He Already Did Better
This article is part of a special series here at More Than Sundays. In this series, instead of writing a few articles on different topics under the same overarching theme, we posed the same prompt to each of our blog writers and asked them to write an article fulfilling it. For this series, the prompt is as follows: “What is a lesson you have learned about God or your walk with God that took you a while to learn or that you wish you had learned sooner?” We hope that by sharing the hard lessons God has taught us that you will be blessed in the process. Please enjoy.
“You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24, ESV). Talk about a kick in the gut when I would take that verse out of context. The verse did not stand alone for me. Commands like “do not be anxious”, “make sure to pray”, “love God and others”, “don’t do bad things”, and “be sure to do good things” seemed to fill the Bible, and once upon a long gone moon, my fragile heart had determined that I needed to figure out how to keep them to stay alive. “Perfectionist” has been a fitting term for me. I believe I was saved at a young age, but for a long time Christianity seemed to me to be about a Savior I had to believe in and the life He demanded I live. He forgave me of my sins, certainly, but still I felt an ever watchful eye peering into my life that only ever had one thing to say: You need to do better, Thomas. Would it surprise you to know that all I could do in response was panic?
The Problem
For as long as I can remember, I have been exceptionally critical of myself. It started as a defense mechanism; I hoped that if others saw I was beating myself up, they would have mercy on me. I also thought that if I could be harder on myself than anybody else could, I could control my pain. I thought it would help to be assured that, with my own thoughts and actions, I could always hurt myself worse than anybody else could. It wasn’t particularly healthy to start with, and it certainly did not get better with time.
I thought performance might be the answer to my problems, too. If I could perform in school, in sports, in my relationships, in extracurricular activities, and in my intelligence, charm, and looks, that my life might eventually become easier. My metrics were two-fold: Did people seem to appreciate me, and did my accomplishments make me feel like I was worth something? Despite my best efforts, the fact that I wasn’t perfect jostled me daily from the dream that I was okay.
Deep down, in a place I didn’t like to go, what I wanted was to feel like I could be loved. I thought love would come my way if I was deemed valuable, and when I didn’t feel valuable, I began to despair. Certainly people loved me, but how many of them had an obligation to do so? My parents loved me, for instance, but in a lot of ways it felt like they had to. I wanted an unbiased source so I could know the love was real. I thought at times that an abundance of friends could fill my need, but friends have this habit of coming and eventually going as seasons change. I also became trapped in the idea that a woman could fill my desire for love, but as the years went on and I found no woman by my side ready to be my wife, I thought I may never find my way out of the hole.
These became just a few of the worthless gems that adorned my crown of depravity. I wore that crown with shame. When I looked in the mirror, all I saw was that crown. I would take it off and adjust it to try to make it look better, adding and polishing its jewels, but it never seemed to help. All I saw was the fact that I never seemed to measure up or that I could never perform to the liking of others. Oh, how I wanted to! If they could just see how much I wanted to be of value, how much I wanted to be a good person, how worthy I was of their love, maybe I could convince them to ignore my crown and start looking at me instead.
The Solution
In my journey to be valued and be loved, there were some nuances I kept missing. Some of them were quite uncomfortable to deal with. For instance, Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Matthew 5:6, ESV). If you hunger or thirst for something, by default, it means you don’t have it. He did not say, “Blessed are those who seek out and work for righteousness”. He instead said that those who will acknowledge they need it, don’t have it, and have no way of getting it will be given it. God has never had an obligation to love me. In fact, the truth I had to admit is even more extreme: I have given Him every reason not to love me. I wasn’t just a guy who made some mistakes but always meant well. I was a sinner to the core (Romans 3:23). I wanted to be a good person not so that good would be done but so that people would like me. I wanted to achieve things not for the value they would bring but for the value they would bring me. I wanted to be in loving relationships with others not to bring them love and joy but so that I could hoard as much of that for myself as possible. I had to admit I was a sinner and powerless on my own to change (Romans 7:18).
Though at times such honesty has felt like it leads down a dark road, it has always freed me to see the concept at the deepest heart of the Gospel. This almighty and just God who had every right to obliterate me from existence made a peculiar decision that showed me how little I actually knew about Him. This God joined us in our feeble existence, not to lord it over us, but to serve us and give His life for us (Matthew 20:28). His hands turned out to be gentle (Isaiah 42:3) and His intentions turned out to be pure (John 13:1-5). Not only had He come for me, but His desire couldn’t be further from being manipulative: He asked for nothing as payment (Romans 6:23). I realized in looking at this that love is not predicated on an outcome; it is defined by what it gives up and the good it desires to give that up for (John 15:13). The God of the universe gave His life down to the last drop to pick up the burden that had doomed me (John 3:16-17).
As I looked at the sacrifice, He helped me to see the gravity of the love that made it, and it was only when I realized I had nothing to offer God that could convince Him to love me that I could understand how much He already did. The full measure of the Gospel was that, even after every achievement, every “right” decision, and every good intention in my heart, I still came up miserably, despondently short. I am not God. I could never be like Him. So He became like me and tied up the accomplishment of His glory with my good (2 Corinthians 5:21). Perfection was what I wanted. Grace was what I needed. As I honestly confessed my sins to God, I believed Him when He said that my sins were forgiven (1 John 1:9) and that He had done everything required to make me His son (John 1:12).
In reference to the inciting verse of this article, James leads into his bold statement that we are justified by works by first saying, “But someone will say, ‘You have faith and I have works.’ Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works” (James 2:18, ESV). He did not claim to show works for works’ sake. As we assume a person with a nice car and big house is rich, we can see a person’s faith through their works. Our works are a by-product of our faith, and our faith is what is most important. I still wanted to see change in my life, but it took a long time. Works are fruit. When we seek to be free of habits, behaviors, or sins and to embrace better ways, we seek the fruit of repentance, not just repentance itself. The process always starts with His love and grace. Knowing the love of God and that He wanted to see me live in freedom as well (Galatians 5:1), I asked Him for the grace to change and submitted the rest of the matter to faith and trust in the One who could change me (Philippians 1:6).
Sometimes, it has been the example that Christ has set that has given me what I need. He went through everything I now go through and made it out in glory (Hebrews 12:2). He showed me that there was a better way that was within my grasp if I just trusted in Him and stopped relying on my own strength to get there (Hebrews 4:15). To try to do it on my own is to deny God, but if I “walk by the Spirit, [I] will not gratify the desires of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16, ESV). Sometimes, it has been the separation I felt from the God I came to see as all-satisfying that has helped me to change. The Bible calls this “godly grief” (2 Corinthians 7:10-11, ESV); I have come, quite imperfectly, to grieve the fact that in my sins I dishonor and dispatch with the God who has loved me so, and that process, by His grace, has begun to clear out the noxious weeds in the garden of my heart. Sometimes, and probably most importantly, it has never been anything I’ve done at all. It is called the fruit of the Spirit because of Who has to grow it, not just because of Who wants to see it (Galatians 5:22-23). If we want to love God and to love one another, the Spirit has to transform us. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19, ESV).
I Hope You Can See It
I had to hear it many times before it began to sink in, so I want to make sure you’ve heard it at least once: God loves you. You cannot refute the statement (Romans 8:38-39). The most fantastic understanding cannot delve fully the depths of God’s love, it goes so deep. Nobody can run so far as to find its extents. In a trillion years, humanity would fail to make a rocket that reached so high. God offers this unconditional, unfathomable, all powerful love to us for free, so let us all quit trying to earn it. You don’t need to do better; Jesus already did better (John 19:30). That is the Gospel Truth. The same love that freed us is the same love that can sanctify us. We cannot bask in the glory of this love if we continue to choose other things over it or assume it’s smaller than it is. He asked us to pick up our crosses, to lay down our lives, and to follow Him (Matthew 16:24 26). We should want to! To walk with the Savior is to experience a love that redefines the words “complete” and “true” with every waking moment. How could we pass up a love like that? What could possibly be more valuable? Take my crown! Take my life! “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:8, ESV). This is not a love that you can let sit on the shelf. Let Him place just a drop of it in the dry, cracked well of your heart and watch as He makes it burst forth to living water (John 7:38). To God be all the glory!