Brokenness in Christ
By Mark Daniel Del RosarioWhat does a Christian look like? What does a righteous man look like? When you’re in the mall and you see people walking back and forth, can you spot the Christian? Today, we will determine what a Christian should look like. Today, we will look at three points: How do you look at Christ; how do you approach Christ; and how do you view yourself in Christ?
First, how do you look at Christ? Answer the following questions:
Who is the most influential living person in your life?
Who are you?
What is God like?
What is the church?
What is truth?
What is the meaning of life?
What is death?
There are many ways one can answer these questions, however, if you’re a Christian, one word can answer all of these questions, and that is Christ. Who is the most influential living person in your life? If you’re a Christian, Christ is the most influential person in your life. Did you not think of Him as living? Who are you? It says in the Bible that you have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer you who live, but Christ who lives in you. Therefore, you must represent Christ. What is God like? Jesus said that if you see him, you have seen the father. What is the church? It is the body of Christ. What is truth? What is the meaning of life? Jesus said that “
I am the way, the truth, and the life.” What is death? Paul said that to live is Christ and to die is gain. If you’re a Christian, when you die, you will gain more of Christ because you will finally be with Him.
Who is Christ to you? How do you look at Christ? When you go through your every day routine, can you see Christ?
Luke 6:46 says, “
Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” Is He the Lord of your life? When I think about Jesus, we always say that He is our Lord and Savior. Too often we look at the Savior part. When we say Christ is our Lord, it means that we trust Him, that our lives are His, and that we follow wherever He leads.
What happens when you see Christ? Isaiah 6:5 says, “
Then I said, ‘woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips! For my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.”When we look at Christ, we should see ourselves for who we are. Isaiah didn’t think of himself as being honored, as being found worthy to see God. Instead, he saw all his own sins and how unworthy he is to be in God’s presence. Isaiah 64:6 says, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean. And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment.” Many times, we feel that we are worthy to go to God because we have done righteous things, because we have been good to others. But Isaiah says that our deeds are like filthy rags in comparison with God.
Philippians 3:8 says, “
I count all things to be loss in view of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ…”Paul frequently pointed out to the believers that if anyone could boast about their good deeds, about their credentials, it is Paul. He followed the law, he was zealous, etc. Yet, he said he counts all those things to be loss in view of Christ. He would be willing to give them all up to gain Christ. Think about all your accomplishments in life? These are the things that, to many of us, define who we are. I look at the many things that I have done in my life and I still struggle with it. I struggle with not putting pride and faith and trust in these accomplishments above Christ. We should always be willing to choose Christ over anything.
This is why, when we look at Christ, we should be thankful that despite all our fears and failures, God has taken us as He found us. He has chosen us. We did not earn it. Therefore, we should want to be clean, we should want to follow Christ because He is the only one who can make us clean.
Let me tell you a story. There once was a woman driving in a storm. The wind and rain poured hard. Then she noticed on the side of the road was a little puppy. People passed by it and didn’t care to even look or help it. She saw that it looked really sick and might even die soon. It was missing patches of fur in areas too. Her heart really went out to the puppy. After all, wouldn’t she want someone to help her if she was in the same situation? So she got out of the car, carefully picked up the puppy, and brought it in the car with her. It looked really sick, so she brought it to the vet. But it as closed. So she took it home with her, washed it in her own bath tub, fed it, nursed it, and even let it sleep in bed beside her. The next day, the puppy was moving around a bit, but seemed to be still very sick. So she wrapped it carefully in a towel and brought it to the vet. She brought it in and told the vet how she found it the night before and how she really wants him to help her. So the vet opened up the towel. He stared at the puppy. Then he stared at the woman. His eyes full of shock.
“Miss, that is not a puppy…that is a very very large sewer rat.”Many times this is how we view sin in our lives. It looks harmless, it looks like something that can’t hurt us. But in reality, it is death. To think the woman slept with this rat, washed it, fed it. One bite from the rat, one scratch would mean death. This is why, when we look at Christ, we must see our sin for what it is.
So then how do we approach Christ? How do we approach Him when we have sin in our lives?
Let me tell you another story that you may be familiar with. There was this young man who told his rich father, “I
would really like to have my inheritance now. You’re pretty much dead to me, just give me the money and I’ll go.” The father willingly gives the son the inheritance. With that, the son leaves and goes out to the city. He spends his money on prostitutes, on food, on pleasures, on drink, on luxuries. He has the time of his life! And then a famine hits the land. The economy collapses. The young man soon finds himself working among the pigs in a pig farm. For a Jewish man, this is the lowest you can fall – pigs are that dirty. He is there for awhile and realizes that his father’s hired hands have a much better life than him. Don’t they eat and have shelter? With determination, he gets up and begins to trek back to his father’s house. On the way, it rains hard and he gets muddy. Imagine how smelly wet moldy clothes smell like? Now imagine adding the smell of pigs and pig droppings and pig slop (which is mostly made up of spoiled food). He’s mumbling to himself the whole way, reciting what he is going to say, “
Father, I don’t deserve to be called your son, take me as one of your hired hands…” The young man gets to the top of the hill, looks down in the valley and sees his father’s house. A tear comes to his eye as he smells the familiar scents and sees the place he grew up in. To his amazement, he sees his father standing in the garden, and he looks right at him. The young man and the father begin running towards each other. The son runs towards his father with arms wide open and – BAM!!! The father punches the son square in the face, sending him flying to the ground.
“Do you know what you have done? What kind of a man are you? How dare you show your face here?! The people in the town know of your crazy ways and spit on my name – all because of you! Get out of here. I never want to see you again.” The son then, crawls and scurries away before the father sends his dogs after him.
But that’s not what happens in the story. You know what happens. The son gets to the top of the hill, sees his house and his father, and hurries down towards him. “
Father! Father!” he says as he approaches him.
The father, extends a hand to hold him back because of the smell. “You’re back,” the father says.
“
Father,” the son says, “
I don’t deserve to be your son. Let me be one of your hired hands.”
The father nods. “
That sounds fare. Okay, how’s this sound? I’ll let you work among the workers in the field for seven years, then you can move into the house as one of my butlers. Then after another seven years of this, maybe, MAYBE we can talk about you earning your right to be my son again. Now get your bags and make your way to the cabin in the fields with all the other slaves…”
But that’s not what happened. The son runs to the house and sees one of the hired hands. “
Where’s my father?” he asks. “
Oh wow,” the hired hand says, “
you’re alive? Heh, thought you were dead. Guess I lost the bet. Hold on, I’ll go get your father.” The hired hand runs in the house. The young man looks up and can see them talking in one of the windows. Then the hired hand runs back down. “
Well, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that he’s too busy to meet with you right now. Your father is an important man, you know. The good news is that he can squeeze you in for an hour next Tuesday.”
But that isn’t also what happens. What happens is the son is still a long way off from the house. He doesn’t know that his father has been looking out for his return every day since he left. His father sees him, and runs towards him. The son barely has time to look up before the father embraces him, despite all the filth, all the smell, the father embraces him tightly. The son tries to speak, but the father doesn’t let him. Back in the Bible times, if a son rebels against his parents, he gets stoned. The villagers probably saw him coming back and prepared the stones for a good stoning. But the father not only hugs him to show his son that he loves him, he hugs him to protect him, telling the villagers that they’ll have to kill him if they want to kill the son. The father then, still not letting his son speak, grabs the best robe and puts it on him and brings him into the house where they prepare a feast.
See, many of feel that we can’t go to God unless we’re clean already. We commit constantly to stop sinning, to give up giving into temptation. However, when we fall again, we feel ashamed, like we can’t go to God anymore. It’s like we will go to God when we have cleaned ourselves up. But we shouldn’t because we can’t clean ourselves up. Think of a little boy who trips and falls and cuts his knee. He doesn’t hide and clean his wound up, no, he runs straight to his mother or father and asks to be clean. When we sin, we should go straight to God, open and say, “
God, I’m sorry, I’ve sinned, please clean me and help me not to do it again.” So that is how we must approach God: unashamed and humble.
Lastly, how do you view yourself in Christ?
Let’s read Luke 18:10-14. "
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'
"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'
"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."
As a Christian, we always want to do our best for God. We get involved in ministry. We come to church every day. We give tithes. We pray each night, we pray in the prayer room, we pray in church. But it is so easy to fall into the trap of the Pharisees. It is so easy to do the actions and forget about the heart.
Take this pot for example. It is a wonderfully clean perfect pot. We want others to see us this way. We’re perfect. And inside it is a candle, and it shines its light up to heaven. Perfect communion between you and God. We’re perfect, like this pot. But is this how we really are? This is what the Pharisees did. They always would put themselves as being perfect, being holy, being the examples. Everyone sees their perfection. But this is not how God wants us to be. SMASH POT! When the pot is broken, shattered, shards, it loses all resemblance of perfection. We’re really like this. We’re really broken. We struggle with sin, we are prideful, we don’t really pray, we have our doubts. But we don’t want people to see us this way. In vain, we try to grab all the pieces and try to put it back together, but we can’t. “Don’t look!” we say, “I’m okay, yeah, I’m okay.” But we’re not. People come up to us and say, “How are you?” and we tell them “Praise God, it’s Friday!” We act like we have it all together because we don’t want people to know we’re really broken. But what happens when we let others know that we are broken, that we struggle with things? Look at the pot again, there are the shards of broken pieces, but now the candle can be seen. When we are real with people, when we are broken, we bring glory to God. People don’t see us, they see Christ. We give Him the glory.
Look at 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, Paul is talking about the thorn in his side, the thing that keeps him constantly hurting. “
But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” I’m not perfect either. We all struggle with things, but what matters is that we always point to God. Because it is in our weakness that God is shown all the clearer.
So here’s my challenge for you. Don’t be like the Pharisees. When the Pharisees saw Christ, they did not see their sin. They did not really get to know Him. They did not know their scripture. It was all about how they looked to others.
When you look at God, see Him for His holiness, his justice, his love. See Him as truly your Lord, your God, your Savior. See who you are compared to Him. Appreciate His sacrifice for us, because we are so wretched that we don’t really deserve it, but He still loves us.
When you approach God, go as a son to a father. Don’t hide, don’t try to fix yourself without him. Remember, He loved you even before you knew you were living in sin.
When you view yourself, especially how you want others to view you, see yourself as broken and see Christ in you. Bring Him glory in all you do.
To close, look at Galatians 2:20. It says, “
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Matthew 2:1-12 
