Becoming a Saint
Living for an audience of One
The Russian author, Anton Chekhov, (apparently) wrote that “One does not become a saint through other people’s sins.”1 Whoever actually coined it was spending money on all our behalf—this is the truth. But it’s often conveniently forgotten or deliberately lost.
It’s right in the mix of the parable Jesus told about two men who went up to the temple to pray. Right place to go, for sure. But what went on in their prayers gives great pause for thought and acts as a polished mirror into which we fix our gaze.
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-13)
The respected religious leader and the flagrant collaborator with their pagan overlords. How different they were. The one believes there is nothing that needs addressing between him and the Lord. All is well in his world, in his soul—and that is so because he is so unlike the man he can see. The man whose eyes are closed and head bowed in an agony of shame and contrition, who stands at a distance, unable to come any closer because his shame is an immovable barrier, marooned in his own far country. ‘I am not like him’, thinks the Pharisee, ‘therefore I am vindicated, approved, confirmed in my position and status. My holiness is defined by the distance between us. I am a saint because he is a sinner.’
False virtue is so often performative and relies on having a ‘villain’ to look down upon—someone else, anyone really, whose life can be put to only one viable use: a stepping-stone for self-given vindication, the aim to feel holy not by climbing higher but by pointing to how low others have fallen. Vilification of the other leading to valouration of the self.
It is so ugly.
And we cannot pretend we’re strangers to it. It’s a posture that has the lengthiest heritage and yet seems to have found another moment for itself in our day. And, as ever is the case, it cannot bring freedom, it cannot promote reconciliation and genuine growth in grace, an honest hope for the holiness without which no-one will see the Lord.2
In the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord Jesus warned us, “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”3 He is making plain what Chekhov undoutedly drew upon, that true virtue is ‘closet-work’—it happens in secret, without the need for a villain to serve as a foil for our failures.
In Chekhov’s stories, the person who screams loudest about other people's sins is almost always the most stagnant or unhappy character. And in this parable, the Lord Jesus closes with the staggering statement that only one of these men went home justified—rightly related to God, accepted on account of faith’s humility—and it wasn’t the one his hearers would have expected (the Pharisee).
Despite all his protestations to the contrary and the glibly gleeful blindness he displays, he was not in a good place, at all. That kind of stance is spiritually and emotionally exhausting, leading either to a breakdown or to a barricaded heart, unable to be touched. The contrite man, who could hardly dare raise his eyes, becomes the beneficiary of the most unexpected reversal—justified with God—by faith, not performance. It would be such a joy to see him on the next occasion he came to pray, no longer with his head hung in despair but, like his Saviour,4 lifted towards heaven—open and overcome with joy, a man forgiven, a man restored and accepted in the wonderful mercy of God.
In her song, This Journey Is My Own, Sara Groves explores the tendency so many of us recognise, of measuring ourselves by others and feeling stable if we have secured their approval—
So much of what I do is to make a good impression
This journey is my own
And so much of what I say is to make myself look better
But this journey is my own
That instinct, to crave the approval of others, “was breaking me down,” she says. The reality is actually and profoundly different:
And I have never felt relief like I feel it right now
This journey is my own…
And now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
This is the relief of the broken man who prayed in the parable. And it’s offered to each of us, if we would turn our eyes away from others and lift them to the God of heaven, honestly seeking the mercy and acceptance he alone can give. What utter relief his verdict and vindication gives.
This Journey Is My Own (Sara Groves)
When I stand before the Lord, I'll be standing alone
This journey is my own
Still I want man's advice, and I need man's approval
This journey is my own
Why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
What does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life
So much of what I do is to make a good impression
This journey is my own
And so much of what I say is to make myself look better
But this journey is my own
And why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
And what does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life
And I have never felt relief like I feel it right now
This journey is my own
Cos trying to please the world, it was breaking me down
It was breaking me down
And now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Now I live and I breathe for an audience of one
Cos I know this journey is my own
And why would I want to live for man, and pay the highest price
And what does it mean to gain a whole world, only to lose my life
And you can live for someone else, and it will only bring you pain
I can't even judge myself, only the Lord can say, 'Well done.'
I say ‘apparently’ because the saying is attributed to him but it’s difficult to track down exactly where. I can’t even find where I first read that he’d said it!
Hebrews 12:14
Matthew 6:1
John 17:1
Goodreads says the quote is from 'Notebook of Anton Chekhov."