Issue 1659 – Coffee Talk – January 29, 2025

While waiting for a friend at a coffee shop recently, I couldn’t help  but overhear the loud conversation at the table next to me. Two businessmen, one a Christian and the other not, were talking about “religion.”

The non-believer made some angry, disparaging remarks about some of the people in the church. “With people like that involved in your religion,” he said, “I don’t want anything to do with it.”

For many years, I was that man. I believed All sinners were hypocrites and Christianity was a farce.

My heart breaks when I hear conversations like that one. Not so much about the faults of the people in the church. For all I know, he could have been right about the money with his assessment of the people in question. The church is filled with imperfect people. My heart breaks for the angry man.

There are two things he has not managed to wrap his head around. Firstly, the Christian faith has little to do with religion. It has everything to do with a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The “religious” trappings are simply things that people have added.

Secondly, people like those he made the remarks about, along with the angry man and you and I, are the reason Christ came. He came to free the brokenhearted. He came to save us from the consequences of our own sin. He did not come for righteous people; he came to rescue those who are messed up.

So he told them this parable: “What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the open country, and go after the one that is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.’ Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance. Luke 15:3-7

To be sure, there are plenty of active sinners in the church. All Christians are redeemed sinners who struggle to become righteous. God is at work in their hearts. Becoming like Christ is a process. We are saved by our faith in His sacrifice, but He still has to mold us. We do not become perfect overnight.

There are plenty of people in the church who are not saved but go for self-serving reasons. God is working in their hearts. There are even outright frauds in the church who will never repent and seek Jesus. Their destiny is not pleasant.

The shame of it all is that people, like the man at the next table, want to judge the church based on an impossible state of perfection. Only Christ is perfect. The people who follow Him are simply ordinary, flawed people who recognize their need for help. We are a long way from perfection.

I know that his attitude is partly a defensive position. If he can put down the church because of the flaws of the people in it, he does not have to face our own faults. If he does not face our faults, he thinks he will not have to acknowledge his need for Jesus. With that approach, he can get away with an entire lifetime, but the eternal price will be too heavy to bear.

His defensive position is ironic because if the people in the church were as perfect as my friend would like them to be, that would become his new excuse. He would not want to have anything to do with “my religion” because of all the perfect people.

My fervent prayer is that someday, the angry man will see that while his sins are different from those of the people he put down, they are sins nonetheless. My friend is no less in need of Jesus than the rest of us. Perhaps when he comes to see that, he will understand that becoming a Christian is not about being perfect. He will know that he is welcome and will fit right in with the rest of us flawed sinners who are saved only by the grace of God, not by our own efforts.

Until next time, pray for the lost sheep in our lives to find the Lord. Pray for them and never give up.

Be blessed

Hallelu Yah / Praise God 

Kevin

Gleanings From The Word

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Soli Deo Gloria (For the glory of God alone)

Never let the enemy tell you that you are worthless or insignificant. Your value in God’s eyes is so great that it was worth dying for. You are a blessing to the world. You are so precious to God that his plan for heaven will not be complete without you.

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