Cleaning Up the Lost

When I was at McNeil Jr. High I remember getting “on fire for the Lord.” I remember telling a few of my lost friends that they should stop cussing. Instead they should start going to church. I was never received well. Usually, I just felt more isolated and alone. But I at least did the right thing. To me, that was what mattered most – being right, but boy was I wrong!

I feel humbled to know that it was me who went around trying to change my lost buddies. I didn’t have any understanding of grace or the power of Christ. Grace was just a pretty word that followed the word “Amazing” and the power of Christ was something I believed I could conjure if I tried hard enough. My thoughts of salvation weren’t about Christ, but sadly instead about me. I sought to be a mover and a shaker that would make God really proud. I now see my efforts were meant to build up me and not Christ. I was a Christian, but what an ugly picture of Christ I painted.

In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul addressed some Christians about the sad and distorted beliefs they preached and practiced. In Chapter 5 starting in verse 9, he wrote:

“I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person. For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside God judges. Therefore ‘put away from yourselves the evil person.’”

None of us has “arrived”, but it is an awesome and overwhelming thing when one realizes that there isn’t a single thing a person can do to earn God’s favor. Everything a child of God has is wrapped up in our free and unearned favor from God. On the cross Jesus did all the work to make us acceptable in God’s eyes. We are all sinners and that won’t change until we shed this body of flesh. I’m not justifying sin, but I acknowledge it is Christ who has taken away ALL my gunk and sin - past, present, and future. And for His great love I serve Him. God knows us inside and out, and accepts us solely because of Jesus.

It is not our job to clean up the lost. The most effective witnesses merely tell what God has done in their lives. They publicly give God glory for His grace! We are called to love and not judge, but there is a fine line between loving the sinner and accepting their sin. It is a painful thing to see someone you love in the process of screwing up their life, but if they are spiritually dead, you must focus on showing them the love and grace and forgiveness of Christ working in your life. Don’t focus on trying to change them. They may hear the gospel at church if you invite them, but it is a sad thing to see a lost person who has been duped with the appearance of a changed life and not the real deal.

I once told a lost friend who was living with his girlfriend that they really ought to get married. The Bible said so. I told them that what they were doing was sin. So after they had lived together for a few years and had a couple of kids, they had a super big wedding. What a relief! Now they were official, and would finally find favor with God. That’s not true, but in essence that’s what I told them. Why didn’t I just tell him what God was doing in my life? What I did wasn’t for him, but for me. I felt justified in knowing I had preached the Word! I felt like God would favor me more since I did His work. I took the easy way out. Well, they got divorced within two years, and we hardly talked after that. I think he felt like I was a liar. He didn’t feel a change, but instead a disappointment.

Yes, my friend needed a changed life, but I gave him an impossible task. “Clean yourself up!” is what I basically told him. “Try harder! God might accept you then.” That was the gist of what I told him, but now those words hurt for me to hear them. I wasn’t introducing him to the God who found me a stinking filthy sinner, and picked me up, and cleaned me up. I was telling him of an impossible God, who would never be happy with him. Try harder! Try harder! Dear Reader, I am using myself as an example for your benefit.

It is Jesus who must change us. Only Jesus can change us, and He does it from the inside out. When I was lost, I knew it and I loathed myself for it. I knew I was full of evil and darkness. I didn’t need someone to rub it in. It is not our job to clean up the lost, but to love them the way Christ loves us all.