I can already see the objections forming in your mind. If people cherished the ordinary, there would not only be no Steve Jobs, no Wright Brothers, no Martin Luther King Jr; there wouldn’t have been church fathers and mothers, reformers, and pioneering missionaries. This call to embrace the ordinary sounds biblical, but aren’t you really asking people to settle for less? To give up their dreams?
I realize that this is the conclusion some will draw from reading the title of this book, so I want to offer a response: ordinary does not mean mediocre.
In fact, far from throwing a wet blanket on godly passion, my goal is to encourage an orientation and habits that foster deeper growth in grace, more effective outreach, and a more sustainable vision of loving service to others over a lifetime. This is not a call to do less, but to invest in things that we often give up on when we don’t see an immediate return. The fact that “ordinary” has come to mean mediocre and low expectations is a sign of the problem I want to address.
The Warping of Excellence
There are no shortcuts to excellence in any area of life, and it is commitment to the ordinary that makes the difference.
Many of us had parents who were the wind beneath our wings. They encouraged us to aim for the stars. Maybe you can recall a coach or teacher who believed in you when you weren’t so sure of yourself. People like that are worth their weight in gold. I’m all for reading The Little Engine That Could to your kids, and I admire the immigrants who work their fingers to the bone to make a better life with better opportunities for their children. We cannot live without drives, passions, and goals. God wired us this way and he pronounced it “good.”
Yet everything that the Bible identifies as sin and our nature recognizes as such is something essentially good gone wrong. More precisely, it is something God has made that we have corrupted. Augustine defined the essence of sin as being curved in on ourselves. Instead of looking up to God in faith and out to our neighbors in love, we turn inward. We use God’s good gifts as weapons in the service of our mutiny against him and each other. We can even use spiritual programs to perpetuate this narcissism.
Excellence is going over and beyond the call of duty. But to what end? More than anything else, excellence demands a worthy object and a worthy goal. We have this worthy object: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever,” begins the Westminster Shorter Catechism. The call to excellence is useless by itself. We can no more stir up a passion for excellence than we can will a passion for love. It is only by discovering a worthy object of desire that we find ourselves interested in pursuing it.
Excellence requires caring about someone or something enough to invest time, effort, and skill into it, with God’s glory and our neighbor’s good as the goal. Biblically defined, true excellence has others in mind — first God, and then our neighbor. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31). Eating and drinking are fairly common aspects of daily life, and yet even ordinary meals become significant when they draw our attention once again to glorifying and enjoying the God who provides them.
The warping of excellence occurs when we believe “it’s all about us.” The clumsy kid will only be able to play at a higher level for the varsity basketball team when the game becomes the focus, not his performance. He has to get over himself and the misgivings he felt and just be part of the team. Or consider a musician. Instead of just playing the music, one may become too busy admiring or criticizing his or her performance. When this happens, “standards of excellence” we’ve created — at school, at work, in the church, and in family life — can easily become an idol. We project a certain image of ourselves or of the persona we would like to project, and we guard it at all costs. Literally and figuratively, we’ve taken our eyes off the ball.
Obviously, excellence is not the problem; we are. The question is whether by excellence we mean quality or quantity, hype or substance, perpetual novelty or maturity. If we were to measure excellence by God’s standards, the list might seem a little strange: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal 5:22). Not exactly the qualities that are mentioned in job postings for leaders these days. I have to say — and it will not come as a surprise to anyone involved in ministry — things seem little different in the church.
There are moments in church history, and in our own church experience, when divisions occur over doctrinal issues. However, our churches, our marriages, and our lives are threatened more by a failure to cultivate this fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, and patience are the fruit of that faith given to us by the Spirit through the gospel. Yet, ironically, the calls to be radical and extraordinary may cut off such fruit at its root. Instead of arising as the fruit of our union with Christ, these qualities become a way of separating the sheep from the goats — or at least the prize-winning sheep from the rest of the flock.
This ungodly sort of ambition can take a variety of forms. Tribes gather around a charismatic figure, and then the movement exalts itself over other churches or movements that haven’t caught up with the “new thing” that God is doing. Patience is precisely what excellence requires, but it’s a difficult commodity wherever the cult of immediate results dominates. Faithfulness over the long haul is undermined by perpetual innovation.
In more conservative churches, love, joy, peace, and patience may be thwarted by a censorious temperament that’s always poised to pounce. And faithfulness may be avoided by a refusal to accept necessary reforms in the light of God’s Word. It is all too easy to assert our own list of orthodoxies and rules as “something more” than what God has revealed in his Word. It is easier to alienate than to teach with humility and love. We too quickly write people off, in contrast to the Good Shepherd, who does not break off a bruised reed or quench a faintly burning candle. Epithets of “fundamentalist” and “liberal” ricochet around us in reckless shots.
In either case, we are not finding our common source in the gospel, nor do we restrict the expectations of Christ’s way of life to what is actually commanded in Scripture. Instead, we invent our own ideals of “missional living” and “radical discipleship” or our own list of doctrinal essentials and then impose them on God’s people as necessary for faith and life. As a result, the mature qualities of gentleness and self-control become subordinate, at least in practice, to the sort of visceral and often ill-informed judgments that we once associated with adolescence.
My point is that these qualities — the “fruit of the Spirit” — are cultivated in the fertile soil of the gospel; they wither in the toxic atmosphere of restless innovation as well as sleepy traditionalism.
You pursue excellence when you care about something other than your own excellence. You find yourself desiring something or someone whose inherent truth, beauty, and goodness draw you in. You love a particular object enough to endure whatever setbacks and challenges stand in your way. That’s true of anyone who is driven by a worthy prospect, romance, cause, or calling.
A World War II aircraft mechanic, my father was also an expert carpenter, plumber, and electrician. On that score, absolutely none of his genetic material was passed down to me. The apple fell very, very far from the tree, rolled down a busy intersection, and was crushed by a truck. When my father gave me a job, I pursued it halfheartedly and usually left it half done. It was only as I grew older that I was able to care more about these tasks, and I did so because they mattered to my dad.
While we cannot care about everything equally at the same time, mediocrity results from not caring at all. Mediocrity is as likely with rushed cathedral building as it is with lazy apathy. If shortsighted bursts of enthusiasm fail to provide sustainable growth, excellence is threatened also by a conservatism that settles for the status quo. In countless examples of those we consider successful in life we can see there was a patient commitment to daily routines, routines that to the outside observer seem dull, trivial, worthless. We may admire Mother Theresa and her daily commitment to the poor, but we’d rather win the lottery.
Consider the Cologne Cathedral. Begun in 1248, the Gothic jewel was to be the main place of worship for the Holy Roman emperors. Frederick II knew he would not see its completion. Consistent building continued until 1473. Halted during the sixteenth century, the construction was completed in 1880 according to the original plan — 632 years after the turn of the first shovel. Towering above the city skyline to this day, the building owes its overwhelming grandeur to its meticulous design and execution over centuries. Even with modern engineering and materials, it would be impossible to duplicate the Cologne Cathedral. It was what Good to Great author Jim Collins would call a “big, hairy, audacious goal.” Yet its completion depended on the patient skill of countless individuals who knew that they would probably never see the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
So how do we want to grow? Well, it all depends on what it is and why we care about it in the first place. McDonalds and the Cologne Cathedral reflect different objects, ends, and means — and therefore, different definitions of excellence. It’s hard to contest the excellence with which the fast-food company fulfills the mission statement on its website:
McDonald’s brand mission is to be our customers’ favorite place and way to eat and drink. Our worldwide operations are aligned around a global strategy called the Plan to Win, which centers on an exceptional customer experience — People, Products, Place, Price and Promotion. We are committed to continuously improving our operations and enhancing our customers’ experience.
But that definition of excellence would never have led to the building of the Cologne Cathedral. The fruit of excellence is determined by the object. Only the worthiness of the object can sustain long-term excellence.
Jesus Christ also had a “big, hairy, audacious goal.” In his case, the outcome was certain. Grounded in the covenant made between the persons of the Trinity before the foundation of the world, the Son was given a people. As their mediator, he became flesh to redeem them from the condition into which they had plunged themselves. Upon ascending to the place of all authority, he and his Father sent the Spirit to gather his people from every tribe into one holy nation. And on the basis of this authority that he has won he gave his apostles the mission statement: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt 28:19 – 20).
We may be discouraged by circumstances on the ground, in our own churches and denominations. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that Christ’s “little flock” centered in Jerusalem has now spread into every part of the world. Even in the face of perennial persecution from without and corruption from within, the church is still the kingdom that Christ is building, with himself as the cornerstone. In addition to the church’s mission, believers have their various callings in the communion of saints and also as parents and children, carpenters and doctors, friends and neighbors, volunteers and citizens. Some are called to positions of leadership in the City of God and the City of Man, while others play humbler but no less important roles. In either case, we are all called to excellence, according to the criteria appropriate to each calling’s object and aim.
Some people choose an object to pursue, but they lack the commitment to sustain growth. Again, this depends on how badly you want it — in other words, how desirable the object is to you. You may want to lose weight or get in shape, but a successful athlete knows that it’s not the sudden bursts, energy drinks, and new-and-improved training video that leads to success; it’s the countless minutes and hours logged in the gym. If I walk into the gym and tell a good trainer, “Hey, I’d like to have six-pack abs in three weeks,” he’ll tell me (if he’s honest) that I’m setting myself up for failure. Yet the advertisements still sell us on the unrealistic promise, and we fall for it.
Rosa Parks didn’t wake up one day and decide to become the “First Lady of Civil Rights.” She just boarded the bus as she did every day for work and decided that this day she wasn’t going to sit in the back as a proper black person was expected to do in 1950s Montgomery, Alabama. She knew who she was and what she wanted. She knew the cost, and she made the decision to pursue what she believed in enough to sacrifice her own security. At that point, she wasn’t even joining a movement. She was just the right person at the right place and time. What made her the right person were countless influences, relationships, and experiences — most of them seemingly insignificant and forgotten. God had already shaped her into the sort of person who would do such a thing. For her at least, it was an ordinary thing to refuse to sit in the back of the bus on this particular trip. But for history, it had radical repercussions.
People who actually know what the eventual cost might be and how little change you see quickly are more likely to counsel patience. But we believe the ads. We think we can become a connoisseur of fine wines with a kit, learn to build a patio by watching YouTube clips, or master a new language with a set of CDs while driving to work. But real growth, the cultivation of excellence, doesn’t work like that. The key is a loving, patient, attentive care to the things that really matter — things that we’re likely to ignore in our overachieving rush to relevance and radical impact. Excellence means that whether God calls me to serve the poor in Calcutta or diners in a French restaurant, the simple fact that it is God’s calling renders it precious. “So . . . whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31).
Excellence cannot be cultivated by lone rangers. We may remember some of the great scientists, artists, and philanthropists in history. But they would never have acquired their knowledge or skills apart from being formed by a community of expertise over time. Standards of excellence in each of these fields are not something that each person invents or even votes on. Rather, they evolve over generations through countless negotiations, failures, and successes.
This is why Christ places us in a local expression of his visible body. Especially as Americans we think that we can figure things out on our own. We are only a “do-it-yourself” guide, seminar, or mouse click away from mastering whatever we want to do or be. However, in any field, excellence requires discipline — submitting to a community that cultivates expertise. Discipline requires disciples, just as craftsmanship requires apprentices. Much wisdom for this discipleship may be found in the community’s accumulated resources. However, books will not be sufficient. In the church today, we do not need more conferences, more programs, and more celebrities. We need more churches where the Spirit is immersing sinners into Christ day by day, a living communion of the saints, where we cannot simply jump to our favorite chapter or Google our momentary interest.
Excellence versus Perfectionism
Excellence is a virtue when it has God’s glory and our neighbor’s good in view. Yet, as with all virtues, self-love turns this noble drive into a vice. It can take many forms. One of them is perfectionism.
In the case of aspiring perfectionists, the craving for approval can paralyze them from receiving God’s mercy and serving their neighbors in simple — and imperfect — ways. Eventually, many in this class acknowledge defeat and curl up inside themselves. “I’ll never do that again!” they say to themselves. The desire to please others — to derive their identity from the words of someone other than God — has a debilitating effect on their hearts. Instead of living from God’s justification of the ungodly in Christ, they live for the approval and applause of other sinners. When that approval is lacking, they close up, pull away, and retreat from the world — and perhaps even God. The fear of failing, the fear of rejection, and the desire to avoid pain keep them from pursuing excellence in a healthy way that honors God.
In the case of deluded perfectionists, success has the opposite effect: to intoxicate them with the illusion of self-justification. It can become a terrible drug. Rather than placing our trust in God, we learn to trust in our own piety and devotion. Our tireless service is driven more by a desire for self-justification and self-acclaim than by being secure in Christ enough to tend now to the actual needs of others.
When I find my justification in Christ alone, I am free to love and serve others in ordinary and unheralded ways. A relatively insignificant and imperfect act of generosity is nevertheless useful to my neighbor and therefore glorifying to God. Our perfectionism, however, makes others and their needs simply an instrument for loving and serving ourselves. We might have a so-called “messiah” complex, and this insatiable need within us drives us to do things that will make us well-eulogized in the end. We want to have “an excellent life” inscribed on our tombstone and prove that we are people of worth and value.
Sadly, even something simple like a desire to serve by hosting a lovely dinner can become warped by our desire to impress. Soon, it is no longer the pleasure of the guests, but their acclaim that makes it all worth the effort. If I place great importance on their acclaim, I will spare no expense and go to extravagant lengths to ensure their approval. By contrast, true excellence — done out of love for others to the glory of God, from faith in Christ — can involve nothing more than having an extra plate for stew in case someone drops in.
This is precisely what Jesus encountered one Sabbath as he was invited to dine with distinguished guests at the home of a leader of the Pharisees. At first glance, this episode ranks as an egregious example of social recklessness on the part of Jesus. After raising eyebrows over healing a man on the Sabbath, Jesus turns their thinly veiled attack (with the generic question, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath, or not?”) into a sermon on hospitality. He reveals that the religious leaders weren’t really interested in excellence, at least not the kind that is done from faith and in service to love for one’s neighbor. For them, excellence had to do with measuring up to moral rules that they had invented. In their idolatry of legalistic excellence, they missed an opportunity to be saved — from themselves.
Jesus turns the tables on them and lectures them on proper dinner etiquette in his kingdom. He begins with the seating arrangement: “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him. . . . For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:8 – 11). In essence, don’t wait for the host to move you to the children’s table.
Jesus is not giving general lessons in dining etiquette. He is calling the sinners and outcasts to his feast, while the religious leaders who refused his generosity were left out in the cold. He is the host at this meal, not the guest. And if they do not let themselves be served at his table — along with the other sinners off the street, they will go hungry. In any case, they are in for some surprises if they think that they have the place of honor at his table.
Jesus even gives his host a warning in the form of a parable about a wedding banquet. “When you give a dinner or banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid.” At first, this doesn’t make any sense: “lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid”? Isn’t this the simple law of hospitality? If you throw a nice party for people, it is likely that you will be rewarded with invitations from them? But that’s not what Jesus tells them. “But when you give a feast,” he continues, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14:12 – 14). Jesus tells the religious leaders that they should invite the very people whom they excluded from the precincts of the temple. These leaders were likely confused. After all, these sordid characters were excluded so that the excellence and purity of the temple could be preserved. Why would they be invited to the feast?
To cut the parable short, Jesus has the host of the great banquet send servants out to invite people to the feast. One by one, the engraved invitations are graciously declined. If you define excellence in self-centered terms, they are declined for good reasons. Finally, the master sends his servant out to the alleys: Go out to the alleys, he says, “and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet” (Luke 14:15 – 24).
On the heels of this episode, Luke inserts Jesus’ instruction to the crowds on the cost of discipleship, concluding: “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). This is not an abstract warning, much less a proof text for a monastic vow of poverty. What Jesus is saying is that every excuse for refusing the master’s invitation — even the pursuit of religious “excellence” — will make you an outsider to his kingdom. Your religious excellence will not earn you a place at God’s table. Your own efforts will never merit you a seat of honor. The invitation is not Christ plus anything, but Christ alone. Material, moral, or spiritual self-sufficiency is deadly, and it has everlasting consequences.
Everything that Jesus is saying in this parable he is fulfilling in their midst. He is spreading the table and inviting his guests. As it turns out, the religious insiders are really the outsiders and the outsiders — those rejected from the temple life — are now made insiders through faith in Christ. When we turn a godly passion for excellence (that is, glorifying and enjoying God and loving our neighbors) into an idol of our own self-justification, we miss the truly radical thing that God is doing right under our noses.
Being “ordinary” means that we reject the idolatry of pursuing excellence for selfish reasons. We aren’t digging wells in Africa to prove our worth or value. We aren’t serving in the soup kitchen or engaging in spiritual disciplines because we long to be unique, radical, and different. When we do these things for selfish reasons, God becomes a tool for winning our lifetime achievement award. Our neighbors become instruments in the crafting of our sense of meaning, impact, and identity. What we do for God is really for ourselves.
Instead, our affections must be realigned and our priorities reordered. Jesus Christ fulfilled all righteousness during his thirty-plus years of perfect obedience to all that the Father had commanded. He did that for us. Having done the work that we were supposed to do, he bore the sentence of divine justice and paid the debt we had piled up. He is now raised, sitting at the Father’s right hand, interceding for us. Here, before the face of the exalted Savior, we behold the portrait of true excellence. He alone is the unique substitute — the guilt offering by his death, so that now we can be not only forgiven but offer up ourselves as “living sacrifices” of praise and thanksgiving (Rom 12:1). It is admittedly paradoxical: only by resting in Christ do we find ourselves active in good works, not just for the sprints but for the long-distance run.
The Call to Action
The call to action, to have an active faith, is well-supported in Scripture. “Ordinary” does not mean passive. All believers should live out what they believe, should practice what they preach. But misguided or chaotic activism makes us sloppy. The real question is: What kind of action? Why — and to what end? There is a difference between frenetic activism and faithful activity in the daily struggles and joys of life.
Some, in defending the doctrine of “grace alone,” have given the impression that there is nothing we need to do as a Christian. It is certainly true that there is nothing that we can do to be righteous in God’s courtroom. How do you qualify for the mercy and forgiveness of a holy God? By being a transgressor of his law. (In other words, we all qualify.)
Nor can we do anything to raise ourselves from spiritual death. The new birth is a gift. Not even our faith causes this new birth. In any case, faith is not something we possess, our contribution to the enterprise; it is the gift of God (Eph 2:8 – 9). Calls to action cannot assume the gospel. Otherwise, the church itself — even in the name of evangelism — conspires with the world in driving us deeper into ourselves.
The power of our activism, campaigns, movements, and strategies cannot forgive sins or raise the dead. “The gospel . . . is the power of God for salvation,” and, with Paul, we have no reason to be ashamed of it (Rom 1:16). That is why phrases like “living the gospel,” “being the gospel,” and “being partners with Jesus in his redemption of the world” are dangerous distortions of the biblical message of good news. The gospel is not about what we have done or are called to do, but the announcement of God’s saving work in Jesus Christ. “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5).
So first and foremost — and always — we are recipients before God. He is the benefactor and we are the beneficiaries. We cannot give him anything he needs, but we receive everything from his hand (Acts 17:25; Rom 11:35 – 36; Jas 1:17). The gospel is not a warmup for the lightning round of our schemes of self-improvement and world transformation. We need to hear the good news each day.
However, the whole point of the gospel is to raise the dead, to justify the ungodly, to transform and liberate us to glorify and enjoy God and to love and serve our neighbors! Chosen, justified, and adopted by the Father, in the Son, we are united to Christ by the Spirit through the gift of faith. This is the same Holy Spirit who separated the waters in creation and in the exodus, for the safe passage of his covenant people to the holy land; the same one who filled the temple; the same one who made the eternal Son incarnate in the womb of a virgin, led and sustained him through his earthly trial, empowered him to perform wonders, and raised him from the dead.
This same Holy Spirit has not only given us new birth, uniting us to our living Head; he has taken up residence within us. His indwelling makes us holy, just as it once had made the temple and the whole land of Israel holy. Unlike the temple, the Spirit’s indwelling presence in his saints cannot be withdrawn. His residence is the security deposit on our final redemption (Rom 8:23). Meditate on these words:
If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. . . . For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:11 – 15)
We are still sinful, but we are no longer “dead in . . . trespasses and sins” (Eph 2:1). And although, in the act of justification, faith is merely resting in Christ and receiving him with all of his gifts, this same faith clings to Christ also for sanctification. The Spirit creates faith through the gospel and saving faith bears the fruit of love and good works. We are united to Christ for justification and renewal. These must be distinguished, but never separated. Saving faith is not the enemy of good works, but their only possible source.
Before God, we are always receivers of gifts. Before our neighbors, however, we are both receivers and givers. Even our praise is offered up as a sacrifice of thanksgiving, not as an atoning sacrifice. It is in view of God’s mercies, not in the hope of attaining them, that we offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom 12:1 – 2). As Luther said, “God does not need our good works; our neighbor does.”12 Calvin says the same thing in discussing the exchange of gifts in the body of Christ. “Since our good deeds cannot reach God anyway, he gives us instead other believers unto whom we can do good deeds. The one who wants to love God can do so by loving the believers.”13
We never offer up our good works to God for salvation, but extend them to our neighbors for their good. As a result, everyone benefits. God, who needs nothing from us, receives all of the glory; our neighbors receive gifts that God wants to give them through us; and we benefit both from the gifts of others and the joy that our own giving brings. Reverse this flow, and nobody wins. God is not glorified, neighbors are not served, and we live frustrated, anxious, joyless lives awaiting the wrath of a holy God.
The gospel produces peace and empowers us to live by faith. We are no longer anxious, but secure and invigorated because we are crucified and raised with Christ. We are no longer trying to live up to the starring role we’ve given ourselves, but are written into the story of Christ. We have nothing to prove, just a lot of work to do. Good works are no longer seen as a condition of our union with Christ, but as its fruit. We are no longer slaves, but the children of God — co-heirs with Christ, our elder brother. The first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism summarizes this faith well:
Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?
A. That I am not my own,
but belong —
body and soul,
in life and in death —
to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.
He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood,
and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.
He also watches over me in such a way
that not a hair can fall from my head
without the will of my Father in heaven;
in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.
Because I belong to him,
Christ, by his Holy Spirit,
assures me of eternal life
and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready
from now on to live for him.14
As God’s creatures, made in his image, we are “not our own” already in creation. Yet our redemption doubles this truth. Created by God and saved by his grace, I am truly “not my own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Toward the end of the Heidelberg Catechism (after treating the Ten Commandments), the question is asked, “But can those converted to God obey these commandments perfectly?” I love the answer: “No. In this life even the holiest have only a small beginning of this obedience. Nevertheless, with all seriousness of purpose, they do begin to live according to all, not only some, of God’s commandments.”15 Notice we are not looking for a balance between passivity and perfectionism. Both are rejected. In his own experience, Paul laments that even when he sins, he is still loving the law and its Giver (Rom 7:14 – 25). It is precisely this quandary that makes the Christian life such a struggle.
It is with this confidence that we can embrace the exhortations in Scripture to press on, to grow in knowledge and maturity, to keep up with the Spirit rather than grieve him, and to offer our bodies to righteousness and put to death the deeds of our sinful nature. Instead of mounting up to heaven in self-righteous ambition, we reach out to those who are right under our nose each day who need something that we have to offer. Christ is our rock. And when we fall off, we get back on that rock, secure in the identity that he has given us, and we keep striving to distribute his loving gifts to others.
When we come to passages that call us to live in a manner that is pleasing to the Lord, we are meant to hear them as those who have already been justified as adopted heirs. The same command can inspire terror or delight, depending on whether the one who commands is our Father or our Judge. We cannot please God as a Judge, but we can please him as our Father. We cannot offer any sacrifice for our guilt — a sacrilege after the Lamb of God has been slain once and for all. His atoning sacrifice frees us now to offer our bodies as “a living sacrifice” of praise and thanksgiving (Rom 12:1; Phil 4:18; Heb 13:16; 1 Pet 2:5).
Since our failures are liberally pardoned by a merciful Father in Christ, we can strive “to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” We are not motivated by fear of rejection or a need to seek approval. Instead, it is a life of “endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified [us] to share in the inheritance of the saints in light.” Why? “He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1:10 – 14).
It is a life no longer turned in on ourselves, alternating between despair and pride, but of putting the spotlight on Christ for his glory and as a witness to those outside whom he will make co-heirs with us in the inheritance. So whether we live or die, Paul says, “we make it our aim to please him” (2 Cor 5:9).
So here’s some relief to perfectionists out there: Give up! Stop climbing and fall into God’s gracious arms. “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Awakened by a true understanding of God’s law and your own life, you’ll never be a perfectionist again, at least in principle. (Getting used to it is a different matter.) So get on with life, with love, with service — fully realizing that God already has the perfect service he requires of us in his Son and now our neighbor needs our imperfect help. Now, with confidence in the gospel, use God’s law as a guide rather than as a means of self-justification. Precisely because we cling to Christ alone for our peace with God, we are liberated to love and serve others without trying to score points.
And notice that all of the Ten Commandments are oriented toward others: God and neighbor. Much of our piety is focused on “me and my inner life.” Just look at the Christian Living section of the average Christian bookstore. Yet God’s commands are focused on what it means to be in a relationship with others: to trust in God alone and to love and worship him in the way he approves and to look out for the good of our fellow image bearers.
On the heels of the question and answer above, the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “Since no one in this life can obey the Ten Commandments perfectly, why does God want them preached so pointedly?” Answer: “First, so that the longer we live the more we may come to know our sinfulness and the more eagerly look to Christ for forgiveness of sins and righteousness.” Even in the Christian life we need this first use of the law to drive us out of ourselves to cling to our Savior. “Second, so that we may never stop striving, and never stop praying to God for the grace of the Holy Spirit, to be renewed more and more after God’s image, until after this life we reach our goal: perfection.”16
“Because of Christ alone, embraced through faith alone, for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors alone, on the basis of God’s Word alone” — and nothing more. This is the slogan of the ordinary Christian (Luke 10:27).