Pastor Tom
Johnson, March 15, 2015
I wonder if you feel the same way I do when we confess our sins together
in our worship: “I, a poor, miserable sinner.” I am not just a sinner but a miserable sinner. It may sound medieval
to our ears—out of fashion or, even worse, self-degrading. “Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” It is the kind of diagnosis none of us wants. We
are sinners, miserable sinners, and poor wretches one and all. What benefit could come from such sin-talk? How can such an honest and
transparent reflection of our fallen, human nature actually build us up? To be
sure, we do not want to bring further harm or injury to anyone including
ourselves. But if we increase our understanding of the depth of our sinfulness—if we
plummet the dark crevices of our broken humanity—we will discover a truth that
will not drag us further down. It will lift us up.
“You were dead through the trespasses and sins” our Scripture says—not
sick, swooned, or even comatose—but dead. We all have lived captive to the
power of evil and darkness. We all have lived for self-pleasure. We are all
“children of wrath.” That is to say, we deserve God’s wrath and anger. As we also confessed our
sins, “[I] justly deserved your temporal and eternal punishment.” As the prayer
of the day says, “we deserve only punishment.” This is where we need to be very careful. How we understand this language
is a game-changer. To understand our sin and what it deserves should not lead
us to a more terrifying view of God. To say that God has every right to punish us for our sins here and
forever does not mean that we have a god who wants to. To portray God as
wrathful and vengeful is a tragic error. It is false teaching. It is heresy. “We were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else,” our Scripture
says, “but God—but God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which
he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive
together with Christ—by grace you have been saved.”
I believe Paul’s point in this beautiful Scripture is to say that by
seeing the depths of our sin we discover the heights of God’s mercy and love.
Deepening our understanding of our depravity should elevate our view of God’s
grace. When God reveals his holy Name to Moses, he said of himself, “The Lord,
the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in
steadfast love and faithfulness.” He is rich in mercy and great in love! We live in the poverty of our sins until we receive the riches of God’s
mercy. We live in the wilderness of our trespasses until we encounter the
greatness of God’s love. That is what mercy is. Mercy is not getting what we deserve. Mercy is God
withholding punishment and anger. The wonderful news is that he has never
wanted to give us what we deserve, punish, or be angry toward us to begin with. “For God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son.” God loves
sinners. That’s why Jesus was born, live, died, and rose again—to reach out to
miserable sinners like you and me, forgive us, and lead us to eternal life.
This leads me back to where we started: “I a poor, miserable sinner.”
Don’t you love that word miserable?
Did you notice that it isn’t in our Scripture? In fact, it is not a biblical
word at all. It comes from the Latin miserābilis.
But it is still a great word. It’s meaning does a good job in communicating the
truth of day. Miserable does not mean sad or unhappy. It does not
mean used goods. It does not mean worthless. It is based on the Latin verb to have mercy (miserior). Miserable is rooted in the mercy of God. It means
exactly what it sounds like—the one to whom is able to receive mercy. A person who is miserable is the best candidate for the rich mercy and the
great love of God. They are pitiable—potential
recipients of the empathy, compassion, and pity of Almighty God. When we say were are poor, miserable sinners, we are making our appeal to
God for his forgiveness telling him we are good candidates for the Gospel—and
God is gets to shower us with his rich mercy and great love. When we pray kyrie eleison, “Lord,
have mercy,” we do so confident that he will because God loves to have mercy on
us miserable sinners.
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