Tag: nothing

You’re Nothing, Special

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(1 Corinthians 1:26-31)

If you’ve never seen The Lego Movie, or it’s been a while since you have, it’s time to do yourself a favor and watch it. The main character, Emmet, lives a very basic life, until he discovers the “Piece of Resistance.” Unbeknownst to him, a prophecy declared the finder of this item to be “the Special. Over the course of the movie, Emmet is joined by Master Builders (those with the ability to build without needing any instructions), who help him face the villain, Lord Business, whose goal is to eventually control everything by freezing it into place with his ultimate weapon, the “Kragle.”

What is noticeable about Emmet is this: that there’s nothing noticeable about Emmet. He’s as plain as can be. There’s nothing special about him. By society’s standards, he doesn’t stand out. He’s just average – the type of guy others would easily walk all over on their way to achieving the world’s version of success. He’s naive about how ordinary he is until he sees video of others describing him, each of whom concludes that there’s nothing special about him. That realization presents the ongoing conflict throughout the movie, which seeks to reconcile how a nobody can be “the Special.”

What’s humorous in an animated movie is actually the reality for every believer. In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul emphasizes two truths that seem to be at odds with each other, but which can actually stand side by side in Christ. We are nothing. We are special.

It is the first of those paradoxical statements that has prompted many to lobby against Christianity. They view it as a source of child abuse or trauma, and argue that Christians shouldn’t be able to “brainwash” children, because it causes them emotional harm and diminishes their self-worth and self-confidence. 

Perhaps that’s how they would interpret these words from Paul: “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth” (v.26). While it may sound as if Paul is talking down to his readers, he is simply reminding them of all of the merit, achievements, accomplishments, value, importance, etc. that every person naturally brings before God on their own, which is… none. Nothing. God didn’t come for those who think they’re something apart from him, but for those who know the truth: our sinful self fails to bring anything of value before God, and instead brings only that which is detestable. That may be a hard word.

But is the world’s alternative more effective? When children are raised with an inflated sense of self, when they can do no wrong, when parents convince them that they are the top award getter in every category, do those children turn out better? 

What happens when they aren’t selected as the class valedictorian? What happens when someone else is awarded the scholarship? What happens when they don’t get hired or get passed over for the promotion by someone more qualified? What happens when their perfect marriage ends in divorce? If raised with an inflated sense of self, if quarantined from failure, if shielded from any adversity, they end up with not just a jaded view of the world, but with question marks about themselves. 

But Paul’s words provide the proper framework where such disillusionment doesn’t exist. He makes a point of being brutally honest with us from the start, so that we don’t in any way misunderstand why God would choose us. He explains it in more detail. “But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (v.27-29). 

Aha! If God wanted to make it clear to man that man could never do right by God on his own, here’s how you do it! Choose the nothings and the nobodies over the somethings and the somebodies! In other words, God passes over those the world might consider to be ideal candidates when picking his team, and chooses the least qualified, so that there’s no question about who’s most deserving – no one! Everyone equally has this in common: nothing to brag about. 

How much does this go against the way we naturally operate in our world? We are preoccupied with demonstrating to others that we’re something. We need others to know that we’re not just average. We’re not nobodies. We’re not like everyone else. We’re special. And we are determined to let others know.

We post filtered and AI-filtered photos because the real us is too… average. The new car isn’t just a matter of a midlife crisis, but a reminder to others that we’re doing fine financially. The trip is less about where I am traveling and more about others knowing that I’m traveling. I share the amazing stuff my company does, not because I’m talking them up so much as I am letting everyone know that I have an amazing job. My kids are in this, that, and the other thing, while yours are glued to screens. Whatever it takes – just so long as you remember that I’m somebody.

But what do such efforts really demonstrate? Don’t they reveal an inner disbelief in God’s own words? Don’t they express a denial of what God has clearly stated about us – that we were “foolish,” “weak,” “lowly,” “despised,” “things that are not?” God says we were all of those things (in addition to calling us dead, blind, enemies elsewhere in Scripture!), yet our lives are a constant hamster wheel of “I’ll show you how wrong you are, God.” 

You may think it’s harmless or inconsequential that we operate this way, with this attitude, but it’s much more serious than that. It is potentially damning. Why? Because what is the root cause of such thinking? “There’s not really that much wrong with me. I’m really not so bad. I don’t really need help or saving from anyone else – not even you, God. So, you can keep your Jesus, and I’ll just keep on showing in one way or another that I’m not really the type of loser he came for.” Is there any more dangerous place we could ever be than there???

Then stop pushing back against Paul’s words and repent! Acknowledge what he says about you and about me is true. Even on our best day, we don’t come close to attaining the perfection necessary to categorize ourselves as special.

Instead, in faith, we can step off the hamster wheel and stop trying to counter our insecurities by proving we’re something to others. God doesn’t need you to be something before he can work in you. God is the one who makes us something in the first place.

Take that reality one more step and realize what it means if we can’t ever achieve God’s impossible standards. If we could, then he would be obligated to pick us for his team. He would have to, because we would have met the expected requirements.

But, since no one (aside from our Substitute, Jesus!) can ever meet those impossible standards, then it can only mean one thing that I was brought into his family of believers: he chose me! God has chosen me because, well… he wanted to. He loves me! He wasn’t forced or obligated to write my name in his Book of Life; rather, he chose me.

I am not a believer because he saw potential in me. I am not a believer because God knew I’d make a difference in his kingdom. I’m not a believer because I’m an all-around good guy.

I’m a believer, and you are a believer, because God chose you. And in doing so, he displays to the rest of the unbelieving world that God brings us into his family of faith, not because of our own effort or merit, but because of his grace. And here is what that grace means for us: “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” (v.30).

Is there any achievement you can unlock that could ever confer on you any title greater than those three – righteous, holy, and redeemed? Never. But that is exactly what you are “in Christ Jesus.” Outside of Christ Jesus? Still “foolish, weak, lowly, despised, things that are not.” But in Christ Jesus? Righteous. Holy. Redeemed. 

Think about those three. Can they be improved upon? If you are already counted righteous, can you become more righteous? More holy? More redeemed? No! You already are those things in Christ. There is no need to level up, no more need to impress, no more need to prove. You are those things right now “in Christ Jesus.” You know what that makes you? Special! 

Look at the title of this post. Consider the phrase without the comma. “You’re nothing special.” You’re an Emmet. You don’t bring anything to the table. You don’t stand out. You’re average at best. You’re just… existing. 

But insert the comma, and now you have a God-given title and designation. Yes, it still reminds you of who you were on your own (nothing!), but now it also reveals how God views you, how he sees you, who you are to him: you are special.

Never forget what accounts for the difference: the comma. The comma makes all the difference, doesn’t it? Well, the comma is Christ. And that means we have something to brag about. “Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord’” (v.31). Not you, not me, but the Lord, who chose those who were nothing and calls us special. 

Do you know what Emmet ends up doing in The Lego Movie? I won’t spoil the ending, but you can probably imagine. While the movie is imaginary, your life isn’t. You are not. You are very much righteous, holy, and redeemed. That qualifies you to do very special things in Christ’s kingdom. If we think otherwise, it’s only because we’re stuck thinking of who we were on our own and not who we are in Christ Jesus. 

But when we remember who we are in Christ Jesus, the sky’s the limit. We can do amazing things for his kingdom. Rather, he can do amazing things through us. Emmet is a made-up Lego character in a fictional movie.

You are not. You are real. You are special. What special things will God do through you? 

Nothing to See

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(Luke 19:28-40)

The history of mighty armies and victorious leaders making grand entrances by parading into cities have something in common: such occasions tend to be displays of power. And it’s true whether it’s an unwelcome oppressor invading or a friendly force coming to the rescue. Either way, any sort of parade is a show of power. Through it, the enemy displays his control and successful overtaking of the city, by being able to parade through it unopposed and unhindered by any opposition. Or, in the case of a rescue, the parade is a show of power on the part of those who came to rescue the city and relieve it of enemy occupation, having successfully defeated the enemy and delivered freedom to the people once again. Enemy or ally, hostile or hero – the pageantry and fanfare associated with grand entrances has always been about a display of power. 

But not Jesus. He didn’t enter into Jerusalem to wield his power, but to withhold it. Don’t forget, all power was already all his to begin with! He didn’t ride into Jerusalem to assume power or rise to it – it was already his.

Remember some of Jesus’ final words before leaving this earth, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt. 28:18). Every ounce of power was his from eternity, and only from his power has any other power in the universe ever been derived. Whether that power has been on display in nature, in man, or anywhere else, all had Jesus as its source (for example, think of Jesus reminding Pilate that he only had any authority in the first place because it had been given to him by God – cf. John 19:11!). There was no power for Jesus to assume when he entered into Jerusalem, for it all already belonged to him. No, he did not enter Jerusalem on the Palm Sunday to wield his power, but to withhold it.

But why? Why should Jesus choose this course? Why not just demonstrate his power in some convincing fashion as he had so many times in the past? He wielded his power over nature and living things by bidding them to do his will through the plagues in Egypt. He then wielded his power by splitting the Red Sea to both deliver the Israelite slaves and destroy the Egyptian army. He wielded his power in the wilderness on many different occasions in how he chose to punish rebellion and ingratitude.

If history records so many different displays of power at the hand of God, why not here and now? This, after all, was God making ready to carry out his most powerful act in history: redeeming a cursed world! What better time to wield his power in full force to grab the attention of as many as possible? Why would he choose not to wield his power on this occasion?

Because he did choose you and me. And to have us for eternity and not lose us to Satan and hell, he chose to wield his power by withholding it. He had to, for there was no other way for salvation to come about if God was to remain true to his essential qualities of being both a God of justice and a God of compassion.

Remember what got us into this position in the first place. It all started in the perfect world in the perfect garden when our perfect parents, Adam & Eve, having been blindsided by Satan, disobeyed the one command they had been given and ate the fruit. God had previously explained to them that such disobedience would result in their being eternally cut off from a relationship with him. Since God cannot lie, he had to keep his word. Justice had to be carried out.

But neither can he operate against his very essence of being a compassionate God, filled with free and faithful love for the crown of his creation, mankind. So to satisfy both of those qualities, his justice and compassion, he promised to take the matter of our sin in his own hands and pay for it himself by sending the perfect sacrificial payment for sin, Jesus, the Lamb of God. In Jesus, God’s justice could be satisfied when he served sin’s severe sentence of damnation in our place, and God’s compassion could be carried out by allowing us to avoid the severe sentence our sin deserved. 

Yes, it wasn’t just for the sin of Adam & Eve that this payment had to be made, but for ours, for yours and mine. For the sins we pull off that we think we got away with, as well as the sins that were deliberate and destructive – the ones we knew full well that we were committing. For the sins we downplay or minimize by shifting the blame onto the person we’ve wronged as being at fault by being guilty of overreacting or taking it too personally. For the sins we commit that blend in so well with the way the world operates that we conveniently forget that they’re even sins. For the sins we commit not by some egregious, shameful act, but by heartlessly doing nothing at all when we should have done the right thing.

So for such an enormous database of disobedience – not just Adam & Eve’s, but our every last sin as well, if God was going to take on himself the complete payment for that sin, that meant setting aside the full use of his divine unlimited power. It meant not fully wielding it, but withholding it for a time.

As we look ahead to the events that play out over the course of this Holy Week, specifically on Thursday and Friday, they could not have taken place if Jesus had not been willing to withhold the full use of his power for a time. 

Think of it – who could ever successfully blindside God with betrayal as Judas appeared to? No one! An omniscient God – all-knowing – and an omnipotent God – all-powerful – would both know about the betrayal ahead of time and easily foil any such plans.

Who could ever put God on trial in any court – legitimate or not – and successfully orchestrate a legal case against the only person to have ever lived who never once sinned?!? It would be impossible to pin any wrong-doing on the One who had never done wrong!

Who could sneer and jeer, mock and make fun of, assault and abuse the God who created the very lips and fists guilty of carrying out such cruelty – he could have rendered their faculties useless with a mere look!

And finally, how could the created ever hammer a single nail into the hand of the Creator if the Creator was not willing to allow it? No, this week we call Holy could never have taken place had God not willingly withheld the full use of his divine power for a time. 

What we’re talking about here is Christ’s humiliation. By that term we don’t mean that it was shameful or humiliating that God became man in Christ Jesus. Rather, this “humiliation” is exactly what Paul described in the book of Philippians. Jesus was and is fully and completely God, yet to carry out the work necessary for our salvation, he set aside – for a time – the full use of his divine power and glory.

Paul explained that Jesus, “being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing (Philippians 2:5-7a). Nothing. By withholding the full use of his power for a time, Jesus made himself nothing. He became nothing for us because we are everything to him.

So as the crowds gathered on that first Sunday we now call Palm Sunday, what did they see as Jesus rode in on his colt? We could say there was Nothing to see. They saw the One who came to be nothing for us so that we could have everything in him. 

Next month our school children will be putting on a play. Suppose we were able to get an A-list actor from Hollywood to come down and take on a role in that play. While it would be a fun, novel experience to have a famous actor in our play, do you think there would be any movie or theater reviewers in attendance, scrutinizing his/her performance with a critical eye to see if it would be Oscar-worthy? Of course not! No one could expect that Hollywood actor to put on an Academy-Award type performance in our little school play!

But could they? Would that A-list actor still be capable of such a performance? Yes! Even if they chose not to fully tap into every ounce of acting chops to pull off the performance of a lifetime, they’d still have the exact same ability to do so. They simply wouldn’t take advantage of it in that setting. 

So it was with Jesus. Do not think for a moment that the temporary withholding of his power rendered him helpless at any moment, or that he had no intention of ever wielding that power again (spoiler alert: Easter Sunday and Jesus’ return on the Last Day!).

Lest anyone doubt it, Jesus’ subtly reminded the Pharisees of the power that was his when they demanded that he take his disciples to task for glorifying him. “Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’ ‘I tell you,’ he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out’” (v.39-40). Jesus’ power was so great that even if the vocal cords of man would not shower him with rightly-deserved adulation, the stones would! He was no less God even though he withheld the full use of his divine power for a time.

Doesn’t that make it even more impressive? We’re not dealing with some cocky, arrogant, braggart, waiting to see if he can back up his words and prove himself; we already know what God is capable of, and we’re witnessing him humbly withhold it – all for us. We know what our sin deserves and what God could do and has a right to do to us, because of it. But in his matchless grace, he chose to make himself nothing so that true nothings like you and me could actually be something. 

For that reason, even though the crowds didn’t know how profoundly true their words were as they belted them out, let us echo their refrain daily, proudly proclaiming, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (v.38).