“I’m not perfect.” Ever hear anyone say that? And of course there is the classic, “No one is perfect. We all make mistakes.” This comes out of almost everyone’s mouth. I expect to hear such talk from non-Christians. After all, that is their main excuse to justify themselves and point out that they are, after all, as good as anyone else, including Christians.
But when Christians say it, I cringe. They often add, “I’m not perfect but I’m getting better every day,” with the Lord’s help, of course. Prayer meetings are speckled with confessions of failure with the implication to try harder. Undaunted by their continual failures, many believe they are making progress in their quest to improve.
This is the problem I have with only being imperfect–it leaves a lot of wiggle room. It’s not much of a confession; it doesn’t go far enough. What it implies is yes, I am imperfect, but I am not that bad and the door is open for me to get better and better, to improve. Pride lurks on the other side of that statement.
Now, anyone who believes they are getting better every day is feeding themselves a lie. Let me give you a secular example. I spent years in management. The expectation is always to drive continuous improvement and have it validated by real metrics. I remember my first real management position. For the first five years I heard my staff tell me over and over, “We are getting better.” We would have a bad month then a good one, a bad one then a good one. It was usually during the good months I heard this but the bad months didn’t preclude anyone from believing. It was a repetitive cycle.
One day I decided to find out the truth. I gathered data as far back as I could, my five years plus ten years before me. I did an analysis to determine if there was any statistical change over time, either good or bad. Guess what I found? Well, we weren’t getting any worse. That was good. But we also were not getting any better! It was flat lined. The reason this was true was because nothing had changed in the behavior of the process. All the “feelings” in the world could not contradict the facts.
If I could come up with metrics for continuous improvement in living the so-called Christian life, guess what I would find? The same thing! Why? Because there is no such thing as self-improvement. There is no scale. It’s binary. It is an either/or situation. (Read The Self-Improvement Myth)
“So what do you mean?” you ask. “Why can’t we improve?”
Well, let me ask you a question–what is your metric? The only possible measure I can think of is compliance to the law or a set of rules, principles, or values, all of which are variable and argumentative. Immediately, I have to bring to your remembrance what brought us to Christ in the first place–the Law!
James 2: 10 For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
And since it was never possible to keep the law . . .
Rom 3: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
. . . either before or after knowing Christ as your Lord, then using that metric is going to get you “F”. It’s binary. Either fulfill it all or forget it. No partial credit!
Another measure that might work is how we do relative to one another against a set of perceived values. That one is very popular amongst the elect and the non-elect. That might make us feel good until the backdrop of God’s Law which is Love appears behind us and reminds us just who we are–insignificant black dots against a blinding white canvas. This metric is borne out of pride, the most insidious spiritual cancer out there.
Let’s cut to the chase. You may feel righteous at times, but what Isaiah said doesn’t change with time:
Isa 64: 6 But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; . . . (KJV)
The operative word here being “our” righteousness. Paul, one who could boast about coming closer than anyone to keeping the law, came to the same conclusion:
Phil 3: 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
“Ok,” you say, “we have heard these things time and again. We got it. We’re filthy. We feel bad. We’re failures. Happy now?”
Well, no. What you need to understand is that if you are in Christ, it’s totally not true! It is true is that the flesh is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. It doesn’t change. If you try to be “good” then you are reverting back to being under the law. It didn’t work then . . . it doesn’t work now, but it is an easy trap to fall into. The flesh may be dead but many keep trying to pump life back into it.
You see, you are not in the flesh. You are in the Spirit.
Rom 8: 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
You are no longer filthy, depraved, or lawless. You are already perfect. How? Because your “filthy” righteousness has been replaced by Christ’s. Your spirit and His Spirit are joined together and are now ONE Spirit. ONE! Not two!
1 Corinthians 6:17 17 But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.
Because of that fact, you ARE the righteousness of God. This goodness that is in you is beyond comprehension. It means you don’t have to try to be good . . . you already are. How can you try to be something you are? We are just vessels, jars of clay that contain the mystery of this treasure.
2 Cor 4: 7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
But, just like many will question that they were all that filthy evil before Christ, many cannot buy the notion of being all this righteous either just because we believed in Christ. They tend to be very sin conscious which means they haven’t yet freed themselves from the law despite the fact they can quote Romans backwards and forwards:
Rom 6: 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
The reason most cannot fully appreciate the extent of this gift is because they don’t fully appreciate the depth from which they were redeemed. They return to the law like a dog returns to its vomit. That might be a little sickening to picture, but believe me that is much prettier than what it really is. Jesus said that we were clean. Maybe we have to wash our feet, but there is no more work to be done. Get over it.
At the end of the day, all we have is Christ. When we come to the conclusion that only Christ can live like Christ, and that is taken care of by the fact that we no longer live, but Christ lives in us, then we will have put our own works away and arrived at true rest.
Gal 2: 20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
The Lost Coin by Samuel Hayes Sherwood is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and all other outlets. Learn what Truth is and see how the mystery of Christ in us is unraveled.
