HOW’S YOUR CREDIT RATING WITH GOD?

(Preached on Sunday, October 2, 2005)

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ.                                                                            -Philippians 3:7

 

This past month I bought a car.

When you buy a car, unless you are paying cash, to secure a loan for the amount you cannot pay up front, they run a credit report on you.

They also do that if you arrange cell phone service, or get a mortgage for a home purchase, or lease an apartment.  Actually, there are many, many transactions where our credit rating is checked.

This rating can determine many things — such as whether you receive the loan, what interest rate you pay, even if there are other fees charged you.  If you have a good credit rating, you often not only get the loan but you get a better interest rate.  If you have a bad credit rating, you may not get the loan, or you may get it but pay a higher interest rate or more fees.

Luckily, I was able to buy the car.

 

Here the apostle Paul is running a sort of “credit rating” on his life.

He lists all the things that he once looked at to evaluate his worth and his value — “a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent of God’s law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting Christians; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God’s law Book.”

These were the things Paul once depended on to assure himself and others that he was a good person, a valuable person, pleasing to God.

He had a pedigree of birth, came from the right people, had done everything he possibly could to live a good, holy, upright life.

Paul had come to realize though, that none of that mattered.

After he came to know Jesus, the living Christ, he now let go of all that other stuff that he was relying on.

 

As I read this and reflected on it this past week I struggled with applying this passage to myself.  After all, I don’t have the pedigree Paul had.

My parents and grandparents, while good folk, were nobody special.  There are no kings or queens, no dukes or earls, no blue blood of any sort in my ancestors.  And they did not achieve much in their lifetimes — no great companies started, no political offices held, no great holdings of land or stocks.

I didn’t come from a long line of preachers and pastors.

I’m not sure I have all that much to let go of on the credit side of the ledger... but wait, I have always done really well in school.

Evidently I tested out with a pretty high I.Q. in elementary school (I don’t really know, since my teachers and parents decided not to tell me so it wouldn’t go to my head.)  I did graduate in the top 1 percent of my high school class of 1,000 students.  I did receive my Bachelors degree Summa Cum Laude.  I did receive my Master’s degree with distinction.  I did earn a Doctor of Ministry degree.

I am a very well educated person with above average intelligence.    That is what I have always tended to rely on for validation and assurance of worth and value.

 

What do you rely on?

Is it your family heritage?  Were you born into the “right” family? 

I sat next to a very nice woman this past week at a community meeting who was very excited to introduce herself to me as another “Congregationalist.”  In fact, one of her ancestors was on the Mayflower!  She was a true American!

What do you rely on?

Is it your work ethic, which has generated success?

Is it the contacts you have made in your work and your life?  Do you rely on knowing the “right” people?

Is it your bank account and your stock portfolio?

Is it the success of your children?

It is your looks?  Do you work hard to keep yourself in top physical shape, eat all the right foods, none of the wrong ones, and work out daily at the gym?

Is it your membership in a political party?  Do you read all the right columnists and listen to the right radio hosts?

Is it your membership in this church?  Are you trusting in that for your validation as a good person?

What is it for you?  What are you relying on for the validation that you are a person of worth and value, someone worth loving, therefore, someone with whom God is pleased and must surely love?

 

Now lets be honest.

Does that do it for you?

I know all my educational achievements don’t.

For all that I have achieved educationally, I still struggle to remember that I am a good person.  I still get short with my wife and snap at her for no reason at all.

I still struggle with feelings of inadequacy.

I still get caught up in feeling like it all depends on me and when my life, or the church, or my children, or my marriage, are not glowing brightly with gleaming success, then somehow I have failed and somehow I don’t measure up.

Paul had that same experience.

On the road to Damascus.

God confronted him with the life of Jesus, the life of a truly good, holy, righteous man who loved and accepted himself because he knew beyond a doubt that he was loved and accepted by God and as a result he loved and accepted everyone else, with great compassion.

God held that life up against Paul’s life, which Paul had thought to be a great success, but which was not loving and accepting, but judgmental, full of hate and condemnation for others, constantly worrying about measuring up to a high standard of perfection and therefore striving to root out all those who did not measure up to that standard; a life which had turned to violence against those who did not measure up.

And suddenly Paul saw that none of that mattered.

What mattered was the love and acceptance of God, which is what Paul had been looking for in his life all along and which none of those other things had ever provided him.  In fact, those other things were getting in the way of his receiving the love and acceptance of God.

 

Not that they were bad things.

But they led him to take his eyes off of God.

He was so worried about measuring up, he took his focus off of God and placed it on himself and what he needed to do.

We all tend to do that in our relationship with God.

Peter was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn’t find a parking space.  Looking up toward heaven, he said, “Lord, take pity on me.  If you find me a parking space I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of my life and give up tequila.”

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.  Peter looked up again and said, “Never mind.  I found one.”

 

But Paul finally understood that it didn’t rely on him and what he did, but totally and completely on God.

And though he did not fully understand it, he embraced it.