The Answer at the Hardware Counter

For the man who defends himself at a counter where nobody accused him.

The wrench is on the counter between you, still in its plastic, with the barcode facing up and a small orange sticker over the price.

The man behind the counter has known you by sight for eleven years and has sold you everything from a washer to a lawnmower. He's ringing it through, taking his time about it, and he asks whether you're still at the same church as his brother in law.

You are aware, while you are still answering, of your own voice going slightly wrong on you.

You say more than you meant to. Something about how it was complicated, how you still believe, how it wasn't really about the people. It takes about forty seconds. He nods through it and puts the wrench in a bag.

He doesn't say anything at the end of it. There's nothing for him to say, which you register at the time as a bad sign and which was nothing of the kind.

Walking out to the van you understand that he'd asked a filing question, the way a man asks whether you still drive the same vehicle. You had answered as though he had laid a charge against you.

You have been defending a position that nobody was attacking. The Word says that that there is now no condemnation over you, and the Spirit is not gathering evidence at a hardware counter.

A Defense Implies a Charge

Follow the logic backwards, because the shape of your answer tells you what you believe.

A man does not defend himself unless he believes he is accused. The forty seconds you produced had the structure of a defense: an acknowledgment, a mitigation, and a character reference for yourself at the end.

That structure didn't come from his question. It came out of you fully formed, which means it's been assembled and rehearsed somewhere, over a long period, ready to be deployed.

You'll have done the rehearsing in the van, or in the shower, or at three in the morning. Everybody who has left a congregation badly has a version of this speech, and almost nobody has ever been asked for it.

So the charge exists. You have been carrying it for years, you have prepared a response to it, and the only party who has ever laid it is you.

Nobody has charged you, and yet you arrived with a defense prepared. The written word says there is no condemnation standing over you, and the Spirit has never opened the case you keep answering.

No Condemnation, Which Means No Case

Here is the verse, and it is worth reading as a legal statement rather than a comfort.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.Romans 8:1 (KJV)

Condemnation is a verdict word. It belongs in a court. Paul is not saying you will be forgiven when the matter is heard. He is saying there is no verdict against you, now, in the present arrangement.

No verdict means no case, no case means no charge, and no charge means the forty seconds you produced at a counter were an answer to nothing at all.

That's a strange thing to sit with, because the speech felt necessary while you were giving it. Necessary is how a rehearsed defense always feels. It's the rehearsal you're responding to rather than anything in the room.

Paul wrote that to a mixed group of believers who spent a good deal of energy accusing each other, and it reaches past them to a man with a wrench on a counter.

No case is open, so the defense you rehearsed was never an answer to anything. The written word closes the matter in the present tense, and the Spirit is not reopening it.

What the Extra Thirty Seconds Cost

Be practical, because there is a real cost here and it is not only yours.

A short answer would have taken ten seconds and he would have said something ordinary and given you the bag. Instead he got forty seconds of a man he likes explaining himself with a slightly wrong voice.

He didn't know what to do with that. He nodded through it because it's what you do when somebody tells you more than the question asked for, and he was mildly uncomfortable on your behalf.

He'll have thought about it for perhaps a minute after you left, in the way a decent man does when he suspects he has touched something sore. Then a delivery arrived and that was the end of it.

The over answer also teaches the other man that the subject is painful, which makes it less likely he asks you anything again. A defense does not only cost the person giving it. It closes a door that was standing open.

A long defense closes the door a short answer would have left open. The written word frees you to answer plainly, and the Spirit is at work in the plain answer rather than the long one.

I Am Not Telling You It Was Nothing

Be careful, because the opposite error is to make light of what happened to you.

Whatever went on in that place was real, and I am not going to tell you it was small, or that you should be over it, or that a settled man would not have flinched at a counter.

Nor am I saying your answer was wrong in its content. Every sentence in it was true. It was simply forty seconds long in a ten second doorway.

What I want off you is the charge. Not the memory. Not the honesty about what it cost you.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Elias This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.