Still Struggling to Get it Right?

If you are not a sinner, then Christ can mean little to you, you have no need of forgiveness and can never experience the grace of God. Indeed you cannot enter heaven for we only read of people there who have “washed their robes white in the Blood of the Lamb.” If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves.

It is the hardest thing on earth to take the sinner’s place. So intensely do we dislike it, that many of us have never taken it at all, while others having once been there take care not to visit it again. The behaviour of a cat on hot bricks is nothing compared with ours when we are being made to take the sinner’s place!

It may be that you will not wish to read this article because you are not a sinner, but a good Christian. However, I beg you to do so because we really are all sinners. The Bible says we are, Paul said he was, and all the great saints have felt themselves vile before God. You will remember a hymn which says:

“They who fain would serve Thee best, Are conscious most of wrong within.”

The sinner’s place is the place where we accept and admit unconditionally that we are in the wrong. Often we come here by admitting only one sin, say jealousy or pride. Maybe we acknowledge that we have that particular sin, or that we have committed it. We said an unkind word or had an unclean thought. We take this place when instead of saying “Of course, that was not really ME,” we say rather “that was me as I truly am.” It may be we have to admit a whole string of wrongs, or continually have to come to the sinner’s place, and so we confess not just single sins, but our whole radical corruption and sinfulness of nature. We admit the truth about ourselves as the Bible declares it.

When we take the sinner’s place we do not blame circumstances or nerves or other people, but take full responsibility ourselves. When charged or challenged about some fault, when put in the wrong, shown some wrong or even criticized, we do not argue or seek to justify ourselves or explain things away. We admit the truth and repent there and then. It helps to see when criticized that if the critic knew you as you know yourself he would have far more to criticize, so why feel hurt? We save a lot of time and breath, clear up many problems and spare ourselves much mental argument, when we simply come with bowed head and stand in the sinner’s place.

The sinner’s place is the place king David took when he said in reply to Nathan’s challenge . . “I have sinned;” that Job took as he cried “Behold I am vile;” that Isaiah took when he said “Woe is me for I am unclean;” that publican took as he prayed with bowed head “God be merciful to me THE sinner.” Peter took it as he fell at Jesus’ feet saying “Depart from me . . . I am a sinful man.” The prodigal took it as he said “Father I have sinned . . . and am not worthy to be called your son.” Paul was very familiar with this ground. If you have never come here you have not even begun with God.

Of course we do not like the sinner’s place. One night, a man went to sleep, hard in heart because his pride had been hurt over some petty challenge in the home. He dreamed of climbing to a great height to look down a precipice at the foot of which his wife and others stood calling him to come down. He knew he must come down but how to do it he did not know. Presently a great tree stretched its long branches up to him inviting him to step on to them that they might lower him gently to the ground. But he feared they would break and he would fall and be hurt, so there he stayed, lofty and lonely and cold. Well, praise God, the very next day, he saw that gentle tree to be the Cross of Christ, and he came down! Why was he afraid of being hurt? Because it is always the fear of damaged pride that prevents us taking the sinner’s place. We do not like to admit mistakes, to betray weakness or confess sin. We say it “lets the Lord down.” Actually it is we who are let down, not the Lord at all, for He is never let down when we take the sinner’s place. But we would rather fight, argue, justify ourselves, than repent. How terrible is the pride that makes us so.

AVOIDING THE SINNER’S PLACE

Sometimes we DO NOT CALL SIN, SIN. A rose by any other name smells as sweet, and sin by any other name is the same to God. We like to make our own definitions of sin. We lengthen (and soften) it to “shortcomings.” We speak of failure, weakness, frailty, fault, disabilities, anything but sin. Here is the crux of the matter. Do we take God’s definition of sin, or our own? Sin in the Scripture is anything that is “short of the glory of God;” that misses the mark of Divine perfection; that is in any way twisted from the straight, whether in the realm of motive, desire, thought, instinct, habit, word, look, action, intention, reaction or relationship, and even if done in ignorance. Whatever is short of God’s perfect standard is sin. To call it something else that does not require repentance and forgiveness is simply to evade the sinner’s place.

Or again we may SHUT OUR EYES TO SIN. We are active people, far too busy to bother about such trivialities. With our important office and our evangelical activities we are, like Naaman, winning our laurels while nursing our leprosy. We will take any place, any platform, any pulpit, we will do anything for the Lord—or so we think. But to stand in Jordan openly as a spiritual leper, needing to wash and be clean like others, we will never do. So we die on our feet! We are like the people in Jeremiah 8, rushing like horses in battle, so that no man, said God, ever repented or stopped to say “What have I done that is wrong.” Always rushing. Never repenting!

We avoid the sinner’s place when WE ASSUME THE ROLE OF CORRECTORS. Adept at sound doctrine, with our orthodoxy neatly tied up, we become evangelical know-alls with a keen sense of theological smell. We love to correct others on little points. Woe to the man who tries to correct us. Like the Pharisees we ourselves avoid the sinner’s place by keeping others in it. We know much, but have need of nothing. We mistake our own pride for the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Henry Martyn’s diary records “Resolved never to reprove another except I experience at the same time a peculiar contrition of heart.”

Again we avoid the sinner’s place when WE PRESUME WRONGLY ON THE GRACE OF GOD, by making our eternal security a reason why we need not repent. If when challenged about sin we say “Oh that does not matter, it is all under the Blood,” or again “I believe in coming once to the Cross, but not continually,” then we are in danger of making the grace of God an excuse for sin, and certainly a means for avoiding the admission of guilt. We regard salvation as automatic, however selfishly we live. We say that we are sons and saints and citizens of heaven, but not still sinners, forgetting that while the Bible says we are not to live in sin, not to be governed by it and not to love it, it nowhere says that in this life we cease to be sinners. If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves. It is the contrite heart that is God’s sacrifice.

The human heart, like the hydra, can adopt any guise to hide its real nature. We can make use of Biblical knowledge, lay claim to all kind of spiritual experiences, buttress ourselves with many achievements. May God give us all the honesty to know whether we are taking the sinner’s place and so counting all else but loss for Jesus and his righteousness alone.

FINDING GRACE IN THE SINNER’S PLACE

The strange thing is that while we who are sinners avoid this place, Christ, who was sinless, accepted it. One would expect the Son of God to work miracles, preach the Sermon on the Mount, and rise from the dead. But that he should stand in Jordan to be baptized with other penitents, and hang on the Cross with other criminals, with never a word of self-justification or defense is a wonder indeed. But He did! “In my place condemned He stood.”

There it was that a sinner met him, hanging on the next Cross. One thief protesting his innocence, blaming everyone else, refused to take the sinner’s place and died in the dark. But the other admitted his guilt and in the sinner’s place he found pardon, and peace and paradise, because he found Jesus. And here is the paradox of grace. He who ever insists that he is right will be pronounced by God to be wrong. He who is willing to admit he is wrong will find God’s grace.