The Godly Duty Of Inducing Guilt (August 15, 2004)

It is necessary that sinners feel miserable in the presence of God and his saints.

In his book, What's So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey writes about a prostitute who came to visit a friend of his who works with down-and-outers in Chicago. The woman was "unable to buy food" for her two-year-old daughter. Through tears she explained that she had been renting out her toddler by the hour for kinky sex with perverts in order to get money for drugs. (She couldn't buy food, but she could sell her daughter to get high.) When Yancey's friend asked if she ever thought of going to church, she said, "Church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."

Yancey believes this woman's avoidance of church is an indictment of it. He writes, "What struck me about my friend's story is that women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she saw Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?"

What? Now wait just a minute. First of all, is it really accurate to say that "women much like this prostitute fled toward Jesus"? Maybe a few exceptional ones did, but it is likely that the vast majority kept plying their trade, steering well clear of the Preacher who was so stern about sexual sin that he would equate mere lust with adultery. The woman caught in the act in John 8 did not "flee toward Jesus" - she was dragged unwillingly before him. (And - a point often missed - he never said it was wrong to stone her. That is, after all, what God had commanded. The problem, as Jesus pointed out, was that all the judges had disqualified themselves.) The five-husbanded fornicator in John 4 never fled toward Jesus - she only talked to him because he happened to strike up a conversation with her (a conversation where he quickly dug up the root of her iniquity). I think it is fair to say that the only prostitutes who fled toward Jesus were the ones who were willing to feel terrible in his presence, like the sinful woman in Luke 7 who cried enough tears on his feet to wash them clean.

Secondly, just what is wrong about "being made to feel worse" in church? The apostle Paul speaks of this not as a danger to be avoided but as a goal to be pursued! 1 Corinthians 14:24-25: "If an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, "God is really among you!" This is a good thing. A sinner in church should not feel warmed and blessed, but convicted and ashamed. In 2 Corinthians 7:8-9 Paul speaks of his joy over the results of his efforts to induce this shame: "Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it - I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while - yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us."

Sorrow as God intended does no harm. Our problem today is not that prostitutes might feel bad in our churches, but that sinners in general feel so good in them. When Isaiah (presumably a decent man by our standards) came into the presence of God, he cried, "Woe is me!" When righteous Job heard God, he said, "I despise myself." When Peter saw Jesus' power, he said, "Depart from me, I am a sinful man." When the tax collector approached the temple he said, "God be merciful to me, the sinner." When Paul the Persecutor saw Jesus, he refused food and water for three days.

But today we who speak for God wring our hands before the sinner and say, "I’m so sorry! Did I make you feel bad?"

I cannot for the life of me see how the Church in North America has "lost the gift" of attracting evildoers. What it has lost, rather, is the will to confront them, and the gracious courage to stir up godly guilt in them. God have mercy on us if unrepentant souls leave our worship services saying, "That was great! I just felt so uplifted today."