Jesus said that we would be His witnesses, thanks to the power of the Holy Spirit. Check it out…it’s the last thing Jesus tells his disciples before he goes back to heaven in the beginning of Acts. I cannot and would not like to count how many times I have heard the phrase “hurting your witness” in reference to (basically) publicly screwing up. I know people who have seriously considered giving up trying to live for God because they knew that every nonbeliever around them saw them lose their temper or talk about somebody or just fail to be “good.” What if there’s something a little less condemning about that whole situation?
Disclaimer (I use these a lot) : I believe that we are called to be set apart. I believe that God meant it when He commanded us to be holy as He is holy. I believe that every person who knows I am a Christ-follower looks at me with a certain degree of expectation.
BUT.
I also believe that Jesus knew who He was talking to when He sent out His witnesses. He had to know that by sending them out, He was advertising a group of imperfect and ultimately flawed human beings as his disciples. He had to know that when the rest of the world looked at them, there would be times when they wouldn’t exactly look like Him. And He told them to go anyway.
We are sent out as witnesses of Jesus. Of who He is and what He has done to radically change our lives. Of the fundamental call to sacrifice and personal death that IS the Christian life. So when we go out into the “world” and claim the name of Jesus, what if the whole point is to show them that grace is attainable? What the heck is so attractive about perfection if you know you wouldn’t ever be perfect? If we stay comfortably inside our stained-glass walls and never live a real life in front of anyone, hide our imperfections and refuse to admit that we’re a work in progress, I genuinely don’t believe anyone would want to be in our shoes.
Why? Because every one of us knows that perfection is not human. A non-believer (assuming said non-believer is fully human) might just be more attracted to the idea of grace than you think. So if you fall somewhere humiliatingly short of holiness like me, and have the same really annoying tendency to do so quite obviously to the rest of the world, USE that. When you honestly admit to them that you are nothing more than a fellow sinner, saved and covered by Jesus’ blood, Christianity might seem just a little more possible. We are all wretched if you remove that salvation/mercy thing. It doesn’t mean that we aren’t trying our best to please God, it just means that we have the humility to admit it when we are wrong instead of beating ourselves up about it.
Be Jesus’ witness. If necessary, be a really good example of God’s grace to the wretched.
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