Tuesday May 12, 2020

Your Daily Dose of Inspiration:

So many of us are missing the mark because we are still aiming at the law. We are still trying to find holiness through the things we do. We keep thinking of righteousness as doing the right things, but that is not what the Bible teaches. Paul constantly tells us that we cannot be justified by our works. If we are trying to be righteous by doing the right things, then we are trying to live according the Law, and the Law has no power to make us righteous. No, our righteousness is not found in what we do, but in who we know. Christ’s great victory was not that He all of a sudden made us into good people, but that He reconciled us in relationship to a good God. We do not draw near to God by first fixing all the wrong in our lives. If we were able to do that, we would have no need of Christ. No, the only way our lives will be fixed is by drawing near to God. Closeness with God is the target at which we are to aim. Relationship, not rules, is the mark that we are missing. As long as we continue to aim at “works”, we will miss mark of relationship.

Once we begin to think about sin as turning away from God, rather than in terms of bad behavior, we will start to aim correctly. We will start to recognize sin even when it is not obvious. For if the right target is the presence of God, then anything which does not draw us closer to Him becomes sin to us. Consider this sage advice from Susanna Wesley in a letter to her son, the great evangelist, John Wesley:

“Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself.”

Anything which obscures our sense of God ought to be considered sin by us, for He is the target. When we think of sin, we tend to think of things like lying, stealing, murder, coveting, etc. Which is, of course, correct, but sin often hides itself in things which seem good. Gen 3:6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Eve did not eat the fruit of the tree because she wanted to sin, but because she was deceived by something that seemed good. As a result of choosing something “good” outside of God, their relationship with God was broken. When close relationship, the very presence of God, becomes your target, you will begin to reject those things which seem good. You will begin to aim carefully at the right mark.

-Jared Freeman, “Missing the Mark”