Come as you are
Posted on : 11-10-2009 | By : Dan | In : Church, Church Marketing, Engaging Culture
Tags: Acceptance, justification, Nirvana, righteousness
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I remember listening to Kurt Cobain singing “come as you are” in the 90’s. I also remember hearing dozens of churches latch on to this statement. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think people need to be all polished up before coming to Jesus, nor do I think folks need to dress up on Sunday mornings (I always wear jeans and a t-shirt). But I think “come as you are” sometimes gets interpreted as “you are acceptable just as you are,” and that’s simply not true.
I know that statement just raised red flags in a few readers’ minds, but hear me out. I absolutely think people should come to Jesus in whatever state they are currently in. After all, if people could get free from sin all by themselves why would they need Jesus? But people must also understand that outside of Christ they are completely unacceptable to God. Consider the following quote:
Truth be told, Christ has not welcomed you just the way you are. He has paid the dearest price of all in order to welcome you: sacrificing His life for you on the cross. Christ welcomed you through the anguish of His betrayal, trial, and death. He did not welcome you freely but in order to set you free from your sins! (LSB, p. 1907).
God is holy. The word holy literally means “set apart, consecrated.” Holiness is like light, and anything else is darkness. When light enters a room, darkness flees. God cannot coexist with evil, and apart from the shed blood of Jesus Christ we are completely unacceptable to Him, we cannot come near Him. But Jesus Christ has created the way to the Father by taking our place on the cross, serving our death sentence. His righteousness gets credited to our account by faith and we thereby become acceptable to God.
Too many people have a view of justification that assumes God simply lets our sins slide. The problem is, “the wages of sin is death,” (Romans 6:23), they must be paid for. Jesus pays for them at Calvary and now offers us eternal life as a gift, which is what the rest of Romans 6:23 says: “But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So please come as you are, but know that you are entirely unacceptable to God apart from the righteousness that is imparted to you through a living faith in Jesus Christ.
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I am one of those that will say come as you are. To simply state my point, we are able to come to Christ ‘just as we are’ because we are not expected to be perfect before coming to him. Whether you are a broken individual living in sin, whether you are a prostitute, whether your in tattered clothes at church, the list goes on. For while we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:8).
So are we supposed to stay ‘the same’ once we enter relationship with Christ? absolutely not because we are a new creation and should be striving to become like Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. I believe you are misinterpreting this statement and its intentions. And it’s important to remember that God loves everyone; even those who deny him.
I would agree with all that you’ve said, which I stated in my second paragraph. The thing is, we don’t do anything when we enter into a relationship with Him, He completely accomplishes our justification without our help or cooperation. Then and only then are we truly acceptable to Him. It is just semantics, though, and yes I am mincing words a bit. I do this a lot in order to get people to think. It’s not meant to be a Bible truth, just something to get people thinking and discussing, and it’s working!
I do think I should have included Romans 5:8 in the post to further strengthen my point when I said: “I absolutely think people should come to Jesus in whatever state they are currently in. After all, if people could get free from sin all by themselves why would they need Jesus?” Thanks for sharing.
P.S. After we enter into a relationship with Him, we are in the realm of sanctification, where we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in becoming more like Jesus. Justification, whereby we become saved, is entirely God’s work. I am simply saying that if we have not been justified we are not acceptable to God. He certainly died for us while we were dead in our sins, and He always initiates the relationship with us. But this is not because we are inherently acceptable, it is because He has taken our sins upon Himself and has thus made us acceptable. My point is that a lot of people seem to think they are already good, apart from Christ. They don’t acknowledge human depravity outside of Jesus’ family.
I’m glad you addressed this whole issue in this post… I too have come across this so many times, and the reason it’s probably such a dangerous error, is that it’s so close to the truth. I mean “Jesus accepts me just as I am”, does sound so right on to most people, and for a long time, I guess I believed it too… But you already spelled out the whole process of justification, and how Christ had to die, because of how unacceptable we are…
But, beyond that, I think the other thing that runs counter to to this whole idea of “Jesus just accepts me as I am”, is the matter of repentance. Because I’ve come to believe that for many people, deeply imbedded within their concept of God’s unconditional love, is actually a real opposition to the call to repentance. People are totally eager to embrace the part of the gospel that says “I can do nothing to earn God’s favor”, but a lot less enthusiastic about the nuts and bolts of what it means to actually live as a new creation in Christ… It’s much more popular to talk about coming to God “just as you are”, than it is to say “you must die to everything you once were, pick up your cross, and follow Him”! (am I making sense?)
You’ve made perfect sense. Dying to sin daily is not a popular topic these days. I think you’ve perfectly pinpointed the issue as repentance, or rather the lack thereof.
I still don’t see a connection between “coming as you are” and dying to self daily. They’re two separate issues. I think the hang-up might be that the churches/ministries that use “come as you are” direct that comment toward the lost; not toward committed worshipers. A reason churches use this statement is a way to reconnect people who have had a dislike for organizes religion because traditional church did not allow you to come as you are (”get your act together before you come into this place of worship”). And don’t tell me traditional lutheran churches are exempt from that, I see it all the time. So “come as you are” is a way to remove a “churchy” barrier to allow for those intimidated by church that there’s no need to fear this particular christian community. I don’t see how it causes confusion and conflicts with “dying to self daily.”
I think we’re just talking about the false message that this statement COULD send, not everyone will take it the wrong way. I’m not saying we should demonize this phrase, just that we should exercise caution when we use it, being sure to teach the gospel properly. The confusion comes in when churches do not properly teach law & gospel, many believe they are inherently good, even without Christ. Newcomers must come to learn that they deserve death because of their sin, and they are only acceptable to God through faith in Christ. In a church where this is properly taught (presumably in yours), using the phrase is no problem. But in many “cheap grace” churches that don’t teach original sin, this can be a problem.
exactly… the point is that we need to look beyond the face value of any given term or catch-phrase, and always be looking to determine the meaning that is being given to it by the particular person who is saying it. More and more often I find myself having to stop and get clarification from people in conversations on what they mean by something, because so often different people use the same terms or sayings, to mean very different things. Like Dan said, it’s not about demonizing certain phrases or words, but about understanding that virtually anything that originally was intended to speak a certain truth can usually be twisted in order to teach something else. We have to always be on guard for those kinds of “twisted usages”…