Holy Weekনমুনা

Neighborhood Facebook pages are worse than Reddit message boards when it comes to gossip and arguing. From driving too fast to pictures of vehicles and rambunctious kids in the act of destruction, it’s a no-holds-barred environment.

For several weeks some fool decided to park their car in front of another person's house, where it leaked oil, blocked trashcan pick up, and caused a dangerous hazard to people pulling in and out. Not paying it much mind, I thought to myself, “This neighborhood is filled with insensitive people.”

That was until someone posted in the comments, “Hey, are you talking about the grey Cavalier?" A few “liked” responses were all the incriminating evidence I needed. Guess who owned the Cavalier. In my defense, I was in the middle of selling it, nonetheless, the guilty party who I was condemning turned out to be me.

The brilliant Bible scholar Mark Allen Powell did a study on who we identify ourselves as when we read Scripture. He found that pastors, teachers, and long-term Christians almost always identified as Jesus when reading the Bible. His conclusion? The more familiar we are with God’s word, the more we begin to think we are God.

While becoming like God is the goal, thinking we are Him is a trap from the enemy that disassociates us from our sinful nature and God’s amazing grace. As we dive into Friday, from midnight to crucifixion eve, don’t let the trap of relating to our merciful, gracious, self-sacrificing, life-giving Savior distract us from who we are in the story.

If we re-read Friday’s events in our rightful place, we see ourselves as betraying, overzealous, inattentive, vengeful, dishonest, arrogant, abusive, misleading, comfort-seeking, relationship denying, people-pleasing, lying, deflecting, murderous, easily swayed, sinful people. Starting to see why it’s easier to read as if we’re God?

Despite all of this, Jesus was willing to go to the cross and die for us, even while we were all the terrible adjectives above. Talk about amazing grace! When we’re in our rightful place, and Jesus is in His, we read Scripture with a clear revelation of God’s indescribable grace, and our desperate need for Him. It is in this space that we become more like Him without confusing who we are.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”