With as much time as I spend thinking about being under the new covenant instead of the old, you’d think I’d have gotten the hang of things by now. And by things, I mean
How I view myself from an eternal standpoint. How I spend my time. How I react to life’s challenges. How I speak to others. How I speak to myself in my internal narrative. How I understand the reality of the relational dynamic between God and me.
You know, those kind of things.
But with every passing day, God sheds a little more light on my situation to light up details I never realized before. He often gives me opportunities to choose to live in His reality or in a false one. The summation of these opportunities He gives me is called life. Sometimes it comes in the form of the most minimal of choices, sometimes as a fleeting thought, sometimes as a sentence I read. Every day, I am offered countless decisions to live in God’s reality or some shoddy imitation of life.
What makes the difference? I personally think it boils down to taking God at His Word. In any situation, we have the opportunity to either
- act in a way that naturally reflects our understanding of what God says about who we are and what He wants for us
or
2. not do that
I think it’s really that simple. Well, the alternative at least. Definitely not the journey to consciously knowing and choosing the first alternative the majority of the time. That’s a whole separate ballgame.
To provide a metaphor –
Well hey, let’s use a ballgame. I’m a fan of baseball, I grew up with the Texas Rangers constantly on the television, and I’d say I’m fairly knowledgeable about the game that is baseball and how someone would look like as a successful player. But after 20ish years of exposure to baseball, I couldn’t just walk onto a field and play a perfect game. Why? There are things involved in developing those set of skills. It takes time, energy, motivation, practice, struggle, and at times, even failure. Those are necessary components to able to live out the way a baseball player plays the game.
Obviously, there are limits to this metaphor, and I want to be clear about what I’m NOT saying. I’m not saying life is like winning a game, or that God is just some kind of watchful and uninvolved umpire waiting for you to slide across home plate. I’m not saying the point of our time here is to develop skills that will make us look good in God’s eyes.
Now here’s what I am saying.
Life is beautiful, and it also involves struggle. Though followers of Jesus have eternal reconciliation with God, we still live in a supremely fallen world that will cause trouble for all people, believer or not. As Jesus said in John 16, we will have trouble in this world. Guaranteed trouble. No qualifiers to be found here. But what does He also say? Well, immediately after, He did say He has already overcome the world. Awesome. Some other relevant things to remember –
Hebrews 4 says that any person who has entered His rest through Christ has rested from his or her own works. Our performance means nothing to God any longer. NUH. THING.
Philippians 3 says that if we have been taken hold of by Christ, we must forget what is behind. We must forget the way we used to live, under a crushingly holy set of laws that we could never honor without the entrance of Jesus’ new covenant.
Hebrews 8 says that the old covenant was a copy, a shadow, of heavenly things, when Jesus has now obtained a superior ministry built on life-giving promises. In fact, it says that Jesus declared that the old covenant is obsolete. That superior ministry is the one we’ve accepted, though I think we often forget that. At least I do.
And Hebrews 10 contains the final nail in the old covenant’s coffin. It says that by God’s will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.
Once, for all time. My friends, it is truly finished.
Now let me tie this back to the baseball metaphor. What was one thing necessary to become a true baseball player? Struggle, sometimes to the point of failure.
Here is the crescendo of this whole post:
How does a follower of Jesus live under this new covenant and experience failure at the same time?
Answer: Easily. And gratefully.
Do you think I’m crazy? A thousand Bible-thumpers across the world just excommunicated me from their faith for saying that. If their religion requires failure (also called sin) to lead to guilt and penance, I don’t want it anyway.
I want the Jesus that said that because He is the risen Lord who overcame sin and death, I’m free to fail. It’s kind of insulting to say “Jesus, I accept that You died to atone for my sins,” and then live the rest of our lives feeling like each subsequent failure drives Him away with a disgusted sneer. No, when He died to atone for your sins, for my sins, He was aware of every single one. All our sins were future sins to Him, none of them surprises. But when we are surprised by the sin struggles we didn’t know about yesterday, we can easily forfeit the present truth for old habits that belong to an old covenant. Please, let’s trade shame for freedom. Law for grace.
It’s one thing for me to say that when we fail, we can trust that God’s opinion of us doesn’t change. I really hope you know that His love for you isn’t conditional like that.
But it’s another thing, like I said above, to fail and be grateful for failure. Why in the world would I be grateful, you might ask?
In the words of Saint Catherine,
“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, “I am the Way.”
AH THAT IS SO GOOOOOOOOOOD.
As we struggle, fail, learn, develop, and change, God is with us through the whole way. He promised that His Holy Spirit has made a home in each of us who believe. With every time we take choice 1 or choice 2 (from above), He is with us, changing us. If He IS the Way, we experience Him every day.
To make it personal, I’ll tell you why this means the world to me today. I felt the pull toward the things of earth. Not even things that were necessarily bad in and of themselves. Adventure, love, beauty, etc. The issue was that I realized that I replaced those things as the most present desires of my heart, removing God from His rightful place on the highest pedestal there. It was a temporary feeling, but it made me crazy. How could I call myself a Jesus follower when I had failed Him so miserably, trading His love for the pull of the world?
And I was stuck there for a while, in that pit of self-condemnation. It really sucked and it was really not in line with the new covenant. And then I heard these words in a song I’ve heard countless times but heard in a new way today
You say it’s already done.
The war for my heart is won.
That was all it took.
And in seconds, using 12 words, God lovingly reminded me of my place with Him. Because He has won, I’m free to fail. Not only am I free to fail, but I’m free to see each failure as a way to see Jesus clearer. As of this morning, my heart knowledge of the Way of Jesus is a little bit deeper. I am so grateful that as the Way, He always there guiding me.
I love it. Like He said, He came to offer us real Life. Life in the fullest sense possible. In this fallen world, that looks like a Messiah whose eternal work is done, but will still take the time to walk with me through every choice I make to help tune my heart toward His own.
He helps guide me along the Way without expectation of perfection, not even a specific pace. Just continual seeking of Him. That is a good God if I’ve ever known one.
-Haley
Soundtrack of a Blog:
28. Simple by People & Songs