That Jesus Christ Swag

"Nobody comes to the throne of Grace with Swag." Dr. Matthew McKellar

My very white, middle-aged Biblical Studies professor said this in class today, and the class burst out in laughter. It instantly became my favorite sentence of the week.

It has been said that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. We hear this and assent to it conceptually yet, at least for me, it is much harder to live out in an honest way. I try to earn grace and to prove by my knowledge that maybe I don't deserve grace, but man did I use it well! But in fact, no amount of preaching, or teaching, or soul-winning can ever give me enough holy accessories to let me earn it.

My swag can't get me into that club.

But because I accepted Christ, my name is on that list.

I got that Jesus Christ Swag.

Could it be that we're broken?

You know, we always think that things are pretty much going as they should be. On some level, most of us accept that since things are how they are, that this current state of being is normal, to be expected and acceptable. And we have this expectation that we are able to get things to where we want them to be if we just try hard enough.

Yet we look through history and see that all of our repeated attempts at perfection always come up short.

Always.

I'm no math whiz, but I think that's almost 100%.

Every time men come up with rules for living together in perfect harmony, it fails. Socialism is a beautiful idea, but it doesn't work. The Tower of Babel was supposed to be an incredible testament to the strength of humanity, but instead, it became the eternal symbol for our disunity and fallenness. Jews came up with 613 rules of behavior in order to keep the Law. Not one of them was able to keep it. Muslims have sharia law, but in the places that it is practiced it is failing to maintain a peaceful society, let alone a perfect one. Why is it that every time we try to achieve this harmony that we all desire, we fail?

Could it be that we're broken?

Maybe we can't achieve perfection because we are all imperfect. Maybe we are made in such a way that attaining perfection is outside of our grasp. Romans 3:20 says that the Law allows us not to be justified but "to become conscious of our sin." No matter what we do, we will find sin. And nothing we can do is able to remove our sins. In fact, even if we do nothing, that is a sin.

We have had thousands of years to try to create the perfect society. But across the globe, across religions, across time all of our efforts have failed to produce one single example of perfection. Maybe we've gotten close, but even if the society functions well, within each individual member, sin is present.

We cannot be justified by works. And maybe all of our failed efforts to produce perfection will allow us to see that.

We are broken.

We are fallen.

We need a Savior.

And his name is Jesus.