We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. –Oscar Wilde

As a carpenter, it’s no secret I’ve installed a lot of windows. The time I jumped out of one, however, is something I’ve kept hidden until now. I’ll explain below.

The Christian faith teaches that the ground is level at the foot of the cross and evangelism—at its best—is just one beggar showing another beggar where the bread is. We all have our sins and, like most labs I’ve owned, have a strange love for trash.

Sometimes we know we need to get our s— together and sometimes a close friend is delighted to highlight this fact. None of us likes to see our true selves in the mirror but this can be a gift, if it brings greater self-awareness, repentance, and change.

But how? Where is the locus for change?

At 17, as a disciple of Keith Green, a singer-songwriter with a huge heart for God, I thought the answer was through my flesh and resonated with these lyrics: “My flesh is tired of seeking God but on my knees I’ll stay. I want to be a pleasing child until that final day.”

In all my effort, I could not pray hard enough, or make vows strong enough to extricate myself from my impurity.  Added to the mix, I had warped ideas about God and was part of a church that motivated with guilt, fear, and shame. I had so much angst and psychological turmoil.

I remember, back in the early eighties, watching Raiders of the Lost Ark at home with my family.  I had been wrestling with my sexuality and trying intensely to please God. There was a scene toward the end of the movie where Indy grabs the female lead’s hand and—in the nick of time—saves her from falling into a pit.  There, suspended in mid-air, legs dangling and—with the camera focused below—you could see her panties.  Honestly, it was an innocuous scene by today’s standards, but it triggered my inner demons.  Caring deeply about God, I wanted desperately to be holy and pure.  It’s as if I wanted to eradicate sexual desire from my being.  After the movie, I went in my room, opened the second story window of our bi-level, and jumped.  I hit the ground and then went running as fast as I could into the woods. Tormented, with my arms up shielding my face from the branches, I ran until I could run no more.

As you can probably guess, I returned home the same guy: whole and broken, intact and fragmented, and still the same mix of vices and virtues. I have since learned that gutters help us find God. The flesh consistently fails, the God who created the stars…saves.

I now understand that he is working in me “both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13, KJV) In fact, often he must work in me “to will” before he works in me “to do:”

That is not a cop-out but a huge comfort.

The “fear of the LORD” may be the beginning of wisdom (Pr. 1:7), but God’s normal MO is to overwhelm us with his goodness and kindness:

“Do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgement will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life.” (Rom. 2:4-7, ESV)

Again, it is his goodness that leads to repentance. It is the loving father God with outstretched arms, not the policeman God with billy club, that melts our icy hearts. We are faithless, yet he remains faithful.

But someone will ask, what about the rest of this passage?  Don’t the verses that follow Rom. 2:4 say it is “our deeds” and “doing good” that are the basis of God’s payment or the condition of the gift of eternal life?

That is a great question and here is the nuance needed to cut through the fog of the works/grace debate: The Scripture teaches that all our works are by the enlivening Spirit (Eph. 2:1) and a gift of grace (Eph. 2:8-9). The work is begun and fueled by God but is carried out through works we ourselves do (Phil. 2:12b-13). It’s synergistic cooperation.

But here’s the critical point: Yes, there is synergy, but the power to change is from God.

That is why the most important thing regarding our sanctification– our growth in Christ, is to avoid the error in the Galatian church:

Oh, foolish Galatians! Who has cast an evil spell on you? For the meaning of Jesus Christ’s death was made as clear to you as if you had seen a picture of his death on the cross. Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? (Gal. 3:1-3, NLT)

It was a seminal moment when I first heard a sermon on this passage in my late teens. The struggle with masturbation and pornography was unbearable. At 51, I no longer believe God is obsessed with our genitals, but I do believe following Christ compels us to look at questions of purity and sexuality under His Lordship (here is an excellent recent example). Gal 3:3 still reminds me that the power for sanctification (what some call “perfecting”) comes in believing the gospel message more deeply, not in human effort.

Jesus died to justify the ungodly; therefore, we have hope!  What’s more, the gospel addresses our heart and desires so that we do change over time, from the inside-out, and by God’s power. And so, friend, as St. Benedict of Nursia said, “Never despair of God’s mercy.” Our failures are meant to point us to our continuing need to cast ourselves on God’s mercy.

Note on the picture above: It is “an icon in Eastern Orthodoxy that, translated from Greek, is called ‘Utmost Humiliation.’ It depicts the head of the suffering and dying Christ on the cross…The iconographic subject is an exception to the generally stated rule that in the early centuries, Christ was always pictured as victorious on the cross. The icon is remarkable because of its emphasis on suffering and humiliation rather than victory. However, not even the suffering face conveys anything even approaching what must have happened to Jesus’ face in reality.”- Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2016), 81.