When God calls Moses to lead the Israelites to freedom, the runaway says: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Moses is, after all a mere shepherd having a quiet life in Midian. He had fled Egypt after commiting murder against a Egyptian slave-driver.

But God tells Moses: “I will be with you”.

In that feeling of inadequacy, Moses is told that it doesn’t matter who he is (a mere shepherd with an iffy background). He has God with him.

Christianity encourages us to hold ourselves to a higher standard that the norm in society. There are lots of behaviours that outside of Christianity many would think are not much of a problem.

For example, getting your own back on someone or spreading gossip about a person who you find annoying. But when we are inspired by the Bible and have our consicences affected by the Holy Spirt, we will try to shift away from sin.

But what if we are worried that our sins are too big?

Years ago, I heard an ex-member of Northern Irish loyalist paramilitary group speak. He was jailed in the 1970s but but then found Jesus and repented. God commissioned him – despite his history – and he now runs what seems to be a very popular warehouse-based church.

Christianity teaches that instead of being paralysed by our sin, we should confess it and repent of it. There are no sins so big that Jesus cannot forgive them.

So, in Church of England liturgy, in services we pray, for example:

In your mercy
forgive what we have been,
help us to amend what we are,
and direct what we shall be;
that we may do justly,
love mercy,
and walk humbly with you, our God.

And the minister responds with, for example:

Almighty God,
who forgives all who truly repent,
have mercy upon you,
pardon and deliver you from all your sins,
confirm and strengthen you in all goodness,
and keep you in life eternal;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The fact that we have a confession every service in Anglican litury is should counteract the worry that people have sinned in ways that exclude them from being commissioned by God. Even the bishops in the House of Lords say confession. We are praying, in the above example, that we God would “help us to amend what we are”.

Now commissioning is not just something that applies to pastors and missionaries. We might wonder what The Great Commission in Matthew 28 really means (“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations…) According to John Piper, the Bible is not actually saying that we should all be doing overseas missionary work. But, he says:

I do think that 1 Peter 2:9 instructs all believers to declare the excellencies of Christ in their network of relationships: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”