I was in line behind a woman at the Wal Mart checkout counter. She was talking with the cashier; someone she obviously knew.
I overheard their conversation. This took no special efforts at eavesdropping on my part. They were speaking loud enough to be heard plainly.
One said, “He plays that alienation game.”
The other said, “When someone has that in them it’s never coming out.”
At home I wrote down those two lines before I forgot them. It was thought provoking, and I wondered if it might have potential for a blog article. Well, here it is.
I have no idea who the “he” was or what “that alienation game” was. It sounded like a chronic behavior that someone obviously found frustrating. But I was particularly interested in the comment, “When someone has that in them it’s never coming out.”
So, the person was stuck playing the alienation game forever? No possibility for repentance and change?
It raises the question of whether people can change or not. Or whether some people are so bad that they are beyond hope.
We hear comments (or maybe make them ourselves) like: “They’ll never change, “They’ll always be that way,” “They’ll die that way.”
Why do people say things like that? My best guess is that they are venting. They get so mad at someone that the only way they can sufficiently express their anger is to consign that person to forever being that way, beyond the hope of change or salvation. While anger might be justified, they go too far and say something harsh to make the point. Their words declare the frustrating sinner as beyond hope.
Such condemnation might bring some temporarily relief. It’s a way to blow off steam. But it’s wrong. It’s declaring that the person is beyond the possibility of grace.
But Jesus held out the possibility of repentance, even from deep-seated, habitual sins. In Luke 18:13, Jesus told of a tax collector who “… stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner’.”
Tax collectors back then were habitual sinners. Being a Jewish tax collector for the Roman Empire meant cheating, corruption and a love of money so strong that you were even willing to betray your countrymen. And yet Jesus held out the possibility of repentance for them. They just had to soften their hearts. Jesus added (vs. 14), “I tell you that this man, rather than the other [an unrepentant Pharisee], went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Redemption is possible even for the worst, most habitual sinners. We must leave room for that because God does.
Sometimes it helps in this to remember our own past sins. While we should not do this too much (after all we’ve be saved from them), the sting of remembrance can keep us humble and show us that we were once a hard case too, just like the people we might now be tempted to condemn. Oswald Chambers speaks of areas of our lives where we might be stuck, one of these areas might be judgmentalism. God may have to remind us of where we came from: “Never be afraid when God brings back the past. Let memory have its way. It is a minister of God with its rebuke and chastisement and sorrow,” (My Utmost for His Highest, April 3). Remembering our own past sins carries a pain with it, but that’s a price worth paying–a healthy rebuke that keeps us from judgmentalism.
True, some sinners are chronic, hard cases. But we must allow for the possibility of their change.
As a pastor, I’ve worked with some people who were hard cases. Though I prayed, gave them the best direction I could, there was still something inside of them that resisted. It would not be right to get frustrated and think, “They’ll always resist the gospel!”
Why do people resist the gospel so much? It seems unimaginable, but they do. Some resist because they love sin too much. Some resist because they are just not interested in salvation enough. Some sit in judgment of God’s way of salvation, thinking it too narrow or exclusive in these broad-minded times.
Be we must labor on, speaking to anyone who will listen. Perhaps we can plant a seed that will grow later. We need to be content with doing what we can. We just leave it in God’s hands, making our contribution in whatever part of the process we find ourselves in.
I’ve fought against the Calvinistic doctrine that God chooses some individuals for heaven and the rest, necessarily, are chosen to go to hell. It doesn’t fit with the generosity of God toward sinners we see in scripture. No one is exempt from the possibility of salvation. But while I defend the biblical view of a generous God I must be careful not find myself ungenerous, writing off people as impossible cases.
There’s a good quote from a great church leader, Phineas F. Bresee, who said, “We are debtors to every man to give him the gospel in the same measure in which we have received it.” If God makes a way for salvation that is open to anyone, who am I to deny it? It’s alright to get frustrated at chronic sinful behavior; indeed, how can we not be frustrated? But we have to handle it right. We cannot view anyone as beyond hope.