What’s the most fervent prayer you’ve ever prayed?
Rescue from a natural disaster? Healing for a sick loved one? For God to grant you a spouse or a child or another dream-come-true you’ve been longing for for years?
Want to know mine?
I used to secretly pray that I would never run someone over with my car.
It’s an odd prayer, maybe, but reasonable enough. It’s a good thing to want to avoid harming others, isn’t it? Here’s why I prayed it repeatedly…
I was pretty sure I could keep trusting God if tragedy struck my life, and I expected it would eventually. What I didn’t think I could bear, however, was being the one responsible for a tragedy. I didn’t think I could handle the guilt of causing serious, irreparable harm, creating pain that I would be unable to take away.
What I failed to realize as I prayed it, however, was that all my daily mistakes, small as they may seem in comparison to a fatal car crash, were already costing others. And often, if I’m really honest, they were not accidental, but ultimately rooted in selfishness.
Honestly, so was my prayer. I was more concerned about not having to bear the weight of blame than I was about protecting the safety of others. I was afraid of the verdict—“guilty”— and what it would mean about me. The reality was, I already knew deep down it was true, automobile crash or not.
“There is no one righteous, not even one.” Romans 3:10
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” Romans 3:23
“For the wages of sin is death…” Romans 6:23a
Another thing I failed to realize when I prayed that prayer was that if you tell God there’s something you could never face, there’s a pretty good chance he is going to require you to face it. Not because he is sadistic, but because he is good enough to put us through exposure therapy to free us from the fears that hold us captive. He loves us enough to loosen our grip on the idols we are clinging to more tightly than to him and his complete sufficiency for us.
God loved me enough to let me swerve off course in order to free me from the illusion of self-sufficiency. No, I haven’t hit anyone with my car. But in my negligence and pride I’ve crashed some ships, hurling people I care about into the sea. I’ve made inexcusable mistakes. Not just accidents, but selfish choices. I’ve hurt people I was supposed to protect. And I’ve wrestled deeply with the weight of my own guilt and my inability to fully fix the things I break.
Oh, how I would have liked to be able to claim a clean record, but I’ve been the reckless driver wishing I could turn back time to reverse the damage, and the guilty verdict. I’ve come up short.
But God.
God, in his kindness, has been using my experiences of failure to rescue me from the biggest danger of all: the temptation to trust in my own righteousness.
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9
As a committed follower of Jesus, I thought I trusted in Christ alone for my justification, but as he has allowed me to confront my own failures, he has shown me that I was still trusting in part in my own performance, my own morality, even my own faith. Releasing those things has been a process that at times has felt as excruciating as I feared an involuntary manslaughter conviction would be. But, ultimately, it is freeing. Because the truth is, even if I could successfully avoid any failures (and Romans 3:23 reminds me that I can’t), living with the weight of my okay-ness resting on my own performance is far too fragile, and it has always been insufficient. Whether our sins feel catastrophic or whether we view them as small, we’ve all come up short before God. The weight of perfection is heavier than any of us can carry.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
“But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:5
“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Romans 8:1
Thankfully, the gospel declares to us the good news that we don’t have to! We may not be able to bear the weight of our own guilt, but Jesus can, and he did. He died to set us free from the impossible burden of proving ourselves through perfect performance, and from the futile tactics of evasion and defensiveness we use to pretend we’re good enough. Our sin problem can’t be solved by denying our guilt, covering up our failures, blaming others, believing we will be able to evade the courtroom, or convincing ourselves that there is no Judge. Nor can we absolve ourselves for laws we’ve broken by pointing to a stack of good works we hope will undo our guilty verdict.
“For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” James 2:10
“But the Lord of hosts is exalted in justice, and the Holy God shows himself holy in righteousness.” Isaiah 5:16
The only way to be absolved of our guilt before a holy God, a just Judge, is by accepting the unfathomable reality that the Judge himself allowed his own Son to stand in our place, take the conviction in his own name, and endure the sentence on our behalf. All we need do is humbly and gratefully accept this substitution. If we do, we get to walk free of the weight of our guilt forever! If we refuse it, however, we remain under the weight of his necessarily just judgment and will have to bear the consequences ourselves. God does not want this for any of us.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” John 3:16-18
It still breaks my heart that people I love get hurt by my mistakes. That the lessons I need to learn come at the expense of others. But God is bigger than our mistakes. He specializes in capsize recovery. He rescues those who need rescue, if they call out to him. He rebuilds what’s broken. He heals. He restores. He even brings the dead back to life.
“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’” John 11:25-26
If you’ve been carrying the burden of guilt and shame for the ways you’ve fallen short, or if you’ve been driving yourself into the ground believing you can perform your way to sufficiency, Jesus invites you to lay down both shame and pride and open your hands to receive the free gift of his perfect merit credited to your account.
Your works will never justify you, but because of the cross of Christ, your sin does not disqualify you. You don’t have to live in fear of crashes that might lay in your future, or shame over the ones already behind.
You can stop running and rest fully in a grace you don’t have to earn.
“He will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.” Isaiah 25:8-9