Remade Hearts and Mended Ways
A sermon brought forth from Romans 6:1-14 preached on May 14, 2023
“The line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”
Maybe you’ve heard that before. That sentence is easier to say than the name of the Russian novelist who wrote it.1 We’re much more comfortable and confident with the idea that what’s wrong with the world—or even in our personal lives—is on others. But what if our deepest divisions start within us and work their way out?
What’s that thing inside of us that keeps us struggling and restless, unsatisfied with ourselves, forever reaching out for something we know we’re missing, divided inside, and creatively divisive from even our closest neighbors on the outside?
In the next chapter of Romans, Paul tries to put this problem into words.
“Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”
Thank you, Paul. In the strangest way, I’m so relieved you had the courage to say so, because I thought I was the only one. We all could respond that way. What’s that thing inside us that leaves us forever unfulfilled, unfinished, bothered, itchy, unsatisfied, and unsettled? There are more than a few things that are not right, and the ones that matter most are within. Why do we keep getting in our own way? What is that?
Don’t we all sense that there’s something within us that’s gone missing, but that it’s something we’ve never had? Whatever that is, it’s everywhere. Everywhere inside of us and outside of us. The world isn’t right, and we are not right within the world. Something about us keeps going wrong, and we’re not sure what to do about it.
There’s a word for this. It’s not a very popular one. It’s certainly misunderstood. The word itself is sharp. “Sin.” Some take it as an accusation. Just as many use the word “sin” to accuse others. We hit others over the head with it. We use the word like it’s a weapon. The way people use it, you’d think the whole idea of sin is made to hurt us.
But what if sin isn’t a stain, but a wound? God used the word. Jesus, too. And contrary to popular opinion, God is not an angry tormented. Jesus used gentle images to describe how God sees us.
“How often I have wanted to gather your children together as a hen protects her chicks beneath her wings, but you wouldn’t let me.”
This should make us feel better, honestly. Like a patient whose doctor finally figures out what’s troubling her, diagnoses that matter. The diagnosis doesn’t heal anything, but it sure does help make her feel better—at least there’s a name for what I’m feeling, what I’m up against. Being able to call by name whatever it is that bothers us is the first step towards something better.
Maybe that last phrase, “but you wouldn’t let me,” tells us most about what’s gone wrong. If God is our Mother, the One who has given us life and breath and loves us even to her detriment, then how often have we refused her embrace?
Paul describes sin as a failure to fully love God and others. It’s our inability to judge whether we’re succeeding or failing. This isn’t a pretty picture of ourselves, but it’s realistic, isn’t it? Sin is failure to love God and others. Sin is that collection of attitudes, actions, habits, emotions, assumptions, and wrongheaded ideas that put us at odds with God and others. And none of us are exempt. As long as it’s up to us, that’s where we end up.
But “sin” isn’t a harsh word; it’s not an accusation. It’s a discovery. It’s a second opinion we should pay attention to. And it’s meant to heal. God wants us to get well, but He needs us to understand how we aren’t and what that difference or distance is made of. He loves us and has our best interests in mind. Sin isn’t a stain; it’s a wound. Sin doesn’t need shaming; sin needs healing. We need healing.
What scripture says about sin explains us so well. Our relationship with God and others needs rehabilitation and rebuilding. Something about our very being—at the core of who we are—needs to be remade. We don’t just make mistakes sometimes; there’s more to it than that. There’s something disordered within us and about us that needs to be confronted, addressed, and done away with. We don’t just need to be reshaped; we need to be rescued from ourselves. That’s how strong the gospel is about it. But God knows that about us, and God has done something about it.
The gospel doesn’t say we need to shape up. It doesn’t tell us we need to pull ourselves together, try harder, and be more faithful when the going gets tough. The gospel doesn’t say we need to do better. If it were all up to us, we don’t stand a chance. If we had it in us, we would have fixed it already. The gospel says something true and much harder to hear about what kind of state we’re in: it says we need the power of God. It says we need Jesus. And thanks be to God, Jesus is for us. Jesus is here to remake our bad hearts and mend our broken ways. Let’s no longer be servants to our worn-out patterns.
Every week the prayer of confession and petition gives us a chance to be honest and real with ourselves and one another. We don’t have to pretend that we’re good people. We do a lot of pretending throughout the week, but here we meet with God in whose company we do not have to pretend a thing.
Corporate confession is a great adjuster. It’s like going to a spiritual chiropractor. It’s there to straighten us out and all this time of walking crooked. With it, we declare that we have fallen short of the glory of God and all of us need help. Our confessions, both those we say to together and those we speak in silence, change from one week to the next. It’s not a weekly guilt trip. We should see it as a lifeline thrown down to us.
Somehow, we’ve ended up farther from God than we thought but wherever we’ve ended up, but God has what it takes to reach us where we are and pull us back into right relationship with Him. Have you ever thought of the Prayer of Confession as a lifeline? Have you ever thought of the Assurance of Pardon as a homecoming?
God’s grace is abundant, and He is more than willing to heal what we have broken and what is broken about us. God in Christ has freed us from our bad hearts and our broken ways and has promised to remake our hearts and mend our ways. Is there anything getting in your way from letting God do that for you?
All praises to the One who made it all and finds it beautiful! Alleluia! Amen.
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8296220-the-line-separating-good-and-evil-passes-not-through-states