justified. That means in the eyes of the Lord, I am innocent: my record of sin expunged, wiped out. I am not living in hope of a future justification, because I am now just before God, through the work of Christ. I am in him. His righteousness is mine, for he has imputed it to me.
This does not mean I am perfected. I am still in slavery to sin; in that my natural physical body wants to sin. Sometimes, by the work of the indwelling Spirit of God, I can say no to ungodliness. However, sometimes (many times!) I do not. This spiritual battle is ever present until the return of the Lord Jesus.
A narcissist will struggle with this idea: because they do not see themselves as sinful. For someone like me it is the flipside: being down on oneself, failing to see the love of God for me, still drives me towards a cheap grace. It can be all too easily, as a defence mechanism, to refuse to look at sin in the eye objectively, because it can be dismissed by me dismissing my whole self. A cynical inevitability.
Or perhaps even a pride disguised as humility. I am not like ‘the good chaps,’ therefore I do not need to worry about my humility.
But the day one does not worry about humility is the day one stops being humble.
My defence mechanism can be a shutting down, passive aggressive mental self-flagilation. I have made a mistake, therefore I am a mistake. That cannot be argued with.
Am I so ingrained in habit, that I cannot, ever, presume to say good things about myself, as protection? Yes.
Protection from:
What?
Who?
When?
Why?
I don’t know. How can I know?
Conflict phobia – the idea of bringing conflict because I’m scared of being shouted at. This PTSD is a scar – albeit a scar God makes beautiful, but a scar that inclines me to fear repeating incidents.
Am I trying to ‘control’ this phobia with a self-hating deflection defense mechanism?
Yes.
What would it look like to not do that?
Random Ruminations of a Rev 