Christmas is for Losers

A couple of weeks ago, my husband burned both his hands at work, and he had them wrapped up in Burn Shield and bandages. So, obviously, he couldn’t drive, feed himself, or button his pants. But, added to that, he’s an amputee, so he has a prosthetic leg. This meant that when it came to bed time, and I had taken his leg off for him to have a bath, he couldn’t get to the bedroom on crutches, like he usually does. So, he did what he had to, which meant scooting across the passage to the bedroom on his bottom!!

The fact is that since Bjorn’s amputation 16 years ago, he has healed and recovered, but he has needed assistance of some form: a wheelchair at first, then crutches and a prosthetic leg. As well as he copes with life since his accident, there’s no escaping from the fact that there’s something missing, and something he needs help with.

Why am I baring our personal lives like this in church, you might be wondering? Let me tell you how this experience relates to our walk with the Lord …

In 1999 Governor Jesse Ventura of Minnesota said these words about people who believe in Christ Jesus as their Saviour: he stated that “Christianity was for the weak and for people who needed a crutch.”

Now, what’s ironic about this comment is that Governor Ventura meant it as an insult, that Christians are too weak or inadequate to stand up and get through life on their own – but he didn’t realise that his words were right on target!

Before you get mad at me, let me explain to you, from Scripture, why I think that we all, like Bjorn, need a “crutch”, because we can’t handle life without help.

We are “losers” in two ways. The first is before our salvation.

Read with me from Luke 19, starting in verse 1 …

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, He looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed Him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Zacchaeus is a guy who, on the outside, has it all together: he’s rich, powerful, well-connected in government circles. In material terms, he had it made, and lacked for nothing.

But internally, Zacchaeus knows he’s not all that – his name in Greek means “pure”, but his hands are dirty with money he’s skimming from the taxes he collects, and he knows that people fear him, but they don’t really like him … and he knows he needs help, because he’s too small and weak to fix his own life.

And when Jesus passes through town, Zaccheus gives up his image, drops his pose, and climbs up a tree to see the Person his heart tells him he needs to meet.

And then, wonder upon wonders – without him having to say a word, Jesus sees him, He calls Zaccheus by name, and He wants to meet with him in person. The religious leaders are scandalized that this holy man wants to eat a meal with a corrupt city official, but that’s where we see the very heart of the Saviour, when he says, “Zaccheus, you were a loser, but today, you are saved!”

It started all the way back in the Garden of Eden, when sin made its way into creation. The sin wasn’t the eating of the fruit as much as it was Adam and Eve thinking that they didn’t need God, and that their way of doing things would be just as good as the way that God had told them to do it. It’s the sin of rebellion, and I think it’s safe to say it’s a sin we’ve all been guilty of.

And on into the New Testament … Paraphrasing from Romans, Paul says that we all have offered ourselves as slaves to impurity and ever-increasing unrighteousness. He says that we all have sinned and fall short of the glorious image of God that we were created in. And he says that the wages, the price to be paid for our sin, is death – our death, an eternity separated from Father God.

And this is where Governor Ventura got it … you see, the world tells people that they are enough, they are the authors of their own destiny, their truth is all that matters, and if it makes you happy it must be okay. So to the world, admitting that you need Someone to guide you through life, admitting that we need an external and objective Truth to base life and morality and society on, seems an admission of weakness and insecurity.

However, it doesn’t take much intelligence to look at the world around us and realize that their way isn’t working! Crime, violence, perversion and outright evil is rampant and on the rise, and no one in politics or Hollywood has the solution!

But right back in the Garden, in Genesis 3 verse 15, the promise was given:

"I will put enmity between you (Satan) and the woman, and between your offspring (those who follow the enemy) and her offspring (the Son of God); He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.” —Genesis 3:15 [ESV]

In a just a few words, God sets the foundation for a consistent theme in the Old Testament: our Redeemer is coming. Just as the curse is getting embedded into creation, even before Adam and Eve learn of the consequences of their sin, God reveals His covenant of grace with mankind! From the beginning of time, God had set a plan into motion to redeem His people. But if we don’t see our need for God’s grace, His greatest gift to us loses its significance. It's only when we understand the complete picture of man's unrighteousness and God's perfect plan of redemption as it's woven through Scripture that we can see clearly our need for a Saviour.

Until we have a “Zaccheus moment”, where we recognize and admit that we are sinners and that we need the Only Person who can redeem us from our sin, we are the biggest losers.

Where Governor Ventura got it right was in saying that followers of Christ are those who need and accept their need for a Saviour, those who realize that they are incapable of saving themselves, that they are not made in their own image, that no amount of chasing the “stuff” of this world will fill the emptiness in their hearts and lives, and that no amount of good works will gain us eternal life.

Where he got it wrong was in thinking that this makes Christians “losers” or weak – because in truth, it’s a bold act of faith to admit that we can’t earn our way into heaven and we can’t fix ourselves, and then to submit our way and our will and our pride, and ask Him to come into our lives and make us new and whole, in His image.

So, without a Saviour, we’re lost. We’re separated from God while we’re alive on earth, and destined to spend eternity the same way after our physical bodies die.

But, in another way, in the way Jesse Ventura meant it, we’re also “losers” after we get saved.

Now hear me out … I mean it in a good way!!

The world, Instagram, Pinterest, are full of quotes like these:

“This is your Monday morning reminder that you are powerful beyond measure. That you are capable of anything you are willing to work for.”

“There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.”

“Be ambitious. Get ‘stuff’ done. Do well. Live well. Eat well. Keep your priorities straight. Your mind right and your head up. Do what you love. Love what you do.”

These type of quotes sound so good, so powerful, so inspiring … But there’s something fundamentally wrong with quotes like these from the point of view of a Believer.

Please read with me in 2 Corinthians Chapter 12 verses 1 – 10 …

This boasting will do no good, but I must go on. I will reluctantly tell about visions and revelations from the Lord. I was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years ago. Whether I was in my body or out of my body, I don’t know—only God knows. Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell.

That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses. If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me. That’s why I take pleasure in my weaknesses, and in the insults, hardships, persecutions, and troubles that I suffer for Christ. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

In the chapter just before this passage, the church in Corinth was under attack by what Paul termed so-called “super-apostles.”

Apparently, these “super-apostles” were leading some of the Believers astray from what Paul calls “sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” They were boasting about themselves, trying to make people followers of them rather than of Christ.

And so what Paul is telling them is that if there is any boasting to be done, it is to be a boasting in the Lord—not in the self.

Paul describes a remarkable experience he had 14 years before, in which he was given insight into spiritual realities.

For some reason, something about this particular spiritual vision was so amazing and extraordinary that Paul says he was afflicted by a “thorn in [his] flesh” to keep him from boasting about it—to keep him humble.

There’s been lots of speculation about what Paul means by a “thorn in the flesh”, but from the original Greek we can see that it was not some minor annoyance; it wasn’t just “a pain in the neck.”

But listen to what Paul says happens when he prays for healing, or release from this affliction:

First, he says he prayed “three times”, but the original text indicates that he actually prayed “many times”, so his answer didn’t come quickly or easily.

Second, Paul says, “And He said to me”… God responded personally to Paul, just as He had with Zaccheus – but this time, the answer was not what Paul hoped for or expected.

Third, God’s answer seems contradictory: “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” … Instead of removing the thorn from Paul’s life, God left the affliction, but gave and would keep giving His grace to Paul.

I love how David Guzik explains this response from the Lord. He says: “Paul was desperate in his desire to find relief from this burden, but there are two ways of relief. It can come by removing the load or by strengthening the shoulder that bears the load. Instead of taking away the thorn, God strengthened Paul under it, and God would show His strength through Paul’s apparent weakness.”

Fourth, for God’s grace to strengthen Paul, Paul had to believe that God’s grace is sufficient. Just as the unsaved don’t believe that God’s gift of redemption is necessary until they see their own sinfulness, so we as Believers don’t really believe God’s grace is sufficient until we believe that we are insufficient. For many of us, especially in western culture, this is a huge obstacle to God’s grace being effective in our lives. As a culture, we idolize the “self-made man” and want to rely on ourselves. But we can’t receive God’s strength until we know our weakness.

Now, I want to be careful that I am not misunderstood here … the Word of God describes Believers as “victorious”, as “conquerors”, as “righteous”, and “justified” and “made new” – how amazing is that, when before our salvation we had fallen so far short of God’s standard for our lives that we were deserving of death??!!

But when you read every single one of those words that describe the power and victory we have as Believers in the Bible, it is prefaced with the condition “IN CHRIST”.

That’s why the world’s message of “you are enough; you have what it takes”, is problematic for us as children of God – should we be successful people who overcome their problems and live lives of victory and joy? OF COURSE!! Can we do it on our own, in our own strength? Oh, we can try, and we may even feel like we’re making it for a while – but in the long run, we’ll let ourselves down and run ourselves dry and wander off course, because our power and strength is only effective when it is found in Him and used in His way, for His glory.

Acknowledging our weaknesses helps us to depend on Christ and allow Him to shine through us in ways we might not allow if we were more able, more self-satisfied.

It’s been said that “God uses broken things.”

Broken soil produces a crop, broken clouds give rain, broken grain gives bread, and broken bread gives strength.

Sufferings, difficulties, weaknesses, insults, hardships are going to come anyway, so I want to be able to rejoice in spite of them, to grow because of them, to glorify God in them, just as much as I can in the good times and the easy places.

Because Jesus is with us … and His power is made perfect in our weakness. When we are empty of self—we can be filled with God!

Paul was just a human being like you and me. He was a man who was completely sold out to Christ, a man who was far from perfect, and his life was far from perfect the way we understand it, but a winner in life just the same. And that winning came through his faith and reliance on Jesus Christ for his everything.

Join me next week for part 2 of this post.