Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

Scandalous Grace, Part 1

A Match Made in Heaven
Romans 7:1-6 & Selected Texts
Sunday Morning
June 6, 2010
Church in the Boro
Rob Wilkerson

Introduction: My Personal Testimony

My earliest memories and thoughts of God are very significant for me. What
you and I think about God is THE single most significant thing we will ever
think in our entire lives. What you and I think about God shapes everything
in our lives from that point forward.

My thoughts about God were typical for an unbeliever, even at eight or nine
years old. A most significant memory for me was around that age while I
was living in Lincoln County, GA. I began to suffer the beginning stages of
Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Stress and anxiety even at that early age
were fast becoming my best friends.

I wanted real friends, but they were few and far between for me. I was a
skinny little nerd with a severe case of social awkwardness, and teeth so
buck I could eat corn through a knothole in a wooden fence. To help my
severe overbite, my parents took me to an orthodontist who invented this
monstrous appliance for my mouth that made me look like a chipmunk who
lost an oral tug of war with a spool of electrical wiring. It made me feel and
look miserable.

My dad was a pastor in a small town basically making enough money to keep
us from starving to death. I had one best friend, and his name was Ben
McWhorter. He was pretty cool and he didn’t mind me hanging around him.
He had cool hair and looked normal. He had a girlfriend too, and was
basically responsible for getting me my first girlfriend named Lisa. I was so
socially inept at that age, she came up to me and asked me to “go with her”
and I was genuinely dumb enough to respond, “go where?” She laughed in
that cute way, translating that she wanted to be my girlfriend, asked me if I
wanted to be her boyfriend, and thus was the beginning of an incredible, life-
changing, stimulating, and humiliating three-week long, “steady”
relationship.

Church in the Boro Page 1

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

I tried out for little league around this time too. This was when we
discovered that I couldn’t see very well. My parents were bright enough to
figure out that this must be what’s going on because the other eight or nine
year olds could hit the baseball when it was pitched to them. I couldn’t see
it. So my failure at little league was, of course, in no way connected with the
fact that I had zero hand-eye coordination, which was also revealed when I
tried to catch a pop fly in center field…and got hit in the mouth… denting the
monstrous orthodontic appliance I was wearing…which didn’t make my
parents very happy. Blood gushed from my gums and lips and I could hear
the distant sounds of my potential teammates laughing at me from the
dugout. I was a demoralized failure of a kid, I felt.

My parents tried to cheer me up and gave me for my birthday what I always

wanted: a Richard Petty cowboy hat. They figured it would console me as
well as cover up the embarrassing butt-cut hairdo I was so defiant toward my
parents about. It was the coolest haircut on the planet in the early eighties.
I looked like Lloyd Christmas, the “pumpkin pie hair-cutted freak” from the
movie, Dumb and Dumber. But when you had a cowlick on the front of your
head, I looked like a loser wannabe, and everybody knew it…and often made
me their favorite joke.

My mom and dad also tried to cheer me up by buying me a baseball jersey

so I’d feel like I belonged to something. The only problem was, they didn’t
put two and two together, because the name of the team on the shirt was
the “Bucks,” which harmonized perfectly with my buck teeth. So my
nickname for the third and fourth grades was “Bucky.” I continued to grow
more disenchanted with life and friendships.

Do you have any idea what a buck-toothed, socially-inept, skinny-framed,

baseball wannabe jersey-wearing, butt-cutted hairdo kid with chipmunk
cheeks looks like with a Richard Petty cowboy hat on his weird looking head?
That’s right. The lead role in Revenge of the Nerds. And this is not terribly
exaggerated either.

So put all this as the backdrop of my life at that age, and plug in the onset of
IBS and you know what you’ve got? A weird looking, furless spider-monkey,
socially-retarded, goofy-hat-wearing eight or nine year old who had to go to
the bathroom a lot because he had social anxiety issues. Big duh, huh?

My point in revealing these rather intimate details of my early childhood

years is to show you that your background, culture, and childhood years
heavily influence and shape how and what you think about God. My dad was
a pastor who had not yet discovered the full, biblical gospel, and at that time
in my life the gospel was simply something you believed about Jesus on the
cross that saved you from getting roasted forever in the fires of hell or

Church in the Boro Page 2

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

getting left behind in the rapture. Grace was almost entirely absent. Except
for that one ray-of-hope-life-illustration I still remember to this day.

My best friend and poverty-stricken black next door neighbor, Bruce “the
Moose” and I were hanging out killing baby turtles one hot summer day. We
were pretending they were sick and we had to put them out of their misery
by dropping large, heavy rocks on top of their shells….over and over again. I
think we must have been bored that day.

We wandered down to the junk yard about a couple of hundred yards from
my house. When lo and behold there was a 1981 brown Lincoln Towncar
sitting there…running…with the driver’s side door open. Bruce and I looked
at each other and had the exact same idea: to get in it and drive it off. So
Bruce, the smarter one, snuck in and crawled over to the passenger side,
summoning me from behind an oil barrel into the driver’s seat. I asked him
what we did next, and he said he thought we were supposed to “put it in D”.
So I shifted the gear lever into “D” and the car began to roll forward. We
instantaneously freaked out and panicked, ditched the car, and ran away as
the car drover itself into a fence and wrecked.

We wandered around too scared to go home. But the owner of the junk yard
must have been familiar with my face because he called the Sheriff to my
house. He was waiting there with my dad when I got home: two ministers of
justice awaiting their opportunity to scare the crap out of me. I was too
scared to remember what actually transpired. Just having him there in my
house was enough to curb my life of grand theft auto forever. Part of my
punishment was that I was grounded indefinitely which also meant non-
involvement in the upcoming county fair later that month.

The night came for the family to go the fair, and my dad walked into the
living room where I was sulking and pouting. Like any kid I was more mad at
the consequences than I was at the fact that I had broken the law and
embarrassed my dad, the town’s Baptist pastor. Surely the Methodist
preacher’s kid behaved better than this!

My dad asked me to stand up. He put his arms on my shoulders, looked me

in the eyes, and asked me if I knew what grace was. I thought she was that
hot-looking brunette chick in the fourth grade with me at the county
elementary school. (My mom always told me I had peanut butter for brains,
and “meathead” was a memorable term of her frustration toward me.) Dad
probably rolled his eyes, prayed for heavenly grace once more, and
explained that grace was giving something to someone that they did not
deserve. I don’t remember anything else after that, because it’s hard to put
much biblical truth into a head filled with half of a sandwich fixing.

Church in the Boro Page 3

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

But here’s what I do remember. He looked at me and told me he was going

to show me grace by letting me to go the county fair. The Ferris Wheel,
funnel cakes, and fun house were all within my grasp once again. And I
never felt more alive…like I was forgiven… like I belonged…like I was a part
of something more special than I really understood. I’ve never forgotten that
moment because it formed a memory that I would return to later in on life as
an illustration of God’s grace when the Spirit would finally illumine my heart
and mind about this incredible truth.

It would be many years later before that illumination came. But it was a life-
anchor I’ve gone back to with my children several times. Thankfully none of
them has stolen a car yet, and if they do I hope it’s something a little sportier
than a Lincoln Towncar. But if they do, I hope I’ll show them the same grace
my dad showed me…the same grace God showed me in Jesus Christ.

Prior to this illumination of my heart about grace, however, and subsequent

to that illustration of it with the county fair, I struggled with a very, very
wrong view of God’s grace. Remember the IBS I struggled with? Other
memories I have of that time in my life include me on the toilet in the
bathroom at home, writhing in intestinal pain, crying out to God for
forgiveness. My spiritual rationale at that time in my life was that if I was
suffering with that kind of pain, it must have been because I had upset God
in some serious way that it required Him to punish me like that. So with
each wave of pain and fever spike I would collapse with my head hanging to
the floor crying, begging God to forgive me of whatever I had done wrong.

Do you recall what I said at the beginning of my testimony? About what you
think about God being the most important thing you’ll ever think in your
whole life? Here are two things I thought about God at this age in my life
that shaped how I viewed God for years to come.

Wrong view of God Number One: my innate desire to belong, to

have real friends, and to not be judged and mocked by mean people
could not be met in God, but could only be met in belonging to
someone else, having real friends, and not being judged or laughed at
by mean kids.

Wrong view of God Number Two: any pain and suffering I went
through were a result of God’s punishment for my sins…even if I didn’t
remember what the sins were.

I know I’m hitting close to home with some of you. Perhaps many of you.
You’ve somewhat identified with my inner turmoil and struggle, even if only
a little. Memories of yourown efforts to “fit in” and be cool and to just plain
belong are perhaps resurfacing in your mind and heart.

Church in the Boro Page 4

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

Maybe others of you will identify with other wrong views of God I had later on
in life as a teenager. I believe the Lord genuinely saved me around eleven or
twelve. I don’t really recall. But I DO recall a real change in my heart and
attitude. Prior to this my life of the object of mockery and subject of joking
produced such anger in my heart that began to feel as if something else or
someone else was slowly gaining control of my behavior. Those who
accepted me for the weirdo I was were my “friends,” and those who didn’t
were butt holes.

This heart attitude eventually surfaced in a dirty mouth and terrible grades.
I seem to recall that as a result of these I was kicked out of the Cub Scouts.
That was in the fourth grade. By the fifth grade we had moved to Savannah,
GA and all of this had turned into full-fledged rebellion against my parents
and secretly making out with the girl across the street. My dad began to get
more deeply involved in ministry with the transition to a new church, and
never felt more alone. Kids were picking on me at the new school, and I was
in trouble with the school authorities because I didn’t believe in the evolution
they were trying to teach me in the classroom.

By the end of my fifth-grade year I had been grounded for two full semesters
because of my bad grades. This amounted to me being confined completely
to my room for 24 straight weeks, coming out only to eat and go to church.
I’m certain my parents had no earthly idea what else to do with me other
than this. Afterwards, I was so pent up with loneliness and anger that I got
into a yelling match with my parents, threatened to move out, and they
helped me pack my bags and hurried me out the front door. This planted a
third wrong view of God in my head.

Wrong View of God Number Three: no matter how lonely and

angry you get, no one will really ever be there for you and someone
will always be mad at you.

But then God saved me and began growing that seed within my heart. It
was a typical Southern Baptist conversion experience with crying, white-
knuckling the pew in front of me, nervous to walk forward, and shake pastor-
dad’s hand, and let him know I wanted to follow Jesus. I did just that, filled
out the card, had family and friends all gathered around me all crying out
loud and snotting up…the whole nine yards. And no matter what you or I
may see wrong with that kind of conversion experience today, God still saves
people that way. He is not bound by methods that contradict our doctrine.

I suddenly loved to evangelize with my friend John who had also been saved.
There were bullies in the neighborhood so we built tonfa billy clubs out of old
lumber, taped them up with different colored electrical tape, and fastened on
the end of the club the Christian fish lapel pins we were given when we

Church in the Boro Page 5

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

walked the aisle at our church. We were ready to defend ourselves as well
as the gospel of Jesus.

Helping the elderly clean their yards, handing out tracts, and telling people
about Jesus were among the simplest things we knew how to do at eleven
years old. John and I would ascend the emergency fire escape stairs
between the two of the buildings at the First Baptist Church of Garden City to
pray, plan, eat, and laugh together. I finally had a friend who understood
me. And he was way cooler than I was!

Eventually we moved again. It’s what so many pastors do. And the horrible
transitions it heaps upon the children are sometimes too unspeakable for
them personally. We moved to Columbus, GA halfway through my seventh
grade year, and began another life, trying to make friends, trying to belong,
and desperately wanting approval. Now, I was in a Christian school, except
by God’s strange providence it was a school run by independent,
fundamentalist Baptists.

Here, a whole new world was introduced to me of what it means to

supposedly please God. Girls weren’t allowed to wear pants. Guys had to
have short haircuts and no facial hair. And when we went to the annual
school camp at the beginning of each school year the guys and girls were not
allowed to swim together. I sort of had this concept in my mind that if I
ended up in the lake with female it would turn into the lake of fire and we
would die together in our forbidden love.

We were only supposed to use the King James Version of the Bible because
all the other versions were supposedly perversions of God’s holy Word. We
didn’t want to adulterate or pollute our tender consciences at such a crucial
age, so my mom and dad conceded to buy me a brand new, burgundy,
leather-bound King James Version Holy Bible. Something I also needed for
use in AWANA clubs at my local church where we memorized a boat load of
Bible verses…in a version of the English language I totally didn’t understand.
Meanwhile my dad was committing Bible-whoredom from the pulpit where he
preached from the New International Version.

Meanwhile, my parents had been snookered by the latest in Christian

seminars. We began to be a family grounded in the “principles” of teacher
named Bill Gothard and his Institutes in Basic Youth Conflicts later renamed
to The Institute of Basic Life Principles. I bought into it all and saw it as the
single greatest thing on planet earth to help me walk closer with God and
follow Jesus. The things taught to me seemed to be biblical. After all, they
were from the Bible. And much of what I learned there seemed to harmonize
with the stuff I was being taught at my fundy Christian school.

Church in the Boro Page 6

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

So my attendance at an independent, fundamentalist, Baptist church school

and my family’s involvement with Bill Gothard’s teachings formed a two-
handed choke hold on me spiritually by producing three additional wrong
view of God.

Wrong View of God Number Four: God cares about what version of
the Bible you use, whether your mom wears pants, and how long your
hair is…if you’re a guy.

Wrong View of God Number Five: When it comes to pretty much

anything about the Christian life you’re too dumb to figure it out on
your own so you need someone else to tell you how to do it.

Wrong View of God Number Six: If people around me don’t follow

the principles and convictions you have come to, then they are worldly,
probably aren’t real Christians, and need to be avoided at all costs in
order to stay holy.

Anger had pretty well settled in by then, a stronghold that I was not
immediately delivered from when I was saved. Now another one began to be
built in my heart: the fear of man, or man-pleasing. Everything I did, just
about, was to make others proud of me and/or not get angry at me. I pretty
much just scooted by in the seventh grade, and began the eighth grade with
a renewed sense of desire to grow closer to God. The wrong views of God
began to grow with a passion inside of me, and I pursued God hot and heavy
through all the things I was being taught. My relationship with God was now
officially and completely based on stuff I was told I needed to do in order to
stay close to God. And if I messed up, I was worldly and not holy and needed
to repent or else God would give me over to the desires of my flesh and I
would be abandoned by God and go to hell when I die. That was more or
less the logical end and effect all this had on me for most, if not all of my
middle and high school years.

My desire to make people proud of me and to belong to “the accepted and

favored” gave me the motivation to excel in school…except for Algebra I
which I failed…along with Algebra II…and Geometry. Other than that,
though, I was at least a Principal’s List student, and an Honor Roll student in
the tenth grade, because I aced business math.

I had earned all the awards and trophies one could earn in AWANA, which
obviously meant I had the most decorated uniform as the only one who had
earned the prestigious Leader in Training position in the clubs. The number
of verses I learned there were enormous, and I am gratefully indebted to this
organization for sheer weight of Scripture I was forced by God’s providence
to lean on in later years. The Spirit eventually illumined my “meat head”
once again and these verses came to light in new way like never before.

Church in the Boro Page 7

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

And here’s the thing about legalism: it will take good, holy, and righteous
things and perversely use them to obtain or maintain a close relationship
with God as well as to make me look really good to everyone else, all at the
same time. My legalistic heart took good things like Bible verses and turned
them into awards to be earned so that I could be the best and most godly
teenager at my local church…and probably in all of world history.

Meanwhile, another stronghold was being built in my life. As if anger and

man-pleasing weren’t bad enough, I spotted and grabbed a pornographic
magazine from the crawl space of one of the deacons we were helping to
move one day, and a stronghold of lust was begun that would control me for
years. It’s the only magazine I’ve ever seen in my entire life to this day. And
it was the only one I ever needed to see. From that point on the lustful
desires of a young man going through puberty took over, and gave full vent
to the normal sort of action that results from lust, and eventually grew to be
a full-fledged slave of masturbation.

So imagine with me if you will what it was like for me. Against the backdrop
of slavery to masturbation I was learning new rules and “principles” for what
it meant to follow God. Guilt ruled my life because this particular stronghold
left me particularly ashamed, to ashamed in fact to tell anyone. And why?
Because the other stronghold of man-pleasing kept me from it. How could I
tell anyone about this struggle when I wanted everyone to think well of me?

Then there was the other stronghold of anger boiling up in me. Lust and
anger are all too common in young men in their puberty years. Passion and
aggression, things normal to human development, often seem to big to
control, and so they end up controlling teenagers. I was one of those. I was
angry at myself for continuing to sin over and over and over and over again.
I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. And the anger at myself began boiling
over to others, like my brother, whose door I obliterated one day because he
did something to tick me off…something I don’t even remember to this day.

Meanwhile, my budding mind and intellect also began to hunger for more
knowledge. So I concluded that if I simply learned more about God and His
Word I would be able to beat all this crap in life. I read the Bible all the time.
I memorized a lot of it, thanks to AWANA. I read and studied other books,
especially on the rapture and second coming of Jesus because it seemed to
be the only rescue to me. I prayed for Jesus’ coming regularly and probably
longed for His coming at that time in my life more than at any other. This, as
I recall, was during my ninth grade year. And all this study didn’t work at
stopping my sin.

I remember studying Proverbs verse by verse for months as a tenth grader. I

figured I was just a foolish young man and that if I studied and memorized a

Church in the Boro Page 8

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

lot of Proverbs I would stop sinning. But that didn’t work either. I just kept
on acting foolish. I then turned to fasting and vows. I remember swearing to
God that if I ever masturbated again I wanted Him to kill me. And I painted a
big sign that read, “You SWORE!” right above my headboard. My mom came
in and asked me one day what it was about, and I simply replied that it was
just a personal deal I’d made with God. It seemed enough to prevent her
from digging deeper.

The oath didn’t work either. And neither did fasting. And neither did more
Bible reading. I basically went through my tenth and eleventh and twelfth
grade years leap frogging from spiritual experience to spiritual experience,
from book to book, from revival to revival, from friend to friend, looking for
that blessed something or someone that would be the final fix for me and
rescue me from what seemed to only be an inner miserable existence
intertwined with a cycle of resolve, sin, and guilt.

You know what I found out? Resolve means nothing, ultimately. The high
school version of AWANA at that time required us praying through and
writing down New Year’s resolutions. Mine were always the same: read the
Bible through in a year. I figured that if I could conquer that mountain I
would arrive at the peak of victory and not sin anymore. Perhaps your
experiences with this same resolution were like mine. I made it through
January, missing a couple of days, but always able to make up the reading
and stay close to God. But by February, I was into Leviticus, and the stresses
and strains of a busy High School life often interrupted me so that I got
further and further behind in my reading.

Each day I got behind was filled with guilt. I had set up a rather easy goal,
but when I got done with homework and basketball practice I crashed…
without reading my Bible. I would resolve again to catch up the next day,
and the next, and the next. But I eventually got so far behind I figured I’d
never catch up. So I gave up. And I felt a new wave of guilt…again. I would
hear things like this going on in my head. “Some Christian YOU are! You
can’t even do something as easy as read the Bible in a year!” And I listened
to things like that until another stronghold was built into my heart. This one
was called hopelessness. And it almost always manifests itself in depression.

Each year of my life after High School was filled with resolve after resolve to
beat my sins of lust and anger, as well as the sin of not reading your Bible
through in year. That’s a big one. I mean, how can you even say you’re a
Christian if you haven’t even read the Bible through in a year! That’s 365
opportunities to read the Bible through from cover to cover, including the
maps, even though they’re not inspired. If you can’t do that, then you surely
suck! At least that’s what Satan wanted me to believe.

Church in the Boro Page 9

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

Each year of my life was also filled with experience after experience.
Revivals, missions conferences, seminars, workshops and prayer meetings
were always on the menu. And my attendance at each one was almost
always with baited breath as I hoped that something would happen to me
there that would deliver me once and for all. Most of the time, something
would happen. The Spirit of God would in fact move. But the misperception
I had of the Christian life caused me to misinterpret His moving so that I
would fail again, and again, and again, plunging me back into the failure,
guilt, and depression. This would in turn be followed by seeking the next
experience for that once-and-for-all deliverance.

Bible College and a job with a missionary organization didn’t help either, by
the way. I went to Bible College for four years, and worked with the
missionary organization for two years. I was mentored by a tremendous
brother who was a proponent of Keswick theology, something that seemed to
only fuel this passion in my life for a once-and-for-all crisis-centered,
experiential deliverance from my struggles. I don’t agree with this theology,
but love this precious brother, whose passion for God is greater than mine
will ever be.

When I was nineteen or twenty I met John MacArthur, the famous Bible
expositor, began my initiation into church hero worship, became a Calvinist,
and left the missions organization for the much more holy work of youth
pastoring. Meanwhile, I was still secretly enslaved to masturbation,
developed a distrust for those in authority over me, and couldn’t keep my
hands off my fiancé, who by God’s grace I ultimately but mysteriously
seemed to marry as a pure man….at least physically.

A few months prior to marrying I remember having a mental breakdown in

the upstairs bedroom where I was living with my parents at the time. I was
so broken over my spiritual state and inability to please God that I had
decided that the best thing to do was to design and carry out my own death.
It had to be certain so that I wouldn’t be left a vegetable with my parents
begrudgingly caring for my worthless existence. I had determined that the
best way to do this was to drive my Toyota Camry to the top of Turner Hill
and then right off the cliff which was easily over a couple hundred feet high.
I had determined the place and the method, but I had a hard time concluding
the time.

Then my brother walked in and ticked me off. When you’re always bubbling
with anger and frustration inside you’re a walking time bomb. I exploded,
reminiscent of the door on his bedroom I destroyed many years earlier. We
got into a yelling and wrestling match, and my dad raced upstairs to break
up two twenty-something year olds fighting like drunk rednecks at a Friday
night football game.

Church in the Boro Page 10

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

My dad asked what in the world was going on. I crumbled into tears and
revealed my plan to take my life. He was shocked. I explained why. It was
now the third or fourth time I had opened up to him about my problems.
Except this time, something got through. It was a twin ray of light called
process and progress. He explained that the Christian life is a constant walk
of progress and process. Things would never be the same because we would
supposedly always be growing. What I was struggling with then would not
be what I would struggle with ten years from then, twenty years, and so
forth. I took that to heart and resolved once again to do better and embrace
progress as my new banner for deliverance.

At this point, I’m now twenty-three or twenty-four, and I’ve carried my

strongholds and baggage into a new marriage, expecting that this awesome
grace of God will deliver me from my troubles. But to my surprise, just like
Bible reading, Bible memorization, Bible study, prayer meetings, revival
meetings, missions conferences, seminars, workshops, and all the other
things I did, this did not deliver me either. It took me about three months
into marriage to figure that out, and I was plunged into depression again.

My precious wife has endured more crap from this troubled saint than
perhaps any wife ought to endure. Imagine living with a husband who has
strongholds of lust, anger, hopelessness, man-pleasing, pride, and rebellion.
Imagine each of those strongholds doing battle against the others so that I’m
left in the middle of them all, huddled on the ground in fear, unable to
perceive or think through anything with any degree of spiritual accuracy. I
felt like I was spiritually a bloody mass of a human being with thousands of
flaming arrows piercing my body. Attempts to break free and crawl away
were simply manifested to my wife and others as anger, rebellion, and
depression.

By this time in my life acid reflux had joined the ranks with IBS. Now I was
suffering in my stomach as well as in my gut. Whatever food or drink
choices that didn’t trigger the other would cause me enough pain in one way
or another. Bathroom trips were more numerous. And so were rebukes and
reproofs from those in spiritual authority over me. Because by now another
stronghold had developed in my life: distrust. My own sins had so clouded
my judgment that I began to figure that if anyone actually found out what all
I struggled with they would de-friend me and I would be left all alone…again.

And I was right. Because as I began to sink deeper into local church ministry
I found out so many other people struggled with so many of the things I did.
But I also found out something far more awful than just merely struggling
with these things, and it was this. If you came out and confessed what you
struggled with to get help, you would be treated as a most pitiful soul who
was in need of biblical counseling, and you would be marked by others to
your face and behind your back as someone who was something like an

Church in the Boro Page 11

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

alcoholic. You know what they say about alcoholics, don’t you? They’re
somehow always in recovery. I don’t know how, but somehow and in some
way they’re always going to be a victim of alcoholism and they’ll never, ever
be able to genuinely recover.

That’s what I experienced in almost every single church I’ve been a part of in
my life. Everybody inwardly knew that everybody else secretly struggled
with one or more sins. The commercial on T.V. during that part of my life
said it plainly: “Never let ‘em see you sweat.” And I didn’t dare. Because if
I did I would be marked as the ever-recovering masturbating rebel who had
no business trying to pastor anybody.

During this time in my life I fell in love with the Puritans. Their view of God
was high, their understanding of His majesty deep, but strangely their
theology of depravity was not conquered in the Christian by the very same
gospel they so gloriously preached. As a result, there was this constant
appeal to inward heart examination that so attracted me at the time. And I
fell into another resolve-trap by thinking if I could purchase and read as
many of the Puritans works as possible I would eventually be delivered from
all this. And I figured that if I could practice heart-examination as thoroughly
and often as possible, I would be rescued from my struggles. And another
wrong view of God took root in my heart and life.

Wrong View of God Number Seven: If I take try harder and harder
to take my sin more and more seriously God will be pleased with my
efforts and love me more by blessing me with victory and success.

This turned out to be probably the most irritating lie I’ve believed about God
to this day. The idea that somehow I could ever take my sin more seriously
than God did when He punished His own Son for my sins is so freaking
ludicrous. Equal to this lie is the equally irritating error that when God saved
me He left me with a heart that remains as depraved and wicked and
deceitful as it was the day before He saved me. These lies were like bitch
slaps which seemed to immobilize, incapacitate, and demoralize me
spiritually.

Carry all of this into seminary with you and what do you have? Another
resolve turned failure, turned depression. I went through seminary gaining
more knowledge more rapidly than at any other time in my life. But my wife
and I had to endure the loss of our second son our second year in seminary,
something I would never wish on my worst enemy. During these years I still
struggled with the same sins, as well as with the same wrong views of God.

Remember the second wrong view of God I had developed at eight or nine
years old? Any pain and suffering I go through are a result of some sin God
needs to punish me for. That wrong view of God surfaced again as I

Church in the Boro Page 12

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

connected the struggle in my life with the death of my second son. I

assumed it was God punishing me again just as He had done with IBS and
acid reflux.

Now imagine me trying to help myself and my wife and oldest son through
all this. I clung to the Puritans and their view of dealing with sin. I struggled
with anger at myself for continue to doing things that brought God’s
judgment on me. My anger would spill over and manifest itself against my
wife. And yet somehow, in the midst of all this, God did what He does best.
He wades through the sewage we create in our lives and saves us. That’s
just what He did with my wife. Because of my spiritual ineptitude I had built
a cage of legalism around my wife forcing her to live like me and think like
me. And fortunately because of God’s grace He mysteriously used my
ineptitude and saved my wife. God let me, a miserable wretch at that time
in my life, lead my wife to Jesus for salvation.

Since then she has discovered His grace much faster than I ever will. And I
think this too was God’s design because He gave me a living-color example
to observe and follow, while often abusing her with my legalism and
strongholds. I don’t have anyone else who is a better friend than she.
Indeed nobody else can be a best friend to me than this woman who is has
developed an incredible resilience of grace against the backdrop of my
stupidity.

Then I read a book called The Cross-Centered Life by C. J. Mahaney in 2002.

Things changed radically.

I suddenly saw the enemy’s lies as clear as day. And to say I was pissed was
an understatement. Equal that understatement was to say I was overjoyed.
I felt a slow but steady empowering in what Jesus had already done for me,
as well as a growing and ginormous empowering against what Satan had
done to me. I felt as if he had been my pimp, using me for his own pleasure.
And all the while my husband, King Jesus Christ, had been standing there
holding my hand and protecting me from ultimate demise.

My dad gave me $20 to memorize Romans 6 when I was in the sixth grade. I
wish he’d have given me another $20 to memorize Romans 7 when I was in
the seventh grade. And then another $20 to memorize Romans 8 in the
eighth grace. I didn’t get to a verse by verse study of Romans 7 and 8 until
2002. And when I did, I was amazed at what I read. I was transformed. It
concluded in my life what God had begun some twenty years earlier when I
memorized Romans 6.

Romans 7: The Foundation for Grace

Church in the Boro Page 13

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

Romans 5:20 teaches us that God gave the Law to the world in order to
make the sin in the world more easily recognizable, and in turn to make it
increase. That seems weird, but follow God’s logic, and not your own.

Ultimately, sin must be revealed for what it really is: the most awful, crazy,
spit-in-your-face perversity against God’s goodness in world history. In a
word, sin is treason. The King of the Universe has given us life and breath,
food and drink, home and clothing and we have returned our thanks with
loving the stuff He gave us more than we love Him. That’s treason.

In order to reveal sin for what it really is, the Law of God had to be given so
sin could be recognized. But when the Law is given, the actual effect on
humanity is to make them want to do what is wrong more and more. So
really, the Law of God just makes sin increase.

But God also introduced something else into the world long before He gave it
the Law. That something was special because it was subversive. It would
root itself in humanity and in the world deeper than the Law of God and even
deeper than sin. This would allow this subversive element to ultimately grow
up and choke out the other two. That element is called grace.

Neither the Apostle Paul nor I can overstate the importance of understanding
that Law is absolutely necessary for grace. In other words, God can’t give
the world grace until He gives the world Law. The reason for that is fairly
simple. How can a prisoner know what freedom really is if he doesn’t know
he’s in jail because he broke the law? God gave Law so people would know
what sin is, in order that they can taste and see and embrace His grace.

Now then, until grace comes into a person’s life, both sin and Law rule like
tyrants over the unbeliever, condemning him or her to eternal death.
However, the tyrant of sin was destroyed at the cross, and this is taught in
chapter 6. This leads us to chapter 7, where we also find out that the new
believer is released from the tyrant of Law, which only served to condemn
him to death and stimulate him to sin anyway. Freed from his slavery to sin
and Law, he is now a new creature, happily serving Jesus Christ, the One who
delivered, rescued and saved him from these two tyrants.

In Chapter 7 then, Paul is reaches way back to 5:20 and picking up the topic
of why the presence of the Law caused sin to increase. One thing you need
to know about Romans is that it is sort of like a legal document, with Paul
forming several arguments, building one upon the other, toward a solid
conclusion about God’s goodness and love and grace, and our resulting
response. And his argument building from 5:20 to 7:1 reveal four crucial
truths you need to know if we want to follow Jesus.

Church in the Boro Page 14

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

First, part of Paul’s argument here is meant to correct the normal Jewish
thought concerning the Law. They normally thought that the Law was given
to curb sin. And it’s unbelievable how smart Satan is and how dumb we
humans really are, because he’s been using that same lie ever since the Law
was given. He knows he can head us down a path of misery if he can make
us believe that following God’s Laws and trying to better about obeying them
will somehow curb the sin in our lives. My testimony should be proof enough
that this is a stinking lie from the pits of hell. Instead, all that the Law of God
does, along with my rules and principles, is simply stimulate me to sin even
more, and then reveal what a failure I am at the whole effort.

Second, also part of Paul’s argument is the truth that even though Law
makes sin increase, the Law itself is not bad in anyway at all. That’s like
saying that the doctor who tells you that you have cancer and have only six
weeks to live is a bad doctor. Or that the teacher who gives you a bad grade
on your test because you answered the questions wrongly is somehow a bad
teacher. Instead, Paul teaches that Law is good and righteous and holy. And
what he wants to show is that sin is so stinking sinful that it will use
something good and righteous and holy to make you want to sin even more.

Third, this line of argumentation leads us to the truth that the Law is in no
way responsible for my death and judgment by God. Just like the doctor is
not responsible for my death to cancer, nor my teacher responsible for my
bad grades. They are simply pointing out what is wrong and what is going to
happen to me. Instead, SIN is responsible because it is using the holy Law of
God for its own perverse purposes.

Fourth, and finally, Paul is arguing here that the Law does not provide ANY
ability to obey God at all. Just like the doctor’s word about my death to
cancer cannot cause any healing for me, and just like the teacher’s grade
cannot actually help me learn the subject better and make a better test
grade next time. That’s not the purpose of God’s Law. Instead, all the Law
does is to produce an awareness of your own disability and powerlessness to
obey and please God.

Now, here’s what I want you to do. Substitute the Law talked about in
Romans 7 for your own rules and principles today. You know what I’m
talking about. Those things you’ve determined in your own mind are
absolutely necessary and essential for you to perform in order to have a
relationship with God and/or with other people. The things you see other
Christians doing and determine to be a better way to please God than
whatever you’re doing right now. The books you see other people reading
and believe will make you more godly if you read them. The methods or
lifestyle choices other couples have made which you think will fix your
marriage if you decide to implement them.

Church in the Boro Page 15

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

God wants you to know today that NONE of those things will actually give
you any real ability to obey God and follow Jesus. They have absolutely no
power whatsoever to help you follow Jesus. The only purpose that laws and
rules have is the only thing they were designed to do: point out your
disability and powerlessness to meet God’s standards.

There’s only one person in the entire history of the world who has ever done
that, or ever will do that. His name is Jesus Christ. And everything in the
world that can ever make God happy has been perfectly performed by Jesus
Christ Himself.

The Holy Spirit of life in Christ Jesus wants you to know today that if you are
following Jesus you’re married to Him and not the Law anymore. You’ve
died, your husband named Law can’t tell you want to do anymore, and
you’re now married to King Jesus. This is just the illustration Paul is using to
teach this truth in Romans 7:1-4.

A. The Illustration of Marriage (verses 1-4)

1 Now, dear brothers and sisters—you who are familiar with the
law—don't you know that the law applies only while a person is
living? 2 For example, when a woman marries, the law binds her
to her husband as long as he is alive. But if he dies, the laws of
marriage no longer apply to her. 3 So while her husband is alive,
she would be committing adultery if she married another man.
But if her husband dies, she is free from that law and does not
commit adultery when she remarries. 4 So, my dear brothers
and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law
when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one
who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a
harvest of good deeds for God. (NLT).

The Jewish Law absolutely prohibited a woman from remarrying unless her
husband had died. If she did she was considered an adulterer. However, if
her husband died, she was free to remarry, and would no longer be thought
of as an adulterer if she did remarry.

Whose who in this illustration? On the one hand the emphasis is put on the
wife as being free to remarry (v. 3). So this seems to make the Law the
husband. But this isn’t consistent because Jesus plainly reveals in Matthew 5
that heaven and earth will pass away before the Law of God does. But then
Paul shifts his emphasis from the one who is living to the one who died,
presumably the husband (v. 4). Are we as Christians then represented by
the husband, and therefore dead to the Law? It gets kind of confusing,
doesn’t it?

Church in the Boro Page 16

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

Just know this: The answer is found not in trying to make a point for point
correspondence in the illustration, but in seeing the connection between
verses 1 and 4. The point is that the law has no jurisdiction over a
person who is dead. And Paul makes that very point in verse 6 for us.

6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it
and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God,
not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new
way of living in the Spirit. (NLT).

Terry Virgo has a great illustration of this truth.

“In Romans 7:6 Paul continues the theme by telling you that you
are indeed discharged from his authority, rather like someone
who has been conscripted into national military service for a
season, but now, having fulfilled his time, is then discharged
from the army. He walks out free, no longer under its control.
One can imagine a sergeant major seeing a discharged soldier
and not realizing that has been discharged. The free man is
strolling across the parade ground without a tie, whistling as he
walks in glorious freedom and abandon. The sergeant major,
seeing this slovenly soldier, screams at him, expecting to impose
his authority on him once more and call him to order. Imagine
the glorious liberty of the discharged soldier merely saying,
‘Goodbye, Sarge!’ Imagine every vein the neck of the sergeant
standing out as he screams his commands on the deaf ears of
the discharged soldier over whom he now has no authority
whatsoever. The soldier is discharged. You are also discharged
from the law, no longer under its control, no longer married to
this particular husband” (God’s Lavish Grace, pp. 17-18).

The emphasis here is simple. Your relationship to God’s Law completely and
eternally changes when you die. Romans 6 has already taught that
Christians somehow mysteriously and miraculously died with Jesus Christ
when HE died. And their souls or hearts were also raised from death in sin to
life when Jesus was raised from the dead. There’s this incredible, mind-
blowing participation you somehow have in the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ way back when.

Paul’s point in Romans 6 and 7 is that if you died when Jesus died, then the
Law is not your husband anymore and you don’t have to listen to its
condemning words. It can’t point out anything you’ve done wrong…ever
again…because you’re not married to husband Law anymore. You’re now
married to King Jesus Christ! HIS voice is the one you want to listen to now.

Church in the Boro Page 17

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

B. The Relationship of Law to Believer and Unbeliever

(verses 4-6).

1. God HIMSELF Has REALLY and TRULY Freed You From His
Own Law.

Notice first the verbage of verse 4: “Likewise, my brothers, you also have
died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to
another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may
bear fruit for God” (ESV). See the verb, “you have also died”? It’s in the
passive voice and in the past tense in the Greek. It should be translated,
“you were made dead to the law.”

Notice also the verbage of verse 6: “we have been released.” Another
passive verb is used here indicating God is performing the work upon us. So
we’ve got two references to a work that God Himself is doing with us, in us,
and to us. And this means three things for you and me.

a. God has already done the work of annulling your

marriage to the Law.

The emphasis here is on sovereign grace, which is something God does for
you that you can’t do for yourself, but that you need to get done! It’s a
sovereign work only HE could have done and can do and does do. You have
no power or ability to break off this marriage. When Jesus died, God killed
the old you along with Him which makes your marriage annulled.

b. God has already done the work of marrying you to King

Jesus.

Again, you can’t marry yourself. If you are married, you got married by
someone who officiated the ceremony, such as a pastor, minister, priest, or
justice of the peace. In the same way, God Himself officiated the wedding to
King Jesus so that you are now joined to Him. The old husband named Law
can’t tell you what to do anymore.

c. There’s nothing else for you to do except celebrate

your new life and marriage to King Jesus.

You do this by simply staying planted in your new marriage with Jesus and
watching all kinds of fruit grow in your life.

2. The Power of the Sin is Seen in its Misuse of the Law; and
the Power of the Law is Seen in its Arousal of Sin.

Church in the Boro Page 18

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

This is exactly what verse 5 is teaching about our condition before Christ as
well as the condition of every lost person. The Law does not enable
obedience, but it actually disables it by arousing sin which in turn works in
our bodies to bear the fruit of eternal death and condemnation.

This would have been a shock to the Jew! How dare anyone even intimate
that the Law actually increases sin. The typical Jewish view was that the Law
helped one obey God and prevented sin. But Paul contends here in verse 5
that the Law actually aids and abets sin, provoking and stimulating it. And
the typical Jew was crazy not to see this, because it was clearly played out in
their own history time and again, eventually ending up in the exile of their
people!

Conclusion

I’ve lived what seemed like exile for years. And I lived there because I
believed that the Law of God and my resolve to continue trying to obey it
would actually curb my sin. Instead, it just made me want to sin all the
more. That is, until I realized what the purpose of the Law actually was, and
until I realized that all this time I was actually dead to it. Yet there I lived
each day of my life listening to it dictate to me how I was supposed to live
and please God.

How awful a life that was. Maybe you’re there today at some point along the
path I walked. God wants you to know you’ve already been rescued from it.
He wants you to know you’re simply listening to a husband you’re not really
married to anymore. And if you’re not following Jesus yet, He wants you to
know you don’t have to married to that husband anymore. You can bring
your weary and burdened self to Him and He’ll give you the rest you’ve been
looking for all this time by annulling your marriage to Law and celebrating
His marriage to you.

God is here this morning in the Spirit of freedom and life in Christ Jesus
revealing the lies about Himself that we have come to believe.

Right View of God Number One: my innate desire to belong, to

have real friends, and to not be judged and mocked by mean people is
met ONLY in my marriage to King Jesus.

Right View of God Number Two: Any pain and suffering you’ve
gone through was NOT a result of God’s punishment for your sins. He
already punished Jesus Christ for your sins, and He doesn’t punish
twice for the same sin.

Church in the Boro Page 19

Rob Wilkerson
Scandalous Grace, Part 1 June 6, 2010

Wrong View of God Number Three: No matter how lonely and

angry you feel, Jesus Christ is your husband and He will always love
you and accept you and embrace you…and He will never, EVER be
mad at you.

Right View of God Number Four: God does NOT care about what
version of the Bible you use, whether your mom wears pants, and how
long your hair is…if you’re a guy.

Right View of God Number Five: When it comes to pretty much

anything about the Christian life you’ve got the Holy Spirit of God living
inside of you to show you how to figure it out and how to do it.

Right View of God Number Six: If people around you don’t follow
the principles and convictions you have come to, then they are just
different from you, they’re probably Christians, and the blood of Jesus
is all over them just like it is all over you, and you’re both loved by
Jesus the same. Staying away from them won’t make you more holy.
Loving them will.

Right View of God Number Seven: You’ll never be able to take

your sin as seriously as God does. Trusting in the way HE dealt with it
means believing He has taken care of it once and for all and will never
remind you of it again forever and ever.

These are a few of the lies God has corrected about Himself, thanks to the
Holy Spirit who lives inside of me.

These are the right views of Himself He’s helped me to see that I am now
living a more joyous, partying lifestyle in the grace of God.

It feels so good to know that I’ll never sleep another night believing God is
mad at me.

It feels REALLY good to know that when I sin and screw up, God has already
forgiven me because of what Jesus Christ has done for me on the cross.

And it feels just awesome to see that what He’s done for me and in me is
making me want to do greater things for Him, bear bigger fruit for Him, and
become more holy like Him.

Church in the Boro Page 20

Rob Wilkerson