We thank Thee, O Christ, for the inestimable benefits which have come to us by Thy life, for the deliverance from loneliness, for the deliverance from fear, and, most of all, O Christ, we thank Thee for delivering us from our guilt to new life. Praise be to Thee, for thy great gifts, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

[3] Sometime ago a clergyman in New York City visited an elderly lady who, according to report, had lived a careless, extravagant, and somewhat wild life. She told him that she was sometimes afraid to die. “Don’t worry,” said the young clergyman too glibly, “you will find that God is just and God is fair.” “Young man,” said the elderly lady, “my great need now is not for a God who is just, but for a God who is loving and merciful.”

The elderly lady’s problem was a sense of guilt, the knowledge that she had misspent many of her days, strayed, been unfaithful, turned her back on God, call it what you will —but somehow she was separated from God. There were doubtless many things which she had done which were wrong. But also surrounding these wrong acts was a sense of wasted days, a whole life not what it should have been—perhaps a wayward life, a rebellious life. When we know in some deep [3/4] moment that we are not what we should be, when we awake in the still of the night to remember some wrong done, a vague sense of our wrongness before the heavens, of our separation from what is highest—that is Guilt. This is the mark of tragedy in the human race. What man could not say, in the well-known words, “I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou shouldst lead me on; I loved to choose and see my path, but now lead thou me on. I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, pride ruled my will: remember not past years.” “Remember not past years.” “My great need,” said the elderly lady, “is for mercy and love.”

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS

Now strangely enough, the first thing we ought to do is applaud this person. We know from her statement that she was humble, that her soul was alive and open, because a smug soul is dead.

I believe from the New Testament, and from observation, that self-righteousness is ugly [4/5] and a lie and that self-righteous people are always cruel people, as we see in the cruel gossip of the self-righteous or, on a greater scale, in the awful self-righteousness of official Russian Communism. They “know” that they are righteous, and all who oppose them are Wall Street imperialists, capitalistic warmongers, nationalistic deviationists, or what have you. The greatest evil in Communism is not that they are evil—we, too, have our share of evil—it is that they think they are good.

Is there anything worse under Heaven than a self-complacency which accuses others in our sinful human situation, without any sense of being involved in it ourselves? We can forgive others only when we know that we need forgiveness. We can be kind only when we know that we are not good. How could a home survive any time at all without forgiveness, and how can we forgive each other in our homes unless each of us knows that he needs forgiveness? The Pharisee said, “I thank thee, God, that I am not as other men are.” And his statement tells us that he was contemptuous [5/6] of, and separated from, his fellowmen; Christ says he was separated also from God. “But the Publican would not so much as lift up his eyes to Heaven, and said, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ I tell you this man went down to his house justified rather than the
other. For everyone that exalts himself shall be abased. And he that humbleth himself shall
be exalted.” Christ says, in effect, that there is something radically wrong with any form
of religious faith which makes it possible for a man to be complacent about himself as he
approaches God.

RATIONALIZATION

Next, we should applaud the elderly lady because she was bravely honest. It’s not an easy thing to condemn yourself, to pass a verdict on yourself from the center of your being. Since we all want to justify ourselves—to think that we are right, to accept ourselves—it is much easier to rationalize, and to suppress our guilt. The human heart is sufficiently inventive to keep this guilt from becoming [6/7] conscious, and the psychiatrist or the psychoanalyst can describe very well the process for us.

There’s a tendency in all of us to hope that by conscientious effort we can establish a claim upon God, and by our own merit stand confidently in His presence. We all do it and yet with a painful honesty at the deepest level, ripping aside our masks and all pretense, it is sober truth to say that there is not one of us who is half as good as he pretends to be. There is not one of us who should not say, “My great need is for God’s love and mercy.” There is not one of us who has not separated himself from God, if only by our neglect of God. And, if anybody doubts this, imagine
putting into the papers tomorrow the worst thing you’ve ever done!

The elderly lady could have rationalized and suppressed her sense of guilt in several common ways. First, if the highest standards condemned her, she could have lowered those standards, saying that after all God only wants us to pay our bills, keep out of the other fellow’s way, and vote occasionally. If a high [7/8] standard makes you uncomfortable, pull the standard down to where it doesn’t make you uncomfortable. If a high and holy God, who wants you to love Him with all your heart, and mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself—if that kind of a God makes you uncomfortable, then lower your conception of the character of God. Lower
it to a genial, easygoing, not really serious God who, because He’s no better than ourselves, is not worthy to be worshipped, and, because He’s not better than ourselves, cannot possibly raise us to be the kind of people we ought to be.

Yes, we can lower our standard, conform to the conventions of our own group, be satisfied with small achievement, become respectably dull, and move into intellectual and spiritual stagnation. We can compare ourselves to the people next door, and not to the moral majesty of Christ and the saints. We can say, “I’m as good as the next fellow.” And, since we generally pick the person with whom we compare ourselves, that’s a pretty good dodge, too. But unless our code is pretty low, it shows [8/9] us with disconcerting clarity the contrast between our obligations and our performance. Indeed the higher the code, the greater the knowledge of our shortcomings.

Nor can we really suppress the vague unrest about our unworthiness by very hard work and by very hard play. We can only temporarily avoid the deep fundamental question of our peace with God by distractions, by tremendous activity, by hiding from God and from ourselves. And that’s why this comes to us, I think, most often in the still of the night, when up from the deep we remember the things we have done.

Nor can we rationalize by means of our work. I think often that the nobler our work the more danger we’re in. Doctors, for example, and clergy. Because I handle holy things, because I preach, because I administer the Sacraments—how easy it is to believe subtly that I am better than I am. I know a doctor who from a simple background has become, I believe, wealthy. How easy for him, because of his profession, to believe that his life is given in a pure manner to sacrificial [9/10] service. How dangerous for his soul! Because of his profession which is so noble, he can rationalize and fail to see some of his motives that other men cannot fail to see. Too many people suppress their guilt, hang on desperately to self-respect they know they really do not have. We rationalize consciously, driving the guilt into the sub-conscious, for all men have a vague sense of unrest, and long for a peace beneath the stars that they do not have.

A SUSTAINING RELATIONSHIP

“But what right do I have to live with God? On what basis do I approach God?” I talked until a late hour one night with an alcoholic. He illustrates a persistent human tendency. Since God made him, he should have lived a life thankful to God, Since God gave him his life, he should have lived a humble and a dependent life. Since God is sovereign, he should have been responsible to God. But, like all of us, only in a more vivid and obvious manner, he rebelled and wandered, ungrateful, proud, and irresponsible, and now, God bless him, he [10/11] wants to come home. On what basis, after this life of separation? On the basis of merit? Merit? Suppose that, following the common misunderstanding of Christianity, I had said to him, “I’m glad you’ve waked up. Now, be good and you can live with God.” Be good?—He has years of rebellious dirt all over him. Even if the future were to be perfect, which it won’t be, what about the past? To say, “Be good and you can live with God”, to found the relationship to God on merit, is bad news—very, very bad news. If Christianity said, “Be good and you can live with God”, there wouldn’t be an honest person in the pulpit or the pew, because there isn’t one of us who is good.

How absurd, then, to say to this world, with its wrongs and sins and guilts and weaknesses,
“Be good and you can live with God,” Life with God is not just the end toward which we
strive, alone, trying to win that goal; it is the source of Life. We do not need just a goal toward which we strive, but we need a sustaining relationship. What my alcoholic friend needed was not exhortations to be good so [11/12] that he could live with God, but a life with God that would make him good. Christianity, then, does not say, “Be good and you can live with God.” Christianity says, “Live with God and you can become good.” It doesn’t say, “Earn your right to this relationship by being good.” It says, “Accept this relationship offered to you, which will make you good.” It does not speak of merit but it speaks of grace, not of earning our salvation, but of receiving our salvation.

NEW LIFE

What this world needs and every family and every person, is not moralizing, but new life. Just as a sick man needs not exhortation but a blood transfusion, so every person needs not exhortation but new life offered to him, and that new life offered to him is God’s life. The relationship is one which we cannot earn but can only receive. If a man, then, realizes his own insufficiency, and sees that neither his own worth nor his own efforts can win him this future, yet trusts in God and casts [12/13] himself upon His resources, then his relationship to God is what it ought to be—it opens the way for a wholly new possibility in the life of his spirit.

Do you remember that as a child in a good home you once did something very wrong, and then, condemning yourself you went to your room and lay with your face to the wall? You had broken the good rules of your home; you had rebelled against your parents; you had placed by your act a gap between yourself and them. You lay on your bed, half-cursing yourself and half trying to justify yourself. (That’s the way we work.) You felt that you had cut yourself off; you loved your
parents, and yet you half-feared them and half-disliked them, too, at the same time. And then your parents came to your room, opened the door, put their arms around you and told you that they loved you. And you loved your parents for that more than ever. That led you to say, with a kind of gratitude coming up in your heart that lasted over the years, that you had the best mother and the best father that ever lived. You were grateful for their [13/14] love and their understanding, for all the suffering they went through for you. You forgiven, because to be forgiven means to be accepted. When you were very difficult, they accepted you, and held you within the relationship of your family.

OUR TRUE MANHOOD

So it is with Christ. Let me state for you the thought of many profound theologians on the “how” of Christ’s saving work. At the center of history stands this figure, who, at the deepest level, has the words of life. Men have turned to Him to find out how He brought man and God together. The essence of His work, in all its wonder and mystery, is that He restored to us a relationship to God which we do not deserve. That’s the essence of it. As our parents opened the door and came to us, so in Him, mysteriously, God came to us.

This is grace. Grace is God coming to our world in mercy. God reaches down to raise us again to our true manhood; to accept us; to knock the barriers down; to win the world [14/15] again to Himself. “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” So it was with the souls of men yesterday and through the Christian ages. Men were insecure, bitter, afraid, guilty, separated; and then the love of Christ arose like the sun comes up.

It was an infinite love, an all-searching love, the love of God, merciful, compassionate, and holy. It lighted on the separated soul of Mary Magdalene. It lighted on Paul’s hard and fanatical and self-righteous nature. It lighted on the hopeless hearts of the sick and the guilty. The love shone on the sinners and on the harlots. It was a creative love, for it shone on the unlovable until they became lovable. The roots of the moral life are in the new relationship of trust to God, made possible by Christ. He brings us this new relationship because of the new life that will follow, and the separation is removed.

We have received a favor—a relationship we do not deserve—and our response is humble trust, and gratitude for what God has done for us. We abandon our self-sufficient, [15/16] self-reliant efforts to deserve Divine favor and we humbly submit ourselves to God to receive what He is prepared to give. God opened the door, came in and said, “I’ll take you just as you are.” And this is the relationship that gives life. You can have the courage to face yourself when you know that God will accept you, and that you can rise with Him to new life.

AS YOU SOW

Finally, let us remind ourselves of some brutal things which some people believe. First, let me speak as a materialist: “These feelings of guilt that you have are an illusion. Indeed, the high standards of purity of heart and love and service—they’re also illusions—they’re just cobwebs spun out by men. There’s no God to help you; there’s no higher power to give you new life. This is a materialistic universe.” There are many people who believe this.

Next, let me speak for a person for whom law alone is real and salvation comes alone from merit. “God is a high, awful, and [16/17] righteous sovereign. He rules this earth by law and by law alone. He has decreed, and this is the truth alone of life, that whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap. You’ve made your bed, now lie in it! We reap what we sow, and no new relationship to God will remove our guilt or the power of evil. This is a hard, and this is a righteous universe. ‘The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on, nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.’ You reap what you sow, that’s all. There’s no new life and we’re guilty before God.” There are many people who believe this, too.

I think all of us would say, however, “Without Christ’s love, and without His forgiveness, and without His offer of life, we perish.” In our hearts let us put Him back on the Cross, so to speak; let us hear Him say, “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you.” New life—not by our merits—but by His Grace. That is the Good News.