Sin within the Body of Christ

Have you seen that show, Wipe Out? I hate that show. It feels so unjust to me. There’s no way to run through one of their courses without being brutally attacked by their machines. It’s like someone is watching the contestants run through the course and no matter how fast or slow they go, right when they get to a punchy thing, they can hit a button and send them flying. The contestants have no chance and then everyone just sits back and laughs at their misery.

Any game where someone is dared to do something embarrassing and then forced to follow through while everyone else laughs at them just unnerves me. I cannot handle it. That is a somewhat silly example but hopefully that paints you a picture of how bad an injustice breaks my heart when it really matters.

Hopefully you believe me, if you’ve read my first blog or my info page, when I say that I’m not writing this blog from a place of having already figured everything out but instead as someone on a journey with you. That is so true today as what I feel I’m supposed to write about today is very fresh. I think I’ve thought about it before but I really had to wrestle with it recently. I’ve been holding onto something that has continued to be a very heavy burden for me. The stress of carrying this around has been mounting and has slowly drained my life of joy. But it was a slow drip so it was very hard for me to see. I’d been feeling very empty lately but I finally reached a tipping point. In God’s grace, He used circumstances to force me to finally face the issue.

To protect the innocent, or rather guilty party in this case, I’ll refrain from being too specific and also because, the particular offense is not really the point of this blog today. Basically, someone else, a fellow member of the Body of Christ, deeply wounded me. I have brought this to their attention and they disagree that they acted in a way contrary to scripture. I have sought reconciliation and they do not see a need because they don’t feel like they did anything wrong. I have wrestled with the pain and humiliation for awhile. I would think I had forgiven them and then something would happen and I would struggle with forgiveness all over again.

There was so much initial pain that I had no choice but to take it to the Lord just to make it through the day. I had seen a Christian counselor and had done a lot of work in letting the Lord heal some very major hurts. I thought I had finished that work of forgiveness and moved on. Recently I have been filled with a sadness that I couldn’t name but I didn’t think it had anything to do with this situation. Through a conversation with a friend, I realized I had let go of the anger and hurt but was still holding on to injustice. The lack of sorrow over sin and the lack of agreement on what was right, felt suffocating. I had been wronged and there was nothing I could do to right that wrong.

What I realized was that my frustration was no longer within any human relationships. We are all broken and make mistakes and that enabled me to forgive and not hold grudges even when there was a lack of apology. I can go with the understanding that they don’t really know what they just did to me or understand how hurtful it was and just let it go. I tend to be on the slow side of trusting people with my heart. So usually those people don’t have a large part of my heart to begin with and I simply just take it back. I’m not rude or unkind, I just don’t trust you with my heart. If you’d like to work together to walk through restoration and build trust back, I am up for that, but if not, that’s ok and I can move on.

But it’s different with God. My goal with my life and my heart is to trust it all to Him. I think of a hymn I grew up listening to and has been revised recently that goes like this

My hope is built on nothing less

than Jesus blood and righteousness

I dare not trust the sweetest frame

but wholly lean on Jesus name

I try to take my heart and my hurts and my fears all to Him, because He never fails. He loves me and promises to take care of me, protect me and fight for me. As long as He lives, nothing can defeat Him or surprise Him or keep Him from accomplishing what He wants to do in my life. Even the person here on the earth that loves me the most cannot be trusted the same way that Jesus can. My husband loves me and I know he would do whatever he can to keep me safe, but his strength has limits. My God’s strength does not. Every time I see those words about not trusting the sweetest frame I think about my husband. He is the sweetest man I know and is very easy to trust. But he is still human and will hurt my feelings from time to time. That’s just the nature of close, intimate human relationships. But Jesus never fails and therefore, is the only one who should be “wholly leaned on.”

I think this plays a part in my strong feelings toward injustice. God says He is a God of justice so when we experience injustice it feels like a inconsistency with God. Those feelings lead toward a lie that the one “person” who was never supposed to let you down and therefore, you depended on Him so deeply, has let you down. Consequently, when we believe that lie, that God has let us down, it feels like the ultimate betrayal. I find my self thinking, “I’ve found myself in this unjust situation and You are doing nothing about it.”

There are plenty of things that the Lord will punish one day. The evil that has lived in this world will not go unpunished. One example is found in Isaiah 13:11,
“Thus I will punish the world for its evil and the wicked for their iniquity; I will also put an end to the arrogance of the proud and abase the haughtiness of the ruthless.”

But this situation was different, because this pain was caused by someone who has been washed in the blood of Jesus, cleansed and justified.

The true conflict in my heart came from feeling like God promised to be fair, and I was wronged but because they were a Christian, then they would not be punished, and therefore, how could my wrong ever be righted?

Hopefully you can see the problems with this train of thought but that’s exactly how the devil works. He had my heart blinded to the reality of what I was believing. I expected the blood of Jesus to wash me and forgive me of my sins, to pay my penalties for me, so that I didn’t have to, but I wasn’t agreeing that it was “right” for the blood of Jesus to pay for the sins of people who had wronged me. I saw that forgiveness as payment for the sins I committed but not for the sins committed against me. I realized right then that I wasn’t handing this injustice over to the Lord because I didn’t want to nail the sins of others to the cross. It felt unfair that the wrongs committed against me would never be “paid for.” I had always thought Jonah rude for not wanting to preach God’s grace to Nineveh but I would have found myself right there beside him in the belly of a big fish.

That’s when Jesus quietly whispered, “you can’t think about the suffering I experienced in my death on the cross as only covering your sin. When you feel wronged and you want someone to pay, picture my body hanging on the cross and decided if I have suffered enough to pay for that wrong.”

It was an earth shattering moment for me. Of course He has suffered enough to pay for that wrong. Even though I was really hurt, when that wrong was viewed against the cross of Christ, it was so trivial. I repented and agreed that Jesus has already paid the penalty for anything I have done but also for anything that has been done against me. I sat on my front porch swing and cried as I finally let that need for justice fall into His hands and I stood up and walked inside lighter than I have felt in a very long time.

If you have struggled with injustices that you see around you or ones that have been done against you, it is a very heavy burden to carry and will drain the joy from your life. The blood of Jesus is so precious and so expensive that it can pay for whatever wrongs you feel need to be righted. Trust those hurts, those wants and desires to Him. Let His death pay for the both the wrongs you have committed and the wrongs that have been committed against you. Lasting, fulfilling joy will always allude you if you are holding on to a wrong that needs to be righted. He died to pay the price for that sin too. You have accepted His payment for the sins you committed but have you accepted it for the sins committed against you? You must in order to find true joy.

Your Fellow Traveler

Lacey