July 17, 2011
Mostly Good (Most of the Time) - Romans 7:13-25
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadBetty Ford, wife of President Gerald Ford, died last week. Gerald Ford, in my opinion, is one of the 21st Century’s unsung heroes. He was a humble man, insisting that we had gotten a “Ford and not a Lincoln,” who somehow managed to achieve the highest office in the land and at the same time keep himself in check while encouraging others. He also said something that I think was fairly indicative of his philosophy towards the end of his life that has long since stuck with me. When President Bill Clinton presented Gerald Ford with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in August, 1999, he said as looked back on his political career that he felt politics to be, despite the scandals and dirty deals, a very noble and high calling. In his experience, “most people are mostly good most of the time.” I’ve always remembered that quote and, unlike many Calvinists, have found it to be very true, both as it relates to other people and also as it relates to myself.
I am mostly good, most of the time. That’s not bad, is it? I’m a mostly good pastor, most of the time. Of course I make mistakes. I say things that I should not say at times. I do things that I might should not do. I don’t do other things that I should do, or at last should do more. I’m a mostly good Christian, most of the time. You’re with me now, I’m sure. I’m a mostly good father, most of the time. I’m a mostly good husband, most of the time. You’re really with me now. I’m mostly faithful to my wife most of the time. You’re not with me now, though, are you? I am mostly faithful to my wife, say 51% of the time. I am 51% faithful, 51% of the time. No? Okay, I’m faithful 75% of the time. That leaves me a full quarter to sow my wild oats. Okay, 99% of the time. Approximately four times a year, once a quarter, I can have an indiscretion or two.
Mostly good most of the time might not be as optimistic or as good as I thought. The Apostle Paul here would actually agree that most people are mostly good most of the time. The problem, obviously, is what to do with everything else? If most people are mostly good most of the time, then most people are mostly rotten some of the time. Some people are mostly rotten all the time. And everybody is kind of sort of rotten all the time. There’s all kinds of folly in that, and I think Paul would completely agree. If you were here last week, you ought to be scratching your head right now, because Romans 7 completely contradicts Romans 6. Paul said in Chapter 6 that we were new creations, that our sinful, rotten selves were gone. I said last week that whereas we once were Mules, that God had made us stallions. We’re ready to go run the derby now. Incidentally, Barry Choate’s mule, Ida Red, took great exception to what I had to say about Mules. She said stallions are way over-rated, that stallions are only for show and mules do all the work. Well tell Ida Red, Barry, to cool it for a little while. As it turns out, at least from Chapter 7, we humans would do well to be mules. “Mostly good most of the time” turns out to be pretty rotten, far more rotten than we ever thought. It’s possible, after all, to be mostly good, and to still “not do the good we want, but the evil that we don’t want.”
Most biblical scholars claim that Paul is using something called the “historical present” in Chapter 7. Writers and speakers do that often for emphasis. They refer to something in the past as if it were still present. Goodness knows where Paul was a Pharisee, long before his conversion, he was mostly good most of the time. In fact, he was almost perfect. “If anyone has reason to be confident in the flesh,” he wrote in Philippians 3, “I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the Church; as to righteousness, blameless.” When it came to being good, Paul was really, really good at it.
The problem, however, is that even when he was good, sin was always present. There’s no way to take sin out of the picture. It’s part of the human condition. So even if we are mostly good most of the time, we still have a problem. In fact, sometimes goodness is the problem. Is it really possible for us, even when we are honestly trying to be good, to be completely good? How many of us, after all, have done the right things for all the wrong reasons? We Christians can be particularly vulnerable to that. In fact, we preachers can be particularly vulnerable to that. I am the only profession in the entire world that gets everybody’s full attention for a half hour every week. Now do I do that for God’s glory, or is it possible to do that for my own glory, to get the bigger steeple Church, to get noticed, to move up the ladder? How many pastors can we name who started out in ministry, figured out that they were good at certain aspects, and got some success, maybe lots of success, and then somehow got caught in adultery or swindling money? They didn’t start out that way. They never thought to themselves that they could really live on easy street if they went to seminary, and started pastoring a little congregation in the country, and then move up the ladder, and then finally after about thirty years, make the big time where they could rip the place off. It’s not that Church is inherently bad, or that God’s call is inherently had. All those things are good. But sin can twist those things around. Sin can take what is good and turn it into something very bad. How many couples get married looking forward to a divorce five years down the road? And yet it happens to 50% of them. It’s not that marriage is bad. It’s just that sin is very prevalent. It’s everywhere. Can we ever be completely, 100% good? If we think we can be, then we are in a very dangerous place. When Paul was as Pharisee, perfectly keeping the law, he was also persecuting the Church. He was working against God. He didn’t mean to. But that’s what happened.
Our Sunday school class has been studying marriage lately, specifically how we often have expectations in our marriages. You expect, for example, you wife to do certain things that wives are supposed to do, at least according to you. And those expectations are often very legitimate. Now the problem is that your wife is mostly good most of the time. Therefore, she never completely meets those expectations, ever. And, by the way, she has a few expectations for you, which are, like your expectations, probably very legitimate. And, like her, you are mostly good most of the time. Neither of you is good enough. And so you constantly live pretty much in a debt-debtor relationship. You’ve got a contract and not a covenant. That’s not what marriage is. So therefore, in a way, you’re not really a true husband and your wife is not really a true wife. You’re essentially business partners. But when you remove those expectations then you free each other to become husband and wife together.
That’s how God deals with us. God in Christ has made us good enough. Maybe that’s a way to look at it. God has taken the expectations away. I don’t mean that anything goes, but I do mean that God has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. God has taken the initiative to get us in right relationship both with him and with others. The idea of a tit for tat God, a God who rewards us solely on our own behavior and by our own merits is gone. At the end of the day, it’s grace. That’s an incredibly freeing idea. Even though that sin is there and it still matters, it still strikes us at the most inopportune times, it cannot, by definition, have its way with us. It can’t.
Because at the end of the day, God has had his own way. At the end of the day, it’s not our own righteousness that gets us anywhere. If we stand on our own righteousness, we’ll never be anything other than mostly good most of the time. But God is good all the time. That’s the Gospel. “Who will rescue me from the body of death?” Paul asks. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” So you’re free to be whom you are called, whom you are created to be. The pressure is off. God is incredibly good and we are all incredibly blessed. Go enjoy it.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
