Author: Ian Greig

…in a city with as many temples to various deities as our cities have church buildings representing different traditions.

Romans liked to know the rules and found security in following them, and in many ways this has been passed down to us. We like to bring relational faith — difficult to quantify, difficult to define — down to a system of belief.

In other words, we like to make a religion out of it.

Gaining and maintaining a relationship with God is, in the first place, costly. Nobody finds sacrificing their independence an easy write-off. And keeping up that relationship needs ongoing investment! A routine that involves certain prescribed actions — and where we can judge how well we and others are ticking the boxes — is much easier. All we need is genuine faith in Jesus — giving Him our trust. Humanly, faith in Jesus alone does not seem enough. We feel the need to add our own effort.

But Paul discounts attainments ‘earned’ through lifestyle and points to the evidence of new life that comes through character and joy.

It’s not anything we do that produced that. It’s what we allow the Holy Spirit to do. Our efforts are like us denying that the grace of God can only be received and never earned. The whole point of God’s grace is that there is nothing good we can do which counts.

When God’s Spirit is free to do His work in us — the work He can do and which we cannot do — the joy and peace we have will be evident to all. And depending on our lifestyle before, our being right with God may strike others as a remarkable change!

There’s a big helping of good news in this verse, and also a couple of obstacles.

The good news is plainly stated: “He will…forgive”, “every time”, and then “He will continue”. All this is accessible to us “because of Christ”.

I remember having a discussion with a local authority planning department and the language they used struck me at the time. It was about a plan to rebuild a rather dilapidated hall on the side of a church in a conservation area. The conservation constraints amounted to a general presumption not to grant permission. However, there would be a presumption to approve the architect’s use of style and materials that blended in with the local vernacular. A proposed improvement to a building in poor repair, to make it more usable, would also merit a presumption to grant permission.

Our relationship with God, through our believing and receiving Jesus, means there is a presumption to grant forgiveness: “God is just to forgive us our sins because of Christ.”

And the phrase “If we freely admit our sins…” offers another presumption that we will be forgiven.

But there are a couple of obstacles. The first one is being aware of what in our life and attitudes is most offensive to God. Our ideas about sin are often slanted towards things we consider culturally ‘sinful’ – eating too much chocolate and having too much fun. For some, historically, it would have been drinking alcohol. Not long ago, an unmarried mother would have been judged like this.

The Bible teaching in the epistles has a much more relational emphasis. It highlights attitudes like disunity, self-importance, and angry or malicious treatment of others. Paul, as well as Jesus, stressed the hidden sin of unforgiveness. Most of the letters mention what proceeds from unforgiveness, which is the human tendency to resort to hurtful gossip. These are the real offences! Offences against any of those created in God’s image are offences against the creator.

The second obstacle is in the words “if we freely admit”. The self-centred, ego driven part of us doesn’t freely admit to any failing! We can find plenty of excuses before we feel the need to say, “I got that wrong…”.

But back to the good news. What God has already done for us in Jesus tips the balance every time. He is waiting for us to agree with Him, about what needs putting into better order with Him. Then He can do what He is already disposed to do: give us His release of forgiveness.

In medieval times a royal herald was a court emissary, distinctive in uniform and bearing, who was accorded the highest respect. A herald spoke on behalf of the sovereign, with words from a scroll that were received with the gravity of their royal source. At a time of royal succession, they would announce the passing of the former order and the message of the new rule and dominion.

If Pentecost is the “birthday of the Church”, as it will be described in countless children’s talks today, then it is not the birth of a building or an institution, not a denomination or a Sunday tradition or a particular religious culture.

It is the commissioning of heralds to go out on behalf of the King of kings to places both relatively near and far off. Heralds are empowered by royal warrant with royal supply and protection, to make known the good news of this new reign.

The original Pentecost was the commissioning and empowering of many, drawn together from all over the known world, to go back out with the Good News of who Jesus is and what He has done to free us, a ransom that we could never have raised.

How do we receive that today? At a time when leaders of traditional denominations are lobbying government to allow their buildings to open again, are we missing the point?

We were not commissioned as a club with activities exclusive to members and experienced only by stepping out of the grimy world and into its special and well-appointed building.

The direction is the opposite one — we were gathered to the presence of Jesus, to be empowered by Him and sent out with His message, not into a building to hear it again. We’re not sent as failing sinners – not much of a message there – but as royal messengers whose distinctive uniform is not made of fabric, but is visible in a different way through the kind of people we are: those broken and put together in a new way, as new creations in Christ Jesus.

We have the best news ever. Recent constraints have taught us that we don’t have to rely on buildings, liturgical formalities or even the ‘holy’ Sunday mid-morning slot. Let us recapture our historic commission of being sent out of our familiar religious comfort zones (Jerusalem) and into the more challenging world (Judea, Samaria and beyond), letting the Holy Spirit lead us into new ways of connecting, and renewed creativity to simply tell the story we have been given.

It’s Good News and we have it to share!