Armstrong, Livestrong, Die Stronger

Lance. Big surprise? Um, No.

Baseball: Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Canseco, Petite, A-Rod, Clemens, their mothers, and their dogs.
Football: Spygate, Bounty Hunting, Brett Favre's cellular indiscretion, Vick and the aforementioned HGH dogs .
Golf: Tiger.
Basketball.
This guy

(ps. government too!)

As earth orbits the sun, so do professional athletes orbit scandal--they cannot elude its inescapable gravitational pull. Don't believe me? Watch Sportscenter for a week.

But now that performance enhancing drugs have since devoured Floyd Landis and latched their tentacles around cycling's golden boy, the public reaction has taken on a particular flavor. The public has taken two distinct sides. The Armstrong's cry fraudulent disqualification, the Livestrong's proclaim result-driven qualification. Neither will suffice. In times of blatant failure (defiant in Lance's case), only dying stronger than you "armstrong" or "livestrong" will suffice.

Armstrong
Public outrage is climaxing at this point. After years and years of scathing, indignant refutation, Lance finally admitted to what he so vehemently denied for at least a decade. As with the rest of our athletes who have fallen so far off the pedestal we insist on elevating them to, Lance's heart has proved to be black. And the public is ready to exile him. Strip the jerseys! Remove the medals! Exterminate the awards! Impeach him from his nonprofit! CONDEMN HIM. Rick Reilly, an ESPN sports columnist and close friend of Armstrong who defended Lance the past decade, outright rejects Lance's personal apology and condemns him by publicly and permanently burning the bridge they so freely traversed in the past. "It does not matter what he's done," the Armstrong's say. "On the inside he's a liar and a cheat, and he's disqualified!"

Livestrong
In the midst of disqualifying accusations, there's a murmuring of those who say, "Hold on a sec, he still qualifies. Look what he's done for cancer. Look what he's done for the sport. He's been such an inspiration!" One tweet reads, "Beat cancer, raise millions of dollars for cancer research, bring back a dead sport, then judge Lance #Armstrong. People piss me off." 55 million wristbands! Millions and millions of dollars for research! "It doesn't matter what he's like on the inside," the Livestrong's say. "It's the external that qualifies this man! Look at all he's done!"

Here's the problem: According to the public, Lance has fallen so far and so fast that there is absolutely nothing he can do to rid him of this permanent and career-wrecking stain. The internal condemnation is thick and heavy and it is not going anywhere. Additionally, the external can clearly do no good in transforming the internal. Lance ran his Livestrong campaign brilliantly while doping with EPO for all 7 Tour de France victories. Polished and sparkly outside, moral decay inside. The yellow wrist band I bought in 4th grade can't change Lance's heart. At least everyone thought I was cool.

So it seems that when we judge others and ourselves, we go one of two options:

1. We recognize we don't measure up. We see that we're total failures. We drown in the cesspools of guilt created by our moral failure. We convince ourselves that we are unlovable. We collapse under the weight of condemnation, and cling to anything we can get our hands on in a vain attempt to pawn off the perpetual weight of ongoing failure. When we find out others are just as bad or even worse than us (based on our own faulty perception of morality), we make sure we drag others down with us. With an undeserved pat on the shoulder and a fake fleeting smile, we leap frog ourselves up a rung on the moral ladder. "At least I'm not as bad as Lance! He's horrible! I'd never do that!"

2. We think we do measure up. We fight and claw for a pristine moral portfolio to present to God and to others, and insist that they accept us. The external justifies the internal. "I'm a pretty good person. I don't lie, cheat or steal. I'm not a murderer or a rapist." When others are caught in a scandal (especially in a scandal we ourselves could be guilty of), we fight for their external records. We do this because by fighting for their external qualifications, we're actually fighting for our own.

Die Stronger
There's always a 3rd way isn't there? Scripture doesn't leave us with either of these options. Road blocks both ways. The Bible tells us to ditch ourselves entirely. Death to self, life in Christ. The imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ simultaneously rescues us from our self-loathing, and deflates the limp balloon of our self-righteousness. Christ forbids our despair and scoffs at our efforts to measure up. There are no options of self left.

"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him" (Romans 6:5-8) 

We ask frenetically with word and deed our entire lives, "How do I qualify??" As my friend answers, "Know you don't." As Tim Keller says, "The gospel is this: we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope."

It is time to decisively push off shore from our tit-for-tat legalism and self-atoning that has been unfortunately familiar to us our entire lives. We don't sulk in abject despair. Nor do we run the unending race of moral manipulation. We fling ourselves overboard the USS Self entirely, and cling to the only Vessel capable of navigating the tempestuous seas of despair, confusion, desperation, frustration, pain, disappointment, anxiety, fear, sin, and death. The liberating power of the gospel is that our qualification no longer has anything to do with us. Our spiritual portfolios are filled with the riches of Christ. We're invited to joyfully jump off the cliff of safe moralism. The world says it's death. They're playing it safe. Risk is good. Jump. Christ is all. "Hallelujah, all I have is Christ. Hallelujah, Jesus is my life."

Will Not Let Us Go

George Whitefield:

"Nothing could possibly support my soul under the many agonies which oppressed me when on board, except a consideration of the freeness, eternity, and unchangeableness of God's love to me.

I need not fear the sight of sin when I have a perfect, everlasting righteousness wrought out for me by Jesus Christ....

May he enlighten me more and more to know and feel the mystery of his electing, soul-transforming love. There is nothing like it, to support us under present and all the various future trials. But the Lord has apprehended us and will not let us go. Men and devils may do their worst; our Jesus will allow nothing to pluck us out of His Almighty hands."

HT: Dane Ortlund

'You Are The Very Person'

Spurgeon:

I have no gospel to preach to the self-righteous, no, not a word, Jesus Christ Himself came not to call the righteous, and i am not going to do what he did not do, No, I ask you rather to look at that righteousness of yours till you see what a delusion it is. It is not half so substantial as a cobweb. Be finished with it! Flee it!

"They that are whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick" (Mark 2:17). Is it not equally clear that the great remedies of grace and redemption are for the sick in soul? They cannot be for the whole, for they cannot be of use to such. If you feel that you are spiritually sick, the Physician has come into the world for you. If you are altogether undone by reason of your sin, you are the very person aimed at in the plan of salvation. I say that the Lord of love had precisely such as you in his eye when he arranged the system of grace.

He that is a dirty sinner is the kind of man that Jesus Christ came to make clean, Come in your disorder. Come to your heavenly Father in all your sin and sinfulness. come to Jesus just as you are: leprous, filthy, naked. Come, though despair is brooding over you, pressing upon your chest like a horrible nightmare.

-All of Grace

.....

That is a shot of joyful hope for sleepy souls such as mine.

Galatians 1:15-16; Jude 1:24

Galatians 1:15-16 "But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles...

Jude 24 "Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy..."

It brings the Father pleasure and joy to both unite us with his son Jesus and present us as blameless before his glory. blameless. He's looking down on us in spite of all our screwiness, all our deficiency, all our lacking, all our frustration and insecurity, our confusion and shortsightedness, with pleasure and joy because of Christ. God delights in saving us.

Forever Forgiven

From Sam Storms' meditations on Colossians, The Hope of Glory...#20, p.72...

"God has taken your sin and placed it out of sight behind his back. All he sees now when he sees you is the blessed righteousness of his own dear Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Such is the love of forgiveness.

Still not good enough? Still not convinced? Still afraid that your sins will do you in? Then pay close attention to the word of the prophet Micah...He has something important to say about the kind of God we have:

 "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea" (Mic. 7:18-19).

How much more graphic do you demand God to be before you enter into the joy of his forgiving love? All vestige of condemning guilt is gone. Again, "just as God said he put our sins behind his back, so here he says he will hurl them into the depths of the sea. They will not 'fall overboard' ; God will hurl them into the depths. he wants them to be lost forever, because he has fully dealt with them in his Son, Jesus Christ."

No Fishing Allowed

Per Tucci and Lawrenz ... thanks for reposting this fellas. Awesome. Get back here for Egg Harbor and 2v2. I got the new Droses. Get wrecked.

Tullian:

"What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in between, need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” To be convinced in our hearts, said Martin Luther, “that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished."

He Has Mercy on Those Who are Wretched

"Therefore, God accepts only the forsaken, cures only the sick, gives sight only to the blind, restores life to only the dead, sanctifies only the sinners, gives wisdom only to the unwise fools. In short, He has mercy only on those who are wretched, and gives grace only to those who are not in grace. Therefore no proud saint, no wise or just person, can become God's material, and God's purpose cannot be fulfilled in him. He remains in his own work and makes a fictitious, pretended, false, and painted saint of himself, that is, a hypocrite."

-Martin Luther, "The Seven Penitential Psalms."

Focus Shift

"The moment the focus of your life shifts from your badness to his goodness, and the question becomes not 'what have I done' but 'what can he do?'-- release from remorse happens. Miracle of miracles, you can forgive yourself because you are forgiven, accept yourself because you are accepted, and begin to start building up the very places you once tore down. There is grace to help in every time of trouble. That grace is the secret to begin able to forgive ourselves. Trust it."

Ragamuffin Gospel, p.117-118

Not What We Do In Order To Earn Forgiveness

"The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. It serves as an expression of gratitude rather than an effort to earn forgiveness. Thus the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance,  rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace."

-Brennan Manning