Check your privilege

This one is for you, Facebook Christian.

If you’re a Christian and you’ve made a habit of calling down God’s wrath and judgement on sinners and non-believers, you need to check your privilege.

Who are you that God is so pleased with your behavior? Were you not, before salvation, a wretched sinner just like that abortionist you’ve condemned to Hell, just like that pedophile you’d love to see castrated, just like that racist homophobe you think should be beaten and branded, just like that robber you gleefully warn about the loaded firearms you keep next to your bed, which you would use to kill them without hesitation?

Who were you, before Christ? Nobody. A depraved, lost and wayward soul. And what did you do do earn his grace and compassion? Absolutely nothing.

Nothing. You have been freely given the grace and forgiveness of God, through Jesus, and you did nothing to earn it, nothing to deserve it, except be unfairly and unjustly and unconditionally loved by the one whose name you now use to speak evil against those who don’t know him. You are saved through no fault of your own.

Praise God that he is merciful and provided a way for us to know him–that while we were still sinners, he died for us. Praise God that we didn’t have to earn it, because God knows we never could. Praise God for the freedom from the burden of sin that we’ve been so graciously given, and the new life we have in him.

And shame on you, Christian, for denying that reconciliation to others, for condemning and judging, for doing anything but hope against hope, as Jesus does, that all who now walk along the path of destruction might find redemption in this life, and one day share the golden-paved streets of Heaven with you. Shame on you for self-righteously anticipating the Day of Judgement, when your enemies will finally get their comeuppance, rather than praying fervently that the ones you should hate will be saved before Jesus returns in glory.

It is ungodly to rejoice in the punishment of sinners. We should be grieved to our core at the idea of someone coming face to face with God without the atoning blood of Christ to cover their sins. We should be grieved, not only because Christ is grieved, but because that could have been us. It could’ve been you. But you came face to face with the love and mercy and grace of God here on Earth, and you were saved, a privilege many will not claim.

Now is the time, Christian, for us to love boldly, unfairly, unwisely. Now is the time to proclaim the mercy of God to all who so desperately need it. Now is the time to remind ourselves exactly who we were and who we’ve become–and to make the heart of Christ our own.

Judgement will come. Do you await that day with gleeful, selfish anticipation, or do you use it as motivation to love more, to shout the name of the Lord from the mountaintops, so that the forgotten of this world will hear and be changed?

I’ve been guilty of selfish thinking lately, too. Many days I’ve found myself overwhelmed by the world, praying that Jesus would simply return and make it all go away. But every moment we have here on Earth, every evil we must endure, is a mercy for all those who have yet to find salvation. So this is my prayer this morning: Lord Jesus, delay just one more day so that more might come to know you.

But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. -2 Peter 3:8-9