Many of you know the song children sing during VBS entitled, “Roll the Gospel Chariot.” This was one of my favorite songs as a young boy, especially when we got to the line that said, “When the Devil’s in the way, we will run right over him.” When we sang that line, we would roll our arms as fast as we could, imitating the turning of a wheel, and we would “run over the Devil” at high speed!
But what I could never understand as a child is why we would sing the line, “When the sinner’s in the way, we will stop and pick him up.” From my understanding at the time, I didn’t want to “stop and pick them up;” I wanted “run right over them too!” I mean, why not? If we were going to run over the Devil in our “Gospel Chariot,” why wouldn’t we also run over a sinner who was behaving like the Devil?
As an adult, I understand what I didn’t understand as a child. We must learn to make distinction between the sin and the sinner. While we are to hate sin (Romans 12:9), we are to love the sinner (Romans 5:8; Luke 19:10). However, if truth be told, although we may understand the meaning of this song, we may in practice be guilty of “running right over the sinner” instead of “stopping and picking him up.”
Maybe we need to do a little introspection. Does your “Gospel Chariot” slow down for sinners, or mow them down? Give it some thought.