Integrity

Distinguishing the Genuine from the Counterfeit (I John 1:5-10; 2:3-6; 2:7-11) INTRODUCTION: Integrity is synonymous with being real, genuine quality, being true. It is the opposite of hypocrisy, of pretending to be something you are not. My wife was in Japan some time ago where she bought a 100 gig external hard drive for me. She wanted to have it tested first, but the sales clerk just laughed. “When something is made in Japan it's sure to work,” she said. That's integrity. A few years ago, I was in Hongkong on a mission trip. One of the things that surprised me when I arrived there was there were no security guards to check the bags that we were taking out of the airport. Integrity was taken as a matter of course over there! What about us Christians? Are we for real? Are our lives characterized by integrity or by hypocrisy? A certain pastor once shared with me how he became a Christian. He said he had a friend who became a Christian. Their barkada wanted him to drink beer with them, but he would not. Someone threatened him that if he would not drink beer with them he would pour beer over his head. And that was what happened: he just let that person pour beer over his head. And this pastor told me; “Before I heard the gospel I saw someone live it, and I realized that he had something that I didn't have.” That's integrity. It's simply having our claims correspond with reality. Integrity is being real, being true, being genuine and not counterfeit. I. INTEGRITY INVOLVES HONESTY TOWARDS GOD. “If we say we have no sin...the truth is not in us.” (1:8) Many Christians are guilty of self-righteousness and spiritual pride. They are “holier-than-thou” and tend to put off others who can see through their hypocrisy. They are fond of condemning others when in fact their own spiritual lives are not in order. They tend to see the mote in another person's eye and ignore the log in their own eyes. They tend to show off their spirituality to others and to boast of their spiritual achievements. They remind one of the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like the sinful publican. But though you can fool people you can't fool God because he knows what's really in your heart. 1 Chronicles 28:9 (ESV) 9 "And you, Solomon my son, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and with a willing mind, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every plan and thought. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will cast you off forever. Job 13:9 (ESV) 9 Will it be well with you when he searches you out? Or can you deceive him, as one deceives a man? The fact is even though we are already Christians we are still very much capable of sinning (cf., Romans 7:13-25. Psalms 51:16-17 (ESV) 16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. 17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Isaiah 66:2 (ESV) 2 All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the Lord. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word. II. INTEGRITY INVOLVES OBEDIENCE TOWARDS GOD'S COMMANDMENTS. “The one who says, 'I have come to know him,' and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (2:4) I remember listening to a conversation between two pastors who were discussing and objecting to something they heard on a local Christian radio station: "The fruit of grace is law keeping.” They probably didn't realize that if you are truly saved the consequence of that is you will love God. As the Bible says, “We love him because he first loved us.” But to love God is to love his commandments! Therefore, a person who is saved will keep God's commandments; not in order to be saved, but because he is saved and because he will naturally love the God who saved him. John 14:21 (ESV) 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him." III. INTEGRITY INVOLVES LOVE TOWARDS GOD'S PEOPLE “The one who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.” We have just said that a real Christian will love God as a matter of course. But how can you say that you really love God whom you can't see when you can't even love your fellow Christians whom you can see? One of the saddest things I've recently come to know concerns a very famous and godly Christian author who, it seems, was not very loving towards his wife even though he wrote a lot about intimacy with God. When he died his wife remarried a man who was saved under her husband's ministry. His wife said, “My former husband loved Jesus Christ but my present husband loves me.” The moral lesson here is that it is quite possible for us to use spirituality as a way to escape the difficulty of loving real people with all their flaws and imperfections. We live in a time when Christians prioritize feeling good spiritually, but at the expense of cultivating loving relationships with the people God has called us to love. We delight in our devotional time, in our private prayers, in praise and worship, in opportunities to preach and speak, but we often remain aloof and distant from our own family members and even our fellow church members. And people see this. People might see you as being a decent and spiritual person but they will sense that something is wrong: that you care more about abstract theology than you do about real people. If we want to be people of integrity we have to love, really love, in terms of truth and action, and not merely in terms of talk.