Sticky Religion

During the 1980s, then Representative Patricia Schroeder was fixing breakfast for her children.   This was a time of non-stick pans, Silverstone cookware, Teflon coated cookware that kept food from sticking to the pan.  She can be attributed to the nickname given to Reagan as that of the “Teflon President.” Things happened during his presidency but didn’t affect his popularity.  The “Great Communicator” was a “Teflon President,” things didn’t stick to him. 

In the Message Bible, Deuteronomy 32 shows God as a kind of “Teflon” leader:

Listen, Heavens, I have something to tell you. Attention, Earth, I've got a mouth full of words. My teaching, let it fall like a gentle rain, my words arrive like morning dew, Like a sprinkling rain on new grass,  like spring showers on the garden.   For it's God's Name I'm preaching— respond to the greatness of our God!

   The Rock: His works are perfect, and the way he works is fair and just;  A God you can depend upon, no exceptions,  a straight-arrow God. His messed-up, mixed-up children, his non-children,  throw mud at him but none of it sticks.

I am glad that God is a Teflon type of leader; none of our sin sticks to God. The bad news is, none of our sin sticks to God.  We are created in His image, but our sinful nature is not part of that image.  One might propose that God the Father knows us, God the Holy Spirit leads us,  but God the Son feels us.  As a fallen humanity, we needed a bridge to eternal life and fellowship with God the Father.  That bridge is Jesus Christ.

Jesus came to our world as God and man, born to a virgin, a baby.  Everything that makes us human, Jesus had to learn.  Every emotion, every feeling, everything that makes us human became part of Jesus.  Hebrews 4:15 is written in support of that fact.

Throughout His earthly walk, Jesus experienced all the feelings that we do, but remained without sin.  But then, we come to the last week of His life  before the crucifixion.  We find during those final days that humanity is weighing in on Christ. He knows what is in store for him and his humanness is not looking forward to that pain and suffering. But his Godness knows that He must if we are to have a Savior.

In the Garden, that humanity, His and ours, almost gets him.  Jesus desires closeness with the Father, yet humanity has already caused a void. The weight of the world is bearing down upon Him.  Once alone with God, Jesus pleads for his fate.  The humanness of Jesus prays for a way out.  But the Godness of Jesus knows and accepts His fate.  “Not what I will but what you will.”

You remember that this message is about how our mixed-up, messed-up lives can attach to Christ.  Jesus was human, so he felt the emotions and desires that are base to our humanity.  Jesus also interacted with sinners.  He came to seek and save the lost.

Ok, so Jesus experienced human feelings and emotions. He hung out with humanity, even sinners. Well, here we are with Jesus arrested and beaten. He is being pierced for OUR transgressions, not His.  He is being crushed for OUR iniquities. And by HIS scourging we are healed.  From the moment Jesus is arrested everything He experiences is because of our sin, our mixed-up, messed-up lives.  You might say that we are slinging it all at Him…and it sticks!  It sticks to such a degree that upon the cross there is that period of time that even God the Father leaves Christ.  (Mark 15:33-34)

God must turn His face from Christ because all of our sin.  A Legion equals 5,120 soldiers and that meant the demon possessed man had 5,120 demons inside, or at least a lot of them.   Well, consider the total number of all human beings ever born or yet to be born.  The sin of that multitude of people is upon Jesus and it is more that God can accept to see. There is nothing Teflon about Jesus at that moment.

As we have heard throughout our lives, the wages of sin is death. If we choose not to accept Christ as our Savior then we are headed for a death in Hell, lost from Him.  But Christ was willing to be the sacrifice, willing to bear our sin on the Cross and die and experience Hell so that we don’t have to.  If we confess our sins and accept Christ as our Savior, then that sin is no longer stuck to us, it is stuck to our Savior on the Cross 2000 years ago.

All of the sin of humanity did not stay on Jesus. He rose from Hell and the grave, conquering death and sin, resurrected, leaving our sin in the depths of Hell.  And He continues to conquer death, sin, and Hell today.

Being a Teflon President may be seen as a good thing, but a Teflon Savior would never work.  This morning I am glad that my Savior was willing to wear my sin. I am forever grateful that Christ is still saving today. 

Are you?

Dan Sullivan
Former Officer
USA Central Territory