Witch hunts, goose chases, and my righteousness

You are enough: a lie that a lot of us like.

In those three simple words, significant damage is done to the Gospel. The voices that affirm our worthiness lie to us. There is simply nothing about Jesus dying on the cross that tells me that I am enough. In fact, His very act of self-sacrificing substitution and superseding mercy points to the fact that I could never be worthy—that my unworthiness is the entire reason behind Jesus’s incarnation.

If I were enough, He would never have come.

Only Christ is enough. His sinlessness, perfection, and sacrifice. His goodness in nature, backdropped against our utter depravity and helpless launch after the cravings of our flesh. Indulging in sin, we condemn ourselves, then try frantically to patch up the holes in our bad nature.

Tape and gauze slapped onto the wall mauled by a tornado.

Too little. Not enough. Insufficient.

That is us.

With the proclamation “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, ESV), gently Jesus peels back the tape and the gauze to expose the hole we hide. Not good. Not fixed. Our lives are not remedied by small or large acts of kindness, charity, and self-sacrifice smeared over a gouged wall.

In Isaiah 64:6 (KJV), our condition is described this way: “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” We go looking desperately for our own righteousness and find that it's a witch hunt or a goose chase--it is a hopeless pursuit.

Infected with sin—that is us.

Several times in Psalms, David laments over the corruption and brokenness in us—the not-enough-ness of our nature, the corruption of what God created perfectly good.

David recorded,

“The LORD looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:2-3, ESV).

Apart from God, that is my accurate profile: a description of perfect corruption and evil.

It is only when we see our inability to be good and to do good, and only when we accept that there is a famine in our souls where righteousness and purity and holiness ought to be, that we will we believe what Jesus says of us.

Then, at last, we cease our brash straining to be enough and to please God with our defective efforts.

The peeling back of the tape over gouged walls hurts, but there is need for it. There is love in the hands of Jesus doing this painful process of cleansing. Only in our shoes of not-enough-ness do we hear God say,

“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

Jesus, enough.

There, the undeniable fact that we never measure up and ever fall short—it matters little. It doesn’t matter that we land flat on our faces and keep on failing no matter how hard we try to stretch out our fingers and try to reach the sky.

Because He is enough. By Himself, alone, not contingent on any other factor, Jesus covers our deficiency. He covers the broken wall of our lives. Every shortcoming, flaw, pock-marked word, and nasty deed, covered. Abundant. Complete. Sufficient.

That is Him.

And because He pleases the Father with His righteousness, I please the Father also. Not because of my performance or character, but exclusively because I am covered by Christ. My righteousness is vicariously given. I possess it fully, yet its origin and source is Jesus. It is His, and it has become mine. But not because of me. Not earned by me. Not kept by me.

“For if, because of one man’s trespass [Adam], death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.” (Romans 5:17-18, ESV)

The gift of righteousness, it says. It is something given, received from another (through the one man Jesus Christ)—not earned nor self-cultivated. His act of righteousness led to my justification and life. What a beautiful story.

Here is salvation: accepting Jesus, allowing Him—with His ability to please God’s righteous and holy nature—to cover us. “And this is not your own doing,” Ephesians 2:8 clarifies. “It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8b-9).

He has never been about taping over the hole in the wall. Rather, He tears down our detective efforts and rebuilds us with His wholeness.

Such freedom flows from knowing that we cannot lose what we never earned. The mantra “you are enough” represents a performance mentality: I have done enough to deserve something. I am valuable because of how I have behaved. My works and character are worthy of good things.

But what can be earned can also be lost.

As Christians, what compels us to live lives driven by fearful guilt? Can you lose your righteousness? The whole foundation of those thoughts bypasses the gospel’s message: that although we cannot please God, Christ does, and He does so in our place.

No longer are we driven by guilt and hounded by fear.

Our guilt over our failures was never meant to drive us to slap bandages over the broken wall of our lives. It was intended to lead us to Jesus, to see His wholeness in the face of our emptiness, and to compel us to ask Him to cover our sin.

As saved people, do we finally measure up to God’s perfect standard? Do we cease our sinning at the moment of true conversion? No, of course not. We are still people with a depraved human nature living in a broken world.

But positionally, we are righteous (Colossians 1). Our sin, covered. Our debt, paid in full. Our need, filled. Our hole, gone.

What covers us inevitably changes us, one day at a time. “Being confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6)—His promise, to us.

For further study: Isaiah 53:5-11; 2 Corinthians 4:16, 5:17-19, 21; Colossians 1:21-22, 3:10