It’s the time of year when many people head away on holiday. Accommodation options these days are legion: AirBnBs, regular BnBs, caravans, self-catering apartments, and of course hotels. With four young children our days of staying in hotels are definitely on hold, and this summer we’re planning a house swap, which has the advantage of not costing anything!
But when it comes to hotels, one thing they all have in common are those little door hangers, which tell the cleaners whether they should come in and make up your room or not. Someone recently shared a photo of a hotel where the usual two options were put in a slightly different way. One side read: ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’. The other said: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.
As someone who’s passionate about getting the Bible’s message across in everyday language, I thought they were brilliant. They perfectly sum up the only two possible responses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Either we say to Jesus: ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’, or we say: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.
One of the misconceptions about Christianity that I and my fellow believers are often trying to combat is that it’s only for good people. Again and again we come up against the widespread idea that we go to church because we think we’re good, or because we think it will make us good. In fact, we’ve had people in church being told by their families: ‘you’re not good enough to go to church!’ Their families know what they’re like – or at least what they were like in the past – and think that church is no place for them.
And yet while it’s a misconception, it’s an understandable one. Undoubtedly there have been and are many who do think of themselves as good because they go to church. Undoubtedly there are those who have been regular church attenders, and have looked down on those who don’t go as somehow worse than them.
But for those who have been born again, the truth is exactly the opposite. We go to church, not because we think we’re good people, but because we know we’re not. And yet we’ve heard about someone called Jesus, who his enemies called ‘a friend of sinners’ (and they didn’t mean that as a compliment!). As New York Times bestselling author Tim Keller put it: When God opens our eyes we discover that ‘we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.’
Jesus once told a story about two men who went to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ‘The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”’ He didn’t pray for mercy; he didn’t think he needed it. He was clean enough – or so he thought.
‘But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”’
Thinking that church is for good people leads only to pride (for those who think they are good enough) or despair (for those who know they are not). On the contrary, the Bible tells us that there has only ever been one truly good person who has ever lived – Jesus Christ. The reason he came to earth was not primarily to set an example for us (which we could never have lived up to anyway!). Instead, he came to live the perfect life that we fail to live, and then die in the place of his people.
As a result, being a Christian isn’t so much about ‘doing’ but about ‘receiving’ – receiving the free gift of new life that he offers. There are many (not least among those who sit in churches) who say, ‘thanks but no thanks’ – ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’. But by God’s grace there are others who have gratefully said: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.
Jesus himself says ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’ (Revelation 3:20). What will your response be? ‘I’m clean enough: please do not disturb’? Or ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’?
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 29 June 2023