Your Sin Has Been Canceled

Every now and then I will watch a reality show on TV. People of my generation might find it absurd when I say that I’ve never once watched “American Idol” and “Survivor”, but it’s true. The reality shows I’ve seen are different, perhaps less popular ones. I may not have seen “Survivor”, but my Dad and I used to like to watch “Survivorman”. I suspect this show, like some other reality shows, was a reality show in the strictest sense of the definition – that is, it was unscripted but very probably never included much that was truly “real”. The point of the show was that the host (Survivorman, of course) deliberately got “lost” in the wilds of some of the world’s most untamed regions and taught his audience how to both survive in and extract themselves from these kinds of situations in the unlikely but still remotely possible event that they suddenly found themselves lost in the Grand Tetons or the Amazon rainforest. Of course, you and I would not have the convenience of having a camera crew tucked away a few miles back who know that we’re lost and can call for help if our staged adventure goes awry.
Just because I’ve never watched an episode (let alone a season) of “American Idol” doesn’t mean that I’m not aware of who wins each year (it’s usually all over the news, which I do keep a close eye on). In fact, if I were to watch an episode of this show, I’d pick the very early ones in which the most awful singers in America take the stage to try to convince the judges and the people of our country that what their ears flatly reject as a musical travesty of the highest magnitude is really worthy of a victory in the contest and some lucrative recording contract. I love comedy, and it rarely comes in a more pure form than that. I’ve also seen bits and pieces of the shows “Wipeout” and “I Survived a Japanese Game Show”, which struck me as so profoundly dumb (in a rather hilarious way) that I had to watch for a moment to see if what I was watching was really being aired on live national television.
I guess the reality shows I watch most often are on the Food Network and HGTV channels of our satellite package. On my own, I don’t think I’d watch these channels much or be very interested in their general subject matter, but my parents and sister watch them very often, which means I often end up watching with them. Just recently we got caught up in a Food Network reality show (“The Next Food Network Star”) in which talented cooks competed with one another to land a new show on the network. My sister likes the show on HGTV called “Design Star”, in which interior designers compete in a similar way to get their own show on that network. Both these shows go on for weeks and have a panel of judges who eliminate one or more contestants each week until, as in all fair contests, there can be only one remaining. At the end of each week’s show, the contestants all gather in front of the judges, who review their performance in the challenges they were assigned. Some make it to the next week with an impressive performance, while others survive by the skin of their teeth to fight another day. Inevitably there will be one or more contestants who simply bombed their chances and who are clearly marked (whether in this week or some future one) for elimination by the all-knowing panel of judges. In the particular case of “Design Star” (which, incidentally, can be a very uncomfortable show for men not interested in interior design to watch, for various reasons that I shall not discuss now), the host tells the unfortunate contestant in a very distinct British accent – “(Insert name here), your show has been canceled” (referring to the show they would have had if they had excelled in all the challenges).
All this is a roundabout and lengthy way to introduce what that phrase, and in a way the general subject of those types of reality shows, brought to my mind just today. The Bible speaks of a reality that we will all have to face someday. Hebrews 9:27 tells us that “It is appointed for man once to die, and after this the judgment”. The difference is that we will not be standing before a panel of judges, but before an audience of One – Almighty God. And we will not be standing with fellow contestants so that our performances may be compared to one another’s – we will be standing alone for consideration on an individual basis. The outcome of the examination will not be a show on a network, or some prize package – it will be a matter of eternal life or eternal death.
The problem is that we would all fail that test. Why? Romans 3:23 informs us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”; and Romans 6:23 further explains that “the wages of sin is death”. We may point to the fact that we tried our hardest to live life in a good way – we helped others, gave to the poor, went to church, worked hard at what we did, loved our family. Maybe we didn’t do some of the things that would get other contestants quickly eliminated – lied and cheated and stole and murdered. The only problem is that these things are not enough. God’s standard for the people He created is holy perfection, the quality He Himself possesses. And any way in which we come up short of that standard is called sin. It doesn’t matter what the severity of the sin is – whether it’s great or little, frequent or seldom. Any type of sin and even one of them is enough to keep us out of God’s presence forever, because God is so holy that He cannot look upon anything that is unholy. Based on these Biblical facts, we would be forced to admit that God, the Righteous Judge, would have to say to each and every one of us – “(Insert name here), your show has been canceled.”
But God does not want this to happen any more than any of us would want it to happen – and He made a way, without cheating or overlooking the facts of our records, for it to not have to happen. He sent His only Son Jesus to this earth to live as one of us. After He lived a perfect life as only He could do, Jesus died on the Cross for us. He took on our sins in His own body, suffering the punishment from God that each one of us should have rightfully taken. In the process, He charged all of our sins to His account and charged His perfect holiness to our account. Three days after He died, God raised Jesus from the dead to prove that He was satisfied with the substitution. Our role is all that remains – we must individually come to God, admitting our guilt as sinners against Him and turning away from that sin and to Jesus, accepting His death on our behalf as the only remedy for our fatal sinful condition. If we call upon the Lord in this way, He promises to hear and to answer us, making us His children and sending us His Holy Spirit to help us to live in a way that pleases God until He calls us home to be with Him in heaven forever. Even though we have sinned before we asked God to save us, and will sin afterward, the fact will remain that Jesus paid the full penalty for our sin and made a way for us to be accepted completely by a holy God.
You see, God has done everything He possibly could to ensure that we will not have to be cast out of His kingdom forever on that day of judgment. There is nothing more He can do to give us a way to escape our just fates. However, if we do not accept the way He has graciously provided, He will have no choice but to tell us, “(Insert name here), your show has been canceled.” We cannot wait until we stand before God – then it will be too late to change our decisions. We must call on the Lord while we still live on the earth. I hope you do just that today if you haven’t already. Then, when you stand before that Judge on that day, He will be able to say to you, “(Insert your name here), your sin has been canceled. Jesus paid it all! Enter into the eternal joy of your Lord.”