Some of you will remember a book from 1969 by Thomas Harris entitled "I'm Okay, You're Okay." In it he used a form of psychotherapy called transactional analysis to try and sort out people's problems so that ultimately they would come to the conclusion that all was well with themselves and others. It was a phenomenally popular book, with nearly fifteen million copies sold. However, there is a much bigger selling book that deals with our mental state and its problems, and that book was completed around two thousand years ago.
Many of us, before we become Christians, feel pretty good about ourselves because we do not see the sin in our lives. We go forward in life with an opinion about ourselves that say's "I'm Okay." We get our reference by comparing ourselves to others, and we usually don't rank ourselves all that badly. I doubt anyone has said to himself, "You know, I really am as bad as Hitler." And the unfortunate thing about this is that the majority of people also believe that because they are "Okay" they will get into heaven. They do not see the need to be forgiven of their sin.
Then comes the day that you are moved to accept Christ as your Savior. You begin to understand what sin truly is, your guilt before God, and the need for forgiveness. You realize that you are not "Okay." You read the Scriptures and learn that all have fallen short of the glory of God, especially you. You cannot enter heaven in your sinful state, because God cannot allow sin into heaven. You are worse than "Not Okay." You are doomed.
Yet by accepting God's Son as your Savior, you come to know that you are forgiven of your sins. They are imputed to Christ, and He imputes his righteousness to you. You didn't do a thing to earn this transaction or deserve it. It's a great deal. All you have to do is turn your life over to Him, and in return you get all your sins washed away, and eternal life in Heaven. There is nothing on this earth that could compare to that future eternal life. And so now you come to know that because of Christ's work on the cross, you are Okay with God.
But you continue to sin. Now matter how hard you try, you cannot stop it. Even the Apostle Paul struggled with this. In Romans Chapter 7, verse 15, he tells us about himself, "For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do." And verse 19: "For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil that I will not to do, that I practice." He was pretty troubled by that feeling. Verse 24: "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" I understand the feeling. I can finish my morning prayer time and have three sinful thoughts before I walk out the door to work in the morning. So once again, I'm not feeling Okay. I'm still a sinner who can't stop sinning.
Paul provides us the answer to his question in the next sentence. "I thank God--through Jesus Christ our Lord!" We are not only cleansed or our sins in the past by our relationship with Christ, we are forgiven of our ongoing sins, when we ask for that forgiveness. God still forgives us, because of the work of Christ on the cross, and we are washed clean, even of that sin you committed five minutes ago. So really you're Okay.
The problem for me as a Christian is that the more I walk with Christ, the more acutely aware I become of how short I have fallen of the glory of God. I used to be troubled by the bigger sins in my life, but now I repent over the small ones, too, things that would not have troubled me before. And even though I can go over and pull the Repent lever on the Sin Exchange machine and get instant Forgiveness, it does not relieve me of the awareness that I sinned or of my sin nature. Although I am constantly pointing to Christ and telling God to look at Him, because Christ has taken my sin away, I know who really committed the sin. Even though I can lay it all on Christ, surely I'm not Okay.
Christians everywhere know of God's love and His forgiveness. The Sin Exchange machine will never run out of tokens, and for that we can rejoice. The answer to the dilemma that we face as sinners still rests on Christ's work. You are Not Okay, but that's Okay. You are a sinner, and will continue to be a sinner who sins, but God loved you enough to put His Son to death so that you will never be separated from Him. He loves you, even though you are Not Okay. And if you are troubled, as Paul was and I am, about continued sinning, there is a promise. Philippians 1:6 says, "...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." One day, you will sin no more, for you will be Perfect. And that's a whole lot better than Okay.
