*This post is based on a letter I wrote to a friend of mine. I have changed the names and some of the details. I am publishing this with my friend's kind permission.
Dear Johnathan,
Greetings, brother, in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I trust this letter finds you well. I understand you’ve recently purchased a home for your family. Praise God from whom all blessings flow! I am writing to you in regards to a recent Facebook post of yours which piqued my interest. The post read as follows:
“For as long as I have remembered I have fought with the tension of “I don’t feel like I’m doing enough.” And especially in this season in our nation there are so many voices trying to vie for my attention and I subconsciously hear “You’re not doing enough when it comes to [fill in the blank].” I’m not sure if anyone else feels the same. Now the answer is not to ignore all that is going on. That’s just unloving and lacks compassion because there are a lot of people hurting.
I’m a Jesus follower and my goal is to be like Him. And I want to hear well done from Him after I breathe my last breath. So the question that has brought the most resolution to my heart has been to ask Jesus, “What and who have You entrusted to me in this season? What does faithfulness look like with what You’ve entrusted me with?” This doesn’t solve my inner tension but it just gives me the focus I need to run this section of the race well! Passion without focus leads to frustration and burnout. Passion with focus leads to the finish line with a whole lot of people loved along the way.”
The reason that post caught my attention is because the question “Am I doing enough”, is one with which I have a long and unpleasant history. It is not more than mildly hyperbolic to say that “Am I doing enough” almost killed me. In your post you stated, “I’m not sure if anyone else feels the same”. John, I can assure you that you are far from alone. The Evangelical world is filled with people who worry about that question. I have no doubt that there are many such people in your church. My aim is to encourage you. I want to give you the consolation of Christ, by responding with an answer from God’s word that, sadly, has been forgotten by far too many Christians. I ask that you read what follows with care and an open Bible. If something I write could be seen as an occasion to take offense, please give me the benefit of the doubt.
I suppose I will start by sharing some of my own story with you. Ultimately, it is not my experience, nor anyone else’s, which determines what is true, but some background may help to put all of this in context. You will perhaps see where I am coming from and why I felt your post warranted a personal response, but I will try to keep the autobiographical stuff to a minimum.
I grew up in a nominally Christian home. We normally went to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. It was generally acknowledged that the Bible is true, Jesus is the savior, God’s rules ought to be obeyed, and so forth. But there was a disconnect between what we were in the church setting and what we were at home. That is an all too common scenario and is dangerous for a number of reasons. I am not saying that you grew up in such a home. Your family seems sincere and I have no reason to not take what I see from you all at face value. But this phenomenon of nominal Christianity connects to your post in a relevant way.
In the Evangelical world, there is a nearly ubiquitous legalism that both encourages and conceals the sort of nominal hypocrisy which I grew up with and which creates the uneasy sense of burden and guilt you described. Please don’t be put off by my use of the term “legalism”. When Christians think of legalists, we often think only in terms of harsh, angry, overtly judgmental, religious types who are hung up on how everyone else is behaving. I’m sure you have encountered this. It is wrong and it is deadly, but not what I am talking about. I am speaking of a much less visible, and perhaps therefore more dangerous, kind of legalism. This is a sort of legalism that is obsessed with what I will call, “fruit inspection”, in the name of discipleship.
This isn’t the legalism that disowns a teenage girl because she got pregnant. This is the kind of legalism that causes such a girl to silently wonder whether she is really a believer at all. It torments her parents with doubts as to whether they really parented “God’s way”. After all, the pastor gave quite a few sermons or Sunday school lessons on how to raise kids who make wise decisions, avoid drugs and alcohol, and wait until they are married. They may find themselves wondering: “Where did we fail?” “Did we not do enough?”
One of the lessons I heard loud and clear growing up was that Christianity is all about one’s moral performance. What do I mean by that? To be certain, any statement of salvation by works would have been strenuously denied in most or all of the churches we attended. However, our spiritual diet consisted exclusively of ethical instruction. The sermons, Sunday school lessons, youth group lectures, the books we were urged to read, the radio programs we listened to, all of it, was geared toward getting people to behave in a particular way.
The teaching in Evangelical Christianity generally tends to be along the lines of “Five Steps to a Great Marriage”, “Six Rules for Raising Drug Free Kids”, “The Secret to Experiencing God’s Blessing in Hard Times”, and so on. At this point you may be thinking, “yeah, what’s the problem”? Bear with me and I will try to make it clear. Briefly, such teaching made it possible, actually necessary, for families like ours to keep up the charade. Why?
When Christianity is about behavior, it quickly becomes about appearance. This is because we all know that we fall short of God’s law. We fall short daily. We don’t like to admit it, but even as Christians we often don’t just fall short, but we intentionally stop short, because we just plain don’t want to obey. I want to be angry at him. I want to look at her for another couple seconds. I want to be lazy. Our flesh screams to have its demands met and we are frequently more than happy to oblige. However, we are told, over and over again, that our living of the Christian life is the evidence that we are really Christians, or the evidence that we are really Spirit filled, or what have you. So we fake it. We pretend to be doing a lot better than we really are. Who wants to be the failure when everyone else is pulling it off? (I will say more about good works as evidence later.)
That faking often conceals a burdened conscience, not unlike what you expressed. What normally goes unnoticed is that there are many others in the same spot, who think they’re the only ones, too. Be honest. Have you ever sat/stood in a church service and wondered what all of these other people have that you don’t? Have you ever wondered “Why is their joy always so real and mine is sometimes just a put-on”? Or have you questioned why so many others seem to be living the victorious Christian life and yet you cannot get out of your own way? Have you ever had the soul crushing experience of starting to think that you are getting there, starting to gain victory over your flesh, only to run face first into whatever sin you thought you were leaving behind? I bet you have.
Johnathan, you are young enough that you may not be tired yet, but if you do want off the treadmill, pay attention. I have really good news for you. But first I have to lay some foundation and talk about some bad news.
What you get from the Bible depends on how you read it. How you read it depends on what questions you bring to the text. What questions you bring will depend largely on what you think Scripture’s purpose is. Many well meaning, sincere Christians approach the Bible as though it is primarily a guidebook for right living. I’m sure you’ve heard it referred to as the “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”. Here is the main point I want to make: The Bible is so much more than a book of instructions. Learning to read the Word of God as something unimaginably better than an instruction manual, will not only clear up the “inner tension” of which you wrote, but it will ultimately make you more fruitful according to God’s definition of fruitfulness. If you are skeptical at this point, good. That means you’re thinking. So I’ll get on with it.
The fact of the matter is, you absolutely are not doing enough. That uneasy feeling you struggle with is there for a reason. But for a moment I want you to step back from the big time news story issues and think on things nearer yourself. Consider the several vocations in which God has placed you according to his moral law. I’ll name a few. You are a husband, citizen, son, pastor, and a Christian man. I’m just going to warn you upfront; I will make this a lot worse before I try to make it better.
There is a method to my madness though. There are hard pills to swallow just ahead, but the medicine of God’s word is healing to the soul (Psalm 19:7 and following). Please, brother, I beg you to not look away from the hard-edged truth that I am about to confront you with. If you are willing to look at it honestly, I will show you how to escape forever from “Am I doing enough”, without neglecting your duties. Remember Proverbs 27:6, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, But the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” If I do wound you, I desire that it be as a faithful friend and brother in Christ.
Consider your calling as a husband according to God’s law. Have you ever been angry with your wife when it is not appropriate? You’re still a fairly young couple, so maybe not, but it will happen. Jesus said in Matthew 5:22 that unjustified anger is murder in the heart. A moment of unjustified anger toward your wife reveals murder in your heart toward the person you are called to lay down your life for. “You shall not commit adultery”. Jesus said in Matthew 5:28 that a lustful look reveals an adulterous heart. If your eye has been where it shouldn’t, it’s because your heart loves what it shouldn’t. “You shall not steal.” John, have you neglected to give to your wife the things God says you are responsible to give her? Even once? If something is rightfully hers and you withhold it, you have stolen from her. My friend, those are just a few aspects of one of your several callings. Examine your performance thoroughly in all of your vocations and then answer the question. Are you doing enough?
You might be thinking that I have erred because we are not under the law, but under grace. Or perhaps you are thinking that none of us is perfect and God knows that. So he doesn’t expect perfection, just our best. The problem here is at least twofold. First, being under grace frees us from bondage to the law, not from the responsibility of obeying it. Otherwise the New Testament would not give us any commandments. Second, the law actually does require perfection. James 2:10 says, “For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all.” God says multiple times in his word, “Be holy for I am holy.” 2 Corinthians 3:7 refers to the law as “the ministry of death”. Psalm 24:3-4 says, “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to an idol, Nor sworn deceitfully.” None of that is a call for us to try our best. So what am I driving at?
“You are not under law, but under grace.” What is happening is you are using the law as a measuring stick. You are using it as a means to gauge how well you are doing, how spiritual you are. Whether you realize it or not, you are using the law to assess your relationship to God. The problem with doing that is simply that the law doesn’t have any mercy in it. It demands perfection. When you ask the question, “Am I doing enough”, you are asking a law question. Because of that, the answer will always be a resounding “NO”! To be sure, the law is good when used properly. 1 Timothy 1:8-9 says, “Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.”
The law always accuses you, John. It doesn’t only accuse. It does instruct, but because it demands perfection, it always accuses. So if you continue to utilize the law as a means of taking your spiritual temperature, you will not only continue to struggle with that “inner tension”, but it will get worse. The law will grind you down over time. Remember the mean, nasty legalist I mentioned above? That sort of thing is normally the result of someone gauging his standing with God by his law keeping. Such an endeavor will always fail. The response to such failure will either be delusional pride, as though you are pulling it off, or despair. Often there is a vacillation between the two. I speak from experience. This is where learning to read the Bible differently comes in.
The Bible is about Jesus Christ. I think most Evangelical Christians would agree with that statement. Unfortunately, the practice typically falls short of the Evangelical profession at this point. When I say that the Bible is about Jesus, I mean that it is not about you. At all. At any point. That doesn’t mean that it is not relevant to you. It is the most relevant thing. But it is not about you. Jesus told the Pharisees John 5:39, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.” Jesus is saying that searching the Scripture without searching for him as the main idea is to misread it entirely. Read Luke 24 as well. In fact, Jesus either states or implies that all of the Bible is about him many times. Let me illustrate.
I assume you have heard at least one or two lessons in your life on David and Goliath. If by some chance you have not, ask yourself how you would teach it. Almost everyone in our day gets this wrong. The account of David and Goliath is not about Christians learning to “face their giants”, “be a David and not a Saul”, or “use the five smooth stones of faith”, or other such nonsense. David and Goliath is about Jesus. David and Goliath is an Old Testament picture of what the promised Messiah would do for his people. Consider the following.
In Genesis 3:15, The LORD tells Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” The entire rest of the Old Testament is the story of Israel waiting for the promised seed and God continuing to be faithful to work history out to that end, in spite of Israel’s constant unfaithfulness. None of the “heroes” of the OT is even the main character in his own story. Jesus told us that in John 5. Nor are most of them particularly heroic. Should I really “be a David”? Which of my neighbors’ should I murder after impregnating his wife?
Anyway, all of the stories point to Jesus, most of them pretty clearly once you’ve learned to see it. So here comes Goliath, the personification of the seed of the Serpent. What does the serpent want to do to God’s people? “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy”. The Israelites are helpless and terrified. They cannot defeat this enemy. He is going to kill them. Enter David, from the Tribe of Judah. Look back to the end of Genesis.
At the end of Jacob’s life, he spoke to all his sons, and prophesied that “Shiloh” (the Messiah) would come from Judah’s tribe. So here comes the man from Judah. He looks like a weakling compared to this giant serpent (the Hebrew word used for Goliath’s armor is actually “scales”, by the way). Goliath sees David and mocks him. “Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?” How does David kill him? Read Genesis 3:15 again: "he shall bruise your head". Incidentally, thinking of Goliath’s remark about coming to him with sticks, do you suppose it was an accident that just over one-thousand years later, Jesus crushed the head of The Serpent with two pieces of wood? David and Goliath is a story about Jesus. So is the rest of it. So what?
Here’s what. When you treat the Word of God as though it is there primarily to tell you how to live, you end up making the Bible about yourself. The Old Testament becomes a mix of unintelligible, arcane legalisms and allegorical morality tales. If that is what the Bible is, we may as well read Aesop’s fables and sleep in on Sundays. My friend, the Bible is a beautiful, mosaic tapestry of true stories that all make up the one story of God’s redemption of his people. When you read it, look for Jesus, not for you. Look for the multivariate ways in which God has shown you who and what He is for you in Jesus Christ. How will that help your “am I doing enough” problem?
John, through faith in Christ, you are, right now, the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Because of Jesus, you never have to look over your shoulder, worrying about whether you’ve done enough to please God because he is pleased with Christ and you are in him (Ephesians 1). In paying your sin debt, Jesus has bridged the impassable canyon of guilt between you and God. Because of Jesus, there is no law between you and The Father. As Paul says, “...where there is no law there is no transgression.” That is true on your best day and it is just as true five seconds after you’ve sinned so horribly that you want to crawl in a hole and die.
Read Romans 5-6. Your efforts at living the Christian life are not the point of the Christian life. Jesus IS your life. He is an example, but he is not primarily that. He is your death to sin. He is your resurrection. There is no example to follow there, because you cannot be anyone’s death and resurrection. If you start to meditate on that and look in Scripture for who and what Jesus is for you, you will be free from the condemnation of the law. I want to say two more things and then I will end this. You wrote, “I want to hear well done from Him after I breathe my last breath!” Well and good. I want that, too.
Consider Jesus’ teaching on judgement in Matthew 7:21-23. The ones who are told to depart are the ones who are keeping track of how much good stuff they did. Compare that with the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31-46. It is striking that the sheep are not aware of their good works. Jesus commends their works and they basically respond by saying, “what are you talking about”? The sheep do not think they’ve done enough. The goats are sure that they have. That is because faith in Christ necessarily focuses one’s attention outward. Focus on works brings your attention inward. It’s the opposite of faith. The sheep were doing good works, but were so busy looking at Christ that they didn’t think they had done anything.
But aren’t good works evidence of our faith? Yes they absolutely are. However, they are not the individual Christian’s evidence of his own faith. They are the evidence that your neighbor sees and that Jesus points out at the judgement. But your works are not evidence for you. Your evidence is Jesus. He died. He rose. He ascended. He did enough.
Your Brother in Christ,
Andrew
