The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can't Get Their Act Together

by Jared C. Wilson

Jesus is looking specifically for the people who can’t get their act together.

Self-help is like sticking your broken hand in the blender, thinking that’ll fix it.

The soul is a complicated thing. The soul is a wormhole, multidimensional, polyhedral. We have outer space inside of us. And we think we can manage this? Give this thing a religious pep talk here and there?

No, the Beatitudes are not laws. They aren’t steps or tips. These blessings are good tidings! They are announcements of something happening, not instructions of things to do.

In his work and in his words, Jesus is making promises to the beaten, the torn, the broken, the depressed, the desperate, the poor, the orphan, the abandoned, the cheated, the betrayed, the accused, the left-behind. He is, believe it or not, promising to fix it all.

Ray Ortlund, who once exhorted his congregation to “stare at the glory of God until you see it.”

He’s not checking your prayer off his religious “listen to people” chore chart. He’s not tapping his foot, looking over your shoulder for someone more interesting, or staring at his phone while you’re vomiting up your latest experience in the exact same struggle you’ve had for the last ten years.

What the Lord’s Prayer is, then, is taking the oars out of the water and raising the sail in anticipation of the sure wind of the gospel of the kingdom. Even in its opening line it has us cast our gaze above the dizzying fog of the world and toward the kingdom of heaven.

We treat the church the way we hope Jesus never treats us, keeping us at arm’s length because we’re weird or messy or socially awkward. But if the holy God of the universe affectionately welcomes all those losers to himself, who do we think we are when we refuse to do so ourselves?

The Spirit is determined that we become holy. In this way, “Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16 NIV) is not just a command but also a promise. We are gifted the holiness into which we have been called.

Christ is all and that trying to measure up is garbage.

That real you, the you inside that you hide, the you that you try to protect, the you that you hope nobody sees or knows—that’s the you that God loves. No, he doesn’t love your sin, of course. But he loves your true self. Without pretense, without façade, without image management, without the religious makeup. You the sinner, you the idolater, you the worshiper of false gods—that’s the you Jesus loves.

Heaven is where we finally feel and experience—really, literally, tangibly—the love that is greater than our capacity to love and to even think about love. It’s when glory swallows up existence as we know it, and all the beauty and wonder and grandeur and exquisite graces of this awesome created world become somehow more, some way deeper and more resonant.