Jesus—hope for spiritual losers

Spiritual and religious systems tend to create two kinds of people: the winners and the losers.  The winners are the people that have the background, self-control and people skills to make them look like they are following the religious system.  Getting out of bed at 8:00am on a Sunday is natural to them, so their church attendance is regular.  They grew up in a church setting, so they know which clothes to wear and which words to say in a religious setting.  If you didn’t grow up in church, you may end up wearing shorts and flip-flops to a dress-up church, or a shirt and tie to a dress-down church.  You always end up waking up late.  The potential embarrassment of showing up late in flip-flops to a dress-up church tends to keep you away from church.  If that’s you, you are what I’m calling a spiritual loser.  Don’t take too much offense, however, because Jesus seems to attract spiritual losers and he is highly critical of spiritual winners). 

Take for example the story that Jesus tells in Luke 18:9-14.  Two men go into a church to worship God.  One was a spiritual winner, the other a spiritual loser.  The Spiritual Winner says, “I thank you, God, that I am not an alcoholic, homosexual, gang banger or a Spiritual Loser.  I give 10% of my income to the church, read lots or Christians books, listen to Christian music and have a Christian dog.”  The Spiritual Loser, on the other hand, sat in the back row, with his face down and quietly muttered to God, “Have mercy on me God, I’m just a sinner.”  Jesus says, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other” (Luke 18:14 ESV).  It was the sinner, not the self-righteous that Jesus says was right with God.  Really? Why is the humble sinner eternally right with God while the guy that knows all the church songs going to hell? 

None of us can become right with God on the basis of what we do.  In reality, we are all such extreme losers that we can only be right with God on the basis of someone else’s work.  Just like my wife did not earn the right to be a part of my father’s family, but became a part of that family on the basis of me giving it to her, so to we can only be right with God on the basis of him giving us that right (which we call mercy).  Such a status with God cost God dearly. If he were to forgive sin without any punishment, that would be injustice.  Therefore God punished his son, Jesus, in our place so that we could be seen by God as just as perfect as Jesus himself. 

So God sees the Spiritual Loser that trusts God for a changed life as perfect as Jesus himself.  That leaves the person-formerly-known-as Spiritual Winner depending on his own, faulty religious performance.  Ouch. 

So, in the end, the person that knows they are a spiritual loser is one step closer to being right with God than the one that feels comfortable in church.  Or as Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3).