This was posted originally on Desiring God blog. Post was written by Christine Hoover
Until my late twenties, I spent the majority of my Christian life
striving — striving for perfection, for God’s favor, for the approval of
others, and for the joy and freedom that the Bible spoke of yet
completely eluded me.
In her forthcoming book,
Nothing Is Impossible with God, Rose Marie Miller describes my life as she depicts her own:
The gospel was not my working theology: Mine was moralism
and legalism — a religion of duty and self control through human
willpower. The goal was self-justification, not the justification by
faith in Christ that the gospel offers. But, as many people can tell
you, moralism and legalism can “pass” for Christianity, at least
outwardly, in the good times. It is only when crises come that you find
there is no foundation on which to stand. And crises are what God used
to reveal my heart’s true need for him. (4)
Like Miller, I am a pastor’s wife, a church planting wife, and a
missionary. Like Miller, I for so long lived a life of legalism, and,
like her, ministry was the “crisis” that shone a light on my
self-sufficiency and self-justification. I discovered quickly that I
could not meet ministry’s demands, and I certainly could not love,
according to bootstrap religion.
The beacon of light, simultaneously convicting and life-giving, was
Galatians 5:4: “You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified
by the law.” That is exactly how I felt — like an outsider standing
apart from Christ, trying desperately to earn my belonging. I rejected
any of Christ’s advances toward me out of shame over my failures and out
of my stubborn self-determination.
Living Like Orphans
Rose Marie Miller’s husband, Jack, characterized her
self-justification as orphanhood: “you act as if you are an orphan. You
act as if there is no Father who loves you” (
11).
- Orphans have to take care of themselves.
- Orphans must be strong.
- Orphans must protect themselves from being taken advantage of.
- Orphans cannot depend on anyone.
- Orphans cannot be weak.
- Orphans crave to be taken in and loved but doubt they ever will.
- Orphans want to be accepted, to belong.
- Orphans only trust themselves.
- Orphans cannot get too close.
- Orphans are on the outside looking in.
For many years, I was acting as if I were an orphan, trying to do the
Christian life but failing miserably. I thought that my failures were
my accusation, not realizing that this understanding — that I could not
actually live the Christian life myself — was the first step toward
liberation. Galatians 3:3 taught me that the Christian life can only be
lived by the Spirit: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit,
are you now being perfected by the flesh?”
No Longer Orphans
The Father advanced toward me, showing me that, in Christ, I am no
longer an orphan but his child: “God sent forth His Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law,
so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 3:4–5).
If we are daughters (and we are, if we are in Christ), we enjoy the
love and protection of a perfect Father. He is not an impatient, stingy
parent forever irritated at our weaknesses and failures. He invites us
into the family, gives us His name, dresses us with righteousness
fitting of His family, and erases the ways of our orphanhood, especially
our self-reliance and self-justification.
But that’s just it, we too often return to our orphanhood . . .
. . . living as if it were still up to us, living as if the Spirit
never came and could never teach us or guide us in all the affairs of
life. We go through the day believing that it is up to us to figure out
how to solve our problems and get on with life. The result is that we
live with an uneasy guilt and fear because we have not measured up to
our standards or won the approval of others. (56)
I see orphanhood pervading my heart and the hearts of other women in
an age when Facebook comparison and self-sufficiency reign. There is an
undeniable urge toward perfection in our culture and even in our
churches. Women stand apart from one another, wondering if they are the
only ones, struggling to keep up the façade of flawlessness.
Worse, women stand apart from God, afraid to go before the throne
with their failures or unwilling to acknowledge their need before Him,
when, in reality, we are daughters with full access to our Father.
Perfect For Us
As Miller says, we don’t have to be perfect because Another is
perfect for us. When perfect is taken care of — when we’re declared
righteousness by the blood of Christ — we are finally free to love, to
accept our weaknesses because God is strong in them, and to believe that
God is for us.
“Living to please God — repenting of the true guilt that comes when
we put anything besides God at the center of our lives, trusting in the
blood of Christ to cleanse the conscience of dead works, and relying on
the power and presence of the Holy Spirit for the tasks of the day — is
truly the liberated way to live” (
32).
Again, if you should be filled with alarm, as others are, you would, doubtless, be led into the sins so common to others under trying circumstances.
The ungodly, when they are overtaken by evil tidings, rebel against
God; they murmur, and think that God deals hardly with them. Will you
fall into that same sin? Will you provoke the Lord as they do?
