WWJD By Dr. Richard Youngblood
Question: I grew up in a very legalistically demanding
home and church where perfection was the expectation. I have never been able to live up to that
standard; and as a result, I struggle with a sense of guilt and constant fear
of failure. What would Jesus do?
You and your family need to hear about and be
blessed by the good news of “the incomparable riches of God’s grace” (Ephesians
2:7). It is the story of forgiveness and
hope available to all who believe in Jesus in contrast to the hopelessness of
impossible human rules and expectations.
Our relationship with God does not depend on our ability to know,
understand or perform all of the right things by our own power. Such demands will always program a person for
guilt and failure in life.
In contrast, our relationship with the Heavenly
Father depends on the greatness of his love and kindness. Paul, an apostle of Jesus, declared: “For it
is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Paul further explained that we cannot be made right
with God by our own goodness because without him we remain “dead in our
trespasses and sins.” He taught that this
is a condition where one is alive to all the wrong things: “the
ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who
is now at work in those who are disobedient . . . gratifying the cravings of
our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” As a result, we are by nature the objects of “the
wrath of God.” Although we are alive to
sin, we are dead to God.
But God
has made us “alive with Christ” when he “raised us up with Christ and seated us
with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” Having been made alive with Christ, we are
enabled to obey and serve the Lord and our fellow humans in ways we never
imagined possible. We have become “God's
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do.”
This
does not mean we will never sin again. The
apostle John said, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the
truth is not in us.” But he also added:
“If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one
another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. . . If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us
our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:7-9).
The
only perfection God demands is the perfection of Jesus Christ. When we place our faith in Christ, our lives
are hidden in him so that God no longer sees our imperfections but the
perfection Christ gives us. Living by
faith in Christ, we find an inner peace that overcomes the fear of failure and
gives us confidence to take risks necessary to learn, to grow and to serve God
and one another more fully than we ever imagined. We are children of the King. We know our father is not looking for an
excuse to disinherit us. On the
contrary, he is always ready to forgive us, heal us and help us overcome our
failures and continue to grow into the likeness of Jesus. There is nothing we can do that will make God
love us any more than he already does, and there is nothing we can do to make
him love us any less than he already does.
This is the good news of the “incomparable riches of God’s grace” (Read
Ephesians 2:1-10).
[Send questions or comments to
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