Beggar or Benefactor?
Newspaper column
If you have been told all your life that God hates sin but loves the sinner, it must surely be unsettling to hear that it isn’t so. “The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes; You hate all who do iniquity” (Psalm 5:5).
The relevant question becomes: “Does God hate me or love me?” The answer is… it depends. It depends on whether you have faith in Jesus Christ. If you do, you are loved beyond comprehension. If you don’t, then you are yet an object of God’s wrath and holy hatred.
What is faith and why does it make such a difference? Faith is not believing that there is a God. Everyone believes there is a God, even the atheist who pretends otherwise. Faith is what you have when you finally come to the realization that you are not a good person at all and you know you need a Savior. But you can’t believe in Christ while feeling that you are, on the whole, a pretty good person and should be accepted into heaven on the basis of that supposed goodness.
The truth is that we have broken God’s law every day of our lives, times without number. If we were to stand before a human judge with so many violations of the Law, we should expect life in prison or the death penalty as the wages of our sins. But somehow, in our pride, we think that God is required to be lenient with us and not hold us to account for all our crimes against Him. As long as we think that way, faith is impossible.
Faith is the empty hand of a beggar reaching out to receive charity from a benefactor. The beggar is dirt poor and has nothing to trade with. He offers nothing to the donor, but his dirty, empty hands. He only receives, he doesn’t give. That is the attitude of faith, and it is what we must have toward Christ if we would be saved. Jesus illustrated this in a parable in Luke 18.
“And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
The religious leader, the Pharisee, had faith in himself. He trusted in his own good works and congratulated himself that he was much better than other sinners. The tax collector, however, did not trust in his goodness. He had been brought to the realization that he was a terrible person. Because he understood his sin, he did not trust in his own righteousness but merely begged for mercy. That is what faith looks like.
Because the tax collector had faith, he “went to his house justified”. To be justified is to be counted righteous before the court of heaven. More to come on why faith justifies sinners.