No matter how big someone is or how small, their sin (both revealed and cloaked) cannot invalidate the Gospel message. The Gospel is still the Gospel even in situations when something shocking and even mind boggling is publicly revealed in someone’s life. The Gospel is no less true now in the midst of ruthless exposure, in the waterfall of horizontal consequences, in the darkness of shame and guilt than it was the 2.2 seconds right before everything was found out.

I’m not just talking about big names here; I’m talking about you and me, too. While our trash isn’t strewn about newspaper and social media headlines (and most of us are pretty glad about that), our sin is still sin and even in the midst of it being exposed (someone clearly witnessed you verbally rip apart your kid, you were caught gossiping about a friend, your lack of work ethic finally noticed by your boss) the gospel isn’t (ever) invalidated. Our sin cannot remove one iota of truthfulness about God’s never-ending, never-ceasing, one-way love for us the sinners.

 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 1 Timothy 1:15

The Gospel is STILL the Gospel.  Jesus still came to save sinners–those who know they are sinners(exposed) and those who don’t (waiting to be exposed).  God still loves the world to a great degree–He loves you, and He loves him and her, He loves me–that John 3:16 is as much a present day truth as it was way back when. He doesn’t love us because we’re now keeping the law, He doesn’t even love you more when you do or because you are; He’s always just loved you fully and completely. In fact, it’s that one-way complete love that’s got any momentum to change (radically) your stone heart, my stone heart, his and her stone hearts. The law cannot do this. Ever.

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted. 1 Timothy 1:8-11

Right before St. Paul pens the words quoted above in 1 Timothy 1:15, he writes the previous portion of scripture about the law. The law, according to Paul is for our disobedient flesh (the “unjust”). The “just” part of you, the part of you that is determined by faith in Christ, and thus justified and thus made the righteousness of God has no dealing with the law.  In our united to Christ state (by faith in Him which is a gift from God Himself and no work of your own) we do not now look to the law as a good word for our soul, as a  word of remedy, or as a word of help. The law will always be a word for the flesh, of death-dealing exposure.

The law cannot prevent us from partaking in bad plans–we are quite capable of ignoring and down right overruling the law when we want to and desire to.  The law cannot prevent us from coveting for it’s jurisdiction is not the heart. The law cannot cause us to be good, righteous, and holy–even though it so desperately desires to make us such; it’s impotent to do so.  The law’s word which exposes sin cannot prevent it but sentence it and the doer…to death.

So, to now, in light of the exposure of our sin (however dire it may be in the public realm), turn and say: had so and so (you, me, him and her) had more law in their life they wouldn’t have done “x” is a misnomer and exposes a grave misunderstanding of the law.  If the law can prevent sin (deep, deep down) then I’m lead to ask, why would I ever need the Gospel?

The law can only expose the covetous and selfishness, the sickness and rottenness, the prideful of me and disdainful of you parts of my flesh. And, get this, the law works for, serves the Gospel, so that exposure is exposure into the light and that light is the light that the darkness could not, cannot, will not ever over come. That light is the light of the word that is the Gospel that is Jesus himself (John 1).  Into your exposure enters this God, into your dirt and crap and unjustness and fleshiness walks this good, good, God. And He’s unafraid to touch you, to grab you in his strong arms and carry you into real life. And repeatedly. It’s not a one time thing. We are repeatedly exposed and repeatedly loved–minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year.  His mercies are new every morning…every morning dawn that follows the dusk of our sin.

The law will always expose where we are errant and bring it and us, the doers, to death; the Gospel will always resuscitate us, the hearers, from death and replace what was dead with what is alive, what was stone with what is flesh, what was concealed with what is unconcealed, what was rejection with what is acceptance, what was condemnation with what is conviction, what was no with what is yes.

Does the proclamation of the Gospel (the word of Christ, the distinction of the law from the Gospel) fail in light of our exposures (big and small, public and private)? Does our exposure render the Gospel any less true or effective as a word that creates new life upon being heard? Does our exposure make it now necessary to add law to the Gospel, to preach more law and cut back on the message of freedom and love? No.

As far as I can tell–and I’ve looked and looked–the answer will always be no. The Gospel is still the Gospel even when broken human beings royally screw up.

Do you know how many times Paul uses the phrase “in Christ” in his letters? A lot.

He uses it so often that I’d say it’s one of his favorite prepositional phrases! One of my New Testament Exegesis professors, during a class on Ephesians, made special note to point out how many times Paul uses it in the first couple of chapters of the book. The phrase was used so frequently that it struck my professor strongly: Paul’s trying to make a point, the believer is in Christ, and Paul is taking every opportunity to not-so-subtly remind them of this fact.

You might not notice it in the English, but when you’re busy parsing out every word (case, number, person, tense, mood…etc), a repeated phrase starts to jump out at you. εν Χριστω…εν Τω Χριστω…εν Χριστω….in Christ…in Christ…in Christ. One of the things we had to do in that particular exegesis class was to discuss how phrases/nouns/verbs were functioning in the sentence. Was the verb past tense? present? future? pluperfect passive? What about the noun: nominative, dative, genitive, or accusative? Each aspect of each word adds a different layer of color to the word. It can be quite fascinating at times and at other times you’d sound your exhausted student yawp: IT’S JUST “THE”! “THE”! JUST “THE”!

Εν Χριστω while looking quite simple packs a little bit of a verbal punch. This particular prepositional phrase (remember, prepositions are anything you can do with a box; a prepositional phrase is when a preposition has a direct object) is in the Dative case–typically the case of the indirect object, that’s a rough and simplistic way to define it so don’t go tweeting that ;)–what’s important to know (and maybe even exhausting, ha!) is that datives themselves have functions; so there are different types of datives that, when that function is sussed out, add dimension to the otherwise bland, saltine-y prepositional phrase. In our case, εν Χριστω is a “dative of sphere/location”. The believer, by faith, is _in_ Christ. It’s your location, your address, your 411.

That’s pretty cool, isn’t it?

I’ve always read that particular dative of location as being shielded by Christ’s robes, hidden in him, cloaked (etc). I’ve always seen it as my imputation of righteousness, that I, by faith in Him, am _in_ Him (by the power of the Holy Spirit) and thus the Father sees me by seeing His son, thus he sees a Lauren who is spotless, her scarlet robes now bleached white by blood of the Lamb, his beloved, purified daughter (all of it His doing and none of it mine).

But is that all?

I don’t mean to imply that that isn’t enough, because, gosh, it certainly is, isn’t it? But that’s not how my brain works–the faulty brain He gave me to keep pushing traditional ways of understanding things; sometimes, I just think, think, and think some more about one little thing and then something happens and that airy upstairs (my head) fills with light: AH HA! What if…

Recently a dear friend wrote to me that she was tired and finding it hard to feel “full” (within herself) to turn around and pour herself out for others–a common parental feeling, perpetual emptiness in the midst of an unceasing demand to pour one’s self out for your children and spouse. Yet, she added, the Lord was continually bringing one scripture to mind, which was “This is the day the Lord has made, rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps 118:24), whereupon she confessed, “The truth of Jesus doesn’t make my heart rejoice in that area” (area being: pouring one’s self out for others while running on empty). Then I started writing back.  I wrote, “Maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe you have the space to just be in that area.” And then one of those light filling moments occurred as I was walking away from the computer to do something; I stopped and darted back and wrote (almost frantically): “wait.” (punctuation aside…i was pretty amped up at this point.) What had caught my attention was “rejoicing in”…rejoicing in the day that the Lord had made, essentially, is rejoicing _in_ the Lord, in Jesus…in Christ. Sometimes it’s rejoicing because of what Christ has done; but what I heard that moment was rejoicing because of where she is, which is in Christ and that means she was free to be, to _just_ be as she was. She was free to be exhausted and spent and grumpy about it because of her location, in Christ.

In Christ there is no need for fake smiles, no need for grinning and bearing it, no demand for some saccharine sweet joy cloaked in some cheap wrapper of happiness. In Christ, you can just BE, as is. In Christ you can confess your bitter feelings, your anger, your hurt, your exhaustion, your just plain grumpiness for no other reason than just because, because it’s a real place located in time and space that is–in the truest sense of the word–safe that has been created for you to just be. And it’s always confession, the freedom to confess (to say it like it is), rather than trying to grab bulls by horns or pretending like things are different that weakens cement strongholds on our hearts. And therein, therein that tired, angry, grumpy heart, therein the freedom for that heart to be just that in Christ, comes the first fruits of real rejoicing…rejoicing εν τω Χριστω.