There is little remorse - or repentance - before God today, even in the Church. Yet only God can deliver us from the evil in our heart, body and soul. It is common to hear Christians talk of their "brokenness". But if you listen closely, you often discover that they are talking about their wounds, about the things they have suffered, not about the evil that is in them.Now this, this really challenged me.
Because I've done it before.
I've talked about my brokenness, but my focus has been on the wounds I've received and the way that has broken me.
And I'm not going to try saying that those wounds aren't a brokenness. That those wounds aren't part of my brokenness.
Because they are.
They are a break in my heart. A break in me.
But perhaps, and I think this what they are getting at, they are not a brokenness in and of themselves.
Perhaps our wounds, the brokenness we often talk about, is actually a sign of a deeper brokenness.
And perhaps in our rush, well, my rush, to heal the surface brokenness, I've overlooked the deeper brokenness.
The brokenness that halts the fixing of the surface brokenness.
The brokenness that inflicts wounds on other people.
The brokenness that means that the brokenness of this world is self-perpetuating.
The brokenness that means that the whole world is ugly, blackened, striving.
The brokenness that started, not with the cutting word of a friend, or the blow of a fist, or the isolation of life, but with a woman, in a garden, thousands of years ago.
A woman who ate a fruit she'd been told not to eat.
The only fruit that she was told not to eat.
Because we see it, don't we? As we read that Genesis 3 passage. We see where our brokenness really started, and we see what our brokenness really is.
Our brokenness started with a choice.
A choice to break God's command.
God's one command. His single command. His only command. How many more times do I want to repeat it for effect?
Because everything was perfect.
Absolutely everything.
There was only one single, solitary command. God's no killjoy.
And yet the woman chose to break it.
She chose to eat the forgiven fruit.
And in so doing she broke everything.
She broke our relationship with God.
She broke our relationship with each other.
She broke our relationship with the world.
She broke our relationship with ourselves.
She broke all other relationships in the world
Because rebellion - nay, treason - is a brokenness.
It is the brokenness of trust.
The brokenness of faith.
The brokenness of relationship.
The brokenness of order.
The brokenness of purpose.
And inside each and every one of us is that same brokenness.
Around each and every one of us is that same brokenness.
And inside all of us is that same desire to rebel, to commit treason.
Our brokenness doesn't come from anyone or anything other than our own decision to keep on living our own way. Ignoring the One who created everything. Pointedly rebelling against the Rightful King.
Yeah, we've got no one to blame but ourselves.
Sure, it started with the woman (Eve), but it continues with us.
Each and every one of us.
Because our wounds, yeah, they are a brokenness. But they are only the surface brokenness. They are the result, the pointer to, the expression of a far deeper and far deadlier brokenness.
And there is a word for that brokenness.
That word is sin.
Sin.
Such a small little word.
But it has so much meaning.
It means our rebellion against the King. Our rejection of our Creator. Our single-minded determination to run our own lives coupled with our complete and utter blindness.
We've got no clue.
We are broken.
At our core we are broken.
You could say that when Eve and Adam ate that stupid piece of fruit, they broke the blueprint.
And all the rest of us since have been broken.
And then we've continued our brokenness.
Brokenness perpetuating brokenness.
Well, not all of us.
One Man was born who was not broken.
One Man was born who was not, at His core, rebellious, self-serving, single-minded and blind.
Just one Man.
But He was enough.
Because He was more than just a man.
He was the God-Man.
The God who we broke faith with, the God who we break faith with, refused to break faith with us.
And He became a Man.
A whole Man. A perfect Man.
Man as He was always intended to be.
And through His life, through His death and His Resurrection, He made it possible for us to pass all our brokenness to Him and be whole again.
But here's the thing.
First of all, we have to be willing to hand our brokenness to Him.
When was the last time you confessed your sins? And not because it was expected of you, or because you were saying the words by rote in church.
But truly confessed them. The last time you saw your sins, you possessed them and then handed them over to God?
I know it's been a while.
It's something I have to work on.
I have thought, up until tonight, that praise was the aspect of interacting with God that I found the hardest.
But I now know I was wrong.
It's easy to look at God, to really look at Him and to respond with adulation and admiration.
But it is intensely hard to look from God to myself. To look away from His wholeness and perfection in order to see my brokenness and imperfection.
And then to own that brokenness and imperfection and pass it on to God.
But that's what confession is. And it is only when we can see the need for Jesus and accept Him that what Jesus did is of any use to us.
Because what did He do?
He enables us to partake in His wholeness and perfection.
And here's something that needs to be said.
As Christians in the current age, we are walking paradoxes.
We are broken.
And we are whole.
It Christ we are whole. We are fixed. We are perfect.
But of ourselves we are broken. We are imperfect.
And if we focus solely on the first, we forget the second and can start to slide away, forgetting the magnitude of what Christ has done for us.
And if we focus too much on the second, we forget the first and become despairing.
And I guess, here's what I want to say:
We are broken.
And our brokenness is more than just our wounds.
It is our sin.
We are broken.
But not irrevocably.
Because in Christ we can be made whole again.
In Christ, we are made whole again.
But until the New Heaven and the New Earth, our brokenness is waging war on our wholeness and we must never, ever become complacent.
Because the second we do is the second our brokenness wins.
Instead, we must keep seeking God.
Keep seeking His will and acting on it.
Keep seeking His love and treasuring it.
Keep seeking His grace and sharing it.
Keep seeking His relationship with us and placing it above everything else.
Because only that way can our wholeness win. Because it's not really our wholeness.
It's God's.
