July 27 2018 – Click here to listen
There is a great song with this chorus:
Count your blessings name them one by one
Count your blessings, see what God has done
When I pray I follow this advice as best I can and then thank God for them. But the other day I thought about this song and wondered about another chorus:
Count my sins, name them one by one
Count my sins. See what I have done
The Bible tells us that we will have to account for our sins. Romans 14:11 –
It is written: “As surely as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow before Me; every tongue will confess to God.” So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
In preparation for this event I invite you to do as I have done and count your sins against God and name them one by one. As you think about your life try to envision the humiliation of having this list, much of which was done in secret and you thought no one would ever find out, revealed by God with all creation watching, including your spouse, kids, grandkids, friends, neighbors, peers . . . Rev. 20:12 – And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done.
I cannot help you with your list, but I can tell you that I dread having every sinful act I’ve ever committed read from that book. Thankfully the blood of Jesus covers those sins; however, I cringe at the mere thought of Jesus observing my darkest moments.
There are no secrets in life. I wrote an autobiography, Miracle on Luckie Street that would make my dog blush from humiliation. In actuality, I left out the worst of it. Further it doesn’t detail sins committed since becoming a Christian. (Yes, I still sin and so do you.) I’m embarrassed to even think about what I’ve done in my life. The worst of it is I know that it breaks the heart of Jesus to see me behave in such a manner.
I read this article by John Piper. His perspective deals with the judgment which is positive for true believers:
How do we balance the understanding that the believer’s sins are forgiven and the fact that we will have to give an account to God for our lives? What happens if I end up with a poor account to give?
Good question. Excellent question. The relationship between what happened at the cross in the covering of all of our sins and the account we will give for the good and the evil, according to Romans 14, at the last day.
So I think believers will face an accounting. And here’s the way I conceive it:
When I put my faith in Christ, I believe that all my sins were forgiven, were covered by the blood of Jesus, past, present and future. And that all my relating to those sins as I move forward is a praying that God would simply continue to cover them by his blood.
When it says, “If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9), I think it does mean that we do go on appropriating the work of Christ in our lives. That is, hour by hour, day by day, we turn from our sins, confess that they were an offense to his grace, and ask God to go on covering them. So prayer is a part of the means by which we continue to avail ourselves of the blood of Christ.
Which means that we’re going to arrive at the Judgment Day with no guilt. We will be perfect on the day of Christ. However, we will have more or less advanced in holiness, and that will make a difference.
It will make a difference in this way. I picture the deeds of my life, the good deeds of my life, the Holy Spirit fruits of my life as being filed away by God in a filing cabinet under the heading, “Evidences of Grace” / “Evidences of New Birth” / “Evidences of Faith.” Those are necessary. Otherwise, when the courtroom is held at the end and the Judge says, “What evidence do we have here that this person by faith is united to Christ who is his perfection?” my ground of acceptance is totally Christ, not that filing cabinet. That filing cabinet is fruit of faith in perfection. And that perfection is the ground of my acceptance.
So his blood covers all of my sins, his perfection counts for my perfection, and the Judge is smiling upon me in Christ. And I know that I will make it because of Christ alone.
The filing cabinet is taken out and it has these two functions:
1) Evidence that I was born again. And it may not be a big file. In fact, there are a lot of bad grades in there, and they’ll all be thrown away. And the B minuses and the B pluses will be taken out and they’ll say, “That’s what’s needed in order to show that he was born again. These things would not have happened otherwise. So he was born again, therefore his is in Christ, therefore he is totally acceptable.”
2) The other is that I think there will be varying rewards on the basis of that measure of fruit. So that one will get five cities and one will get ten cities to rule over. And I’ll get a little Georgia village.
So I think that’s the way it works.
My brother Jim once told me that he’d be happy if he could end up just being a janitor in heaven; he just wanted to make it. I know how he felt. I don’t need a little Georgia village or ten cities to lead, I just want to see heaven in whatever capacity Jesus has ordained. God has assured me that will happen because His Son Jesus paid the terrible price for all my awful sins.
So, the Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. Perhaps you might think you really haven’t done anything significantly wrong in the sin department and you will be rewarded for being so good.
Wrong . . . It is what Jesus did and what you have done for Him and not the fewer amount of sins you have committed that is important. The Bible offers a parable related by Jesus of two debtors. One was forgiven a great amount of money by the master; the other only a small amount. Then the question was asked, “Who do you think will love the master the most for forgiving their debt?” The answer was a “no-brainer” for the disciples, the one forgiven a large amount. As for me I have been forgiven much and I love Jesus with all my heart. I think about Him constantly and I pray throughout the day and ask Him to help me resist evil at every turn.
I suppose that having my life exposed for what it really is will glorify God by exemplifying His loving grace and perhaps that is the point. The Apostle Paul and many other biblical figure’s sinful lives intensified their love of Jesus and though they were humiliated by their failures they were glorified in Christ’s victories. The point is that God loves us so much and His grace so mysterious that we cannot even comprehend it.
2 Cor. 4:10 – For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.
Have a great weekend and go to church this Sunday!