Ignorance and Unbelief

The season of Lent begins today. We pass from Epiphany, where the focus is the mission of the Church in response to the gospel, to a season of Christ-centered repentance in preparation for the transformational season of Easter. The first day of the season of Lent is Ash Wednesday, a day where many Christians observe an imposition of ashes as a way of turning us back to the proper perspective: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. "From ashes thou hast come, to ashes thou must return."

τὸ πρότερον ὄντα βλάσφημον καὶ διώκτην καὶ ὑβριστήν: ἀλλὰ ἠλεήθην, ὅτι ἀγνοῶν

ἐποίησα ἐν ἀπιστίᾳ

"Though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor and a man of extremes; but I received mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief." - 1 Timothy 1.13

None of us are without stain. We err not just through ignorance, but because of unbelief. We don't believe the things that our Lord says about us, that we are accepted (Eph 1.3-8), secure (Rom 8.1-2) and significant (Eph 2.10); the result is deep woundedness, which we act out to the detriment of others and ourselves. We don't believe that he loves us, and so we accept tragically less than his best for us. We may not believe in the miraculous rescue of the cross at all, in which case we sin in ignorance; it's hard to blame someone who accepts stale water from a cistern when he or she simply doesn't know where to find clean water.

πιστὸς ὁλόγος καὶ πάσης ἀποδοχῆς ἄξιος, ὅτι Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ἦλθεν εἰς τὸν κόσμον

ἁμαρτωλοὺς σῶσαι: ὧν πρῶτόςεἰμι ἐγώ

"This saying is reliable and deserves full acceptance, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners: of which I am foremost." - 1 Timothy 1.15

The emphasis on "sinners" indicated by the italics is provided by the Greek. Greek is not a word-order language like English; in other words, one can put the words of a sentence in any order, and one determines the subject and object through the use of case endings. Since there is so much freedom, the word order a writer chooses becomes very important with respect to what he wants to stress. In this case, Paul puts amartolous (sinners), before sosai (to save); Paul is saying that Jesus came into the world to save sinners specifically, so the fact that one finds oneself before the cross in a state of fallenness is no cause for self hatred. It's to be expected. That is, in fact, why the cross exists. Paul is not literally foremost among sinners; we all are. In the same way the pain each person suffers is all the pain there is in the world, the sin each one of us indulges is all the sin there is. No one is better than another. We all stand before the cross equally fallen and are saved on exactly the same basis: faith.

Tonight many (if not most) churches worldwide will observe Ash Wednesday. It is not a goal unto itself though; it's the start of a season. Ash Wednesday is the "start here" sign on the path that is the season of lent, a path that leads not to condemnation but to glorious resurrection life. The last words of the season of lent are "it is finished." After that a new season begins with the words "Christ is risen."