Irreplaceable

Beyoncé, “Irreplaceable”

So don’t you ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplaceable.

Caedmon’s Call, “The Truth”

[M]aybe all that I’ve to do was done a long time ago.

‘Cause there was life before my life,
There was provision before my need,
There was redemption before my sin,
For the sake of the world I thank the Lord,
That the truth’s not contingent on me.

Psalm 103:15-17

As for man, his days are like grass; he flourishes like a flower of the field; for the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting . . .

This last month and a half has been (in many ways) an extended exercise in forced humility. There is little virtue is having one’s weaknesses exposed, particular those banal, petty weaknesses that I’d hoped were a thing of the past. Cultivated humility for the sake of spiritual growth is one thing. Being pushed down under the weight of one’s own failures is another. As Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 12, there’s nothing more pitiable than exorcising one demon and “putting your house in order” just to have the same unclean spirit show back up with seven fresh companions in tow. “The last state of that person is worse than the first” (Matt. 12:45). It takes real spiritual sanity to live proactively within that truth.

All metaphors aside, by far the hardest thing to deal with has been the stark realization that I am (despite my previous thoughts to the contrary) thoroughly replaceable. I don’t mean replaceable as a person (like with my wife, friends or family). I mean replaceable as a tool of the kingdom. It’s been tough (unbelievably tough) to realize that I’m not indispensable, not foundational, not one-off. In the end, God’s about doing His will, building His church, glorifying His Son and he’ll do it with just as much glory, power, and beauty with me as without me. Jesus is irreplaceable, Aaron isn’t.

I don’t say this to evoke sympathy. A sort of “There, there. You’re special.” is the last thing I need (not that I’ve given up hoping for it; pride dies hard after all). In the end, however, what it has to come down to (what I need most) is grace. Grace that comes from the outside in. Grace that has nothing to do with me, the receiver, and everything to do with God, the Giver. Grace to be forgiven. Grace to be renewed. Grace to be made clean. Grace to grow-up. “For the sake of the world [am myself] I thank the Lord / That the truth’s not contingent on me.”

An Immersion in [Imperfect] Humanity

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

There is not the slightest effort given in the biblical story to make David admirable in any moral or spiritual sense. And yet there is the assumption in all of this that flawed and faithless and failed as he is, he is representative—not a warning against be behavior but a witness, inadvertent as it was, to the normalcy, yes, the inevitability of imperfection (82).

The life of David is a labyrinth of ambiguities, not unlike our own. What we admire about David does not cancel out what we abhor, and what we abhor does not cancel out what we admire. David is not a model for imitation; David is not a candidate for a pedestal. The David story is an immersion in humanity, no different from the humanity conditioned by our culture and flawed by our sins. The story of David is a not a story of what God wants us to be but a story of God working with the raw material of our lives as he finds us. David’s story is told with so much detail so that we will have spread out before us exactly what goes on in a thoroughly lived human life in which God is shaping a life of salvation (88).

A Turned and Turning Life

Acts 2:38-41

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

N. T. Wright, Acts for Everyone (Part One)

This is, perhaps, the first beginning, the first small glimpse, of the church’s developing understanding of the purpose of the cross. . . .

You need to turn back. But the way to do that is to become part of the kingdom-movement that is identified with Jesus, part of the people who claim his life, death and resurrection as the center and foundation of their own. You need, in other words, to be baptized, to join the company marked out with the sign of the “new exodus,” coming through the water to leave behind slavery and sin and to find the way to freedom and life. You need to allow Jesus himself to grasp hold of you, to save you from the consequences of the way you were going (“forgiveness of sins”) and to give you new energy to go in the right way instead (“the gift of the holy spirit”). To do all that is to “turn back” from the way you were going, and to go in the other direction instead. That is what is meant by the word repent (42).

Aaron Orendorff

“When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent’ (Mt 4:17),” reads the first of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, “he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” We ought to hear in Peter’s words a similar admonition. There is, of course, an aspect of repentance (particularly here where it is coupled with the initiating right of baptism) that is likewise initiating. We enter Jesus’ “kingdom-movement” (quite frankly) by turn from our own. We repent (to paraphrase the Lord’s Prayer) from hollowing our own names, from saying, “Our kingdom come. Our will be done.” But it is not as though, having turned “once for all” we then leave off the ugly and humbling work of repentance. To live a life of repentance means to live a turned and turning life. We are to be constantly about the work of feeling our hearts cut, recognizing our sin, acknowledging the reality of the gospel and turning again from our way of doing life to God’s. The beautiful truth of this lifestyle is that “forgiveness of sin” is never exhausted but is always new and always sufficient. We are never left to get by or get good on our own. Moreover, the work of the Spirit is meant not to fill us with sublime feelings and lofty thoughts but to ground us more and more in the grit of life, to reveal to us more and more who and what we are, to work in us the necessity of repentance and the freedom of life found therein.

The Fruit of [Inauthentic] Repentance

Matthew 27:3-5

Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself.

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

[T]here are levels, and degrees, of remorse. We saw when we looked at Peter, at the end of the previous chapter, that there is a big difference between remorse, such as that of Judas, and genuine repentance, such as that of Peter. . . . Remorse and repentance both begin with looking at something you’ve done and realizing it was wrong. But the first goes down the hill of anger, recrimination, self-hatred and ultimately self-destruction, the way that leads to death. The second goes down the route Peter took, of tears, shame, and a way back to life (174).

Aaron Orendorff

John the Baptist—Jesus’ wild-eyed, locust eating, camel-fur wearing cousin—chastised his curious audience: “Bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt. 3:18).

Jesus, with a similar bend, warned his disciples that the difference between authentic sheep and “ravenous wolves” will be seen by their “fruit” (Matt. 7:16, 20).

The dual stories of Peter and Judas bear this truth out. The key difference between these two failed disciples—one an deserter, the other a traitor—is in the fruit their “changes of heart” bore. Peter, broken and weeping, clings to the hope that this cannot be the end. He clings to his friends, and eventually clings to Jesus. Judas, on the other hand, surrenders himself to failure. Judas gives himself over to despair and goes the heart-breaking way of death.

“A man had two sons.”

Matthew 21:28-32

“A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.”

Tom Wright, Matthew for Everyone (Vol. 2)

The first son, who rudely tells his father he doesn’t fell like working today, but then does after all, stands for the tax-collectors and prostitutes. Their daily life seemed to be saying “No” to God; but when they heard John they changed their minds and their lifestyle (in other words, they “repented”). The second son, who politely tells his father he will indeed go to work, but then doesn’t, stands for the Temple hierarchy and other leaders. They look as though they’re doing God’s will, worshipping in the Temple and keeping up appearances; but they refuse to believe in John’s message, not only about repentance, but also about the Messiah who was standing unknown in their midst (76).

A. Orendorff

Another, more famous parable also open with the words, “A man had two sons.” Luke 15:11, which introduces what is commonly known as the parable of the prodigal son begins: “There was a man who had two sons.” Interestingly, both parables were told in an attempt to explain why Jesus was welcoming the wrong kinds of people: in Matthew they’re called the “tax collectors and prostitutes” in Luke 15:1, the “tax collectors and sinners.” The point of both parables is the same: no one is too unrighteous to enter the kingdom if only they will repent. Another way to say this that righteousness—or perhaps better self-righteousness or public-righteousness, i.e., the son who says “Yes”—is a more dangerous spiritual condition that unrighteousness—i.e., the son who says “No.” What the kingdom requires is not merit but repentance, a change of mind and heart.