Those Very Same People

Excerpt from Perry Noble post: "Oh Crap, They Got Me" -- Part Two

#2 – As a Christian it is incredibly easy to look down on people who are far from God…not understanding that we used to be those very same people. 

Ephesians 2:1 has been rocking my world lately…seriously…read it…Ephesians 2:1.

“YOU WERE DEAD…”  AND…keep in mind that the Apostle Paul was writing this to people INSIDE the church…church people…Bible study people…deacons…elders…reminding them that THEY WERE ALL DEAD!

I was DEAD…not suffering from bad habits, not caught up in destructive patters, not trapped in a system of making bad mistakes, not addicted, not unfocused…BUT DEAD!!!

BUT…Ephesians 2:4-5 tells me that GOD MADE ME ALIVE IN CHRIST!

So…I was dead…God made me alive…so…that transaction had EVERYTHING to do with HIS effort and not my own!  (Because dead people can’t decide to be better people…because…THEY’RE FREAKIN DEAD!!!)

God saved me by HIS grace…not because I am great but because HE IS GREAT!

BUT…as Christians we forget that fact.  We forget that salvation was (and is) and gift…quite often because we slip into a system of legalism that allows us to be defined by what we do and do not do rather than the finished work that Christ has done for us.

We get angry at spiritually dead people for…well…acting spiritually dead.  So…we protest them, we picket them, we yell at them and damn them to hell…completely forgetting that if it were not for the amazing grace of God we would be the very people that we try to isolate ourselves from!

It is incredibly difficult to look down on someone when you realize that you WERE that person…and God brought you out of that death by HIS SON and not your effort!

The church is not called to condem the world (John 3:17) but to reach and impact the world…and that will NEVER be accomplished until those IN the church realize the reality of the Gospel…and instead of using the cross to beat people with we simply kneel at the foot of it and began to declare that there is still room for those who are far from God.

We can’t forget what it was like to be lost…

And we can’t yell at people who are the very people we would be if it were not for God’s grace.

I believe the grasp of those two concepts could CHANGE our churches…and through that would eventually CHANGE our world!