Has anyone ever condemned you? I mean throughout the course of your life, has anyone ever laid a charge against you and, at the same time, pronounced you guilty without asking you for a defense.
Or, maybe you heard the condemning words and, in turn, offered words that would explain your actions. Perhaps you even acknowledged that the one condemning you had misunderstood your intent. You took the opportunity of the condemnation to offer your apology for the misunderstanding and gave your accuser the assurance that you meant no harm.
Back in the early 1990's, I received an assignment from the senior vice president to whom I reported that gave me rather broad responsibilities with respect to the internal and external communications within a large national insurance company. The senior management of the company had received complaints from clients about poorly worded letters and reports. An analysis of the internal memos also displayed a need for greater clarity and more precision in communicating the intent of any particular subject.
Because I was in charge of training, and because one of my college majors was writing, I was asked to research available courses on business writing. Eventually, we chose an excellent course and delivered it to all employees worldwide.
As a follow up, the senior management of the company gave me an assignment that would normally be considered outside the purview of my regular job tasks. They asked me to review all internal and external communications and serve as a quality control person to assure that employees used the principles of the business writing course. I was also expected to offer suggestions for corrective action that would improve the company's image.
To assure that I would have the appropriate powers to enforce their wishes, senior management added this new assignment to my formal Job Description. Unfortunately, it became clear in time that few people outside of the top executive level of the company fully understood this new assignment.
Six months into the new responsibilities, and after having reviewed many hundreds of memos and letters, I received a copy of a memo from a task group within the company that had been charged with developing a new approach to advertising. Much of the memo read like any rather dry corporate report. But, one paragraph nearly jumped off the page.
In this paragraph, the chairperson of the task group wrote a rather scathing personal attack against the manager in charge of the Communications and Advertising Departments. In a few curt sentences, the chairperson eviscerated the manager. The attack seemed quite out of place and, to make a serious matter worse, mentioned the manager by name.
I immediately telephoned the chairperson and asked to meet with her. When I arrived at the designated conference room, I explained that in the course of my job assignment her memo had come across my desk. I asked her, in a very polite a manner, if she could give me some additional information that would help me understand what had prompted her to write such harsh words about a colleague.
She reacted to my request with anger, stood up, and stormed out of the conference room. She then wrote an unbelievably nasty memo to me. She ranted on and on. She accused me of poking my nose into her business. She accused me of having some arch motive. “How dare I attack her in this way,” she wrote rather peevishly.
Of course, I wrote back. In a calm, but straightforward way, I explained that I was fulfilling the duties of my Job Description. I even quoted the relevant portions of my Job Description. And, I shared that my speaking to her was not an attack. Rather, I was trying to find out what had prompted her to write so harshly about a colleague without first seeking some other method of resolving whatever conflict existed. I had hoped that my careful and gentle response to her vitriolic memo would introduce calm into an escalating emotional situation.
Instead, she fired back yet another memo that used additional inflammatory words and directed her anger and frustration against me, personally. At this point, the senior vice president to whom I reported, and who had received copies of my response memos, lowered the boom. He called her supervisor into his office and, following a review of her written communications, the company terminated the task group chairperson's employment.
No one was more surprised at the senior vice president's action than I was. He later told me that the chairperson's continued attitude of condemnation made him realize that, if she would not listen to my polite and restrained response, she likely shouldn’t remain in the employ of the company. Her attitude of condemnation was simply unacceptable.
Of course, this incident was not the only time I have received condemnation in my life. Like most of you, I have received lots of condemnation from a wide variety of sources. Many times, both before and since this particular incident, my rather straightforward, no-nonsense approach to problem solving has rankled people around me. I have been showered with condemnation virtually every time I have taken a stand on some issue. I've learned that people usually don’t respond well to the person who stands up against carelessness, incompetency, slothfulness, inappropriate behavior, or sin.
Condemnation seems to be a part of life. We have to deal with condemnation from friends and foes alike. We even have to recognize that we stand before God condemned by our sins.
But, in regard to God's condemnation, how magnificent it is to read the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 8:1 and 2. How glad I am that, from the depths of my soul, I can affirm Paul’s words:
1 Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, 2 because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.
God chose us before the foundation of the earth to belong to Him. And, in due time, sent the Holy Spirit to convince us of our need for a personal relationship with Him through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. As we sensed the convicting power of the Holy Spirit and acknowledged our need of a Savior, God enabled us to receive the free gift of His salvation through Christ’s death on the cross and through the power of His resurrection from the dead.
The penalty we inherited from Adam—the curse of original sin compounded by our own many sins—has been paid. Our sins have been covered by the precious blood of Jesus. We have become a new creation in Him.
Doesn’t it feel good to know we have no condemnation? It surely does!
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