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

by Jared C. Wilson

For those of us who have struggled our whole life to get our act together, what does a discipleship built around getting your act together eventually do?

I don’t know how to explain my primary personal malfunction except to say that there is constantly a shadow of guilt overlaying my thoughts.

You cannot vanquish what you cannot expose.

The despair is getting thicker in this world. It will not be remedied by the syrupy platitudes that often pass for Christianity.

It’s those who would find this admission beneath them, who think themselves above Christ and his gospel, actually, who will end up losing in the end.

We don’t study the familiar.

I think this is the big problem disciples of Jesus have with the gospel. I think this is the big problem disciples of Jesus have with Jesus. We take him for granted.

Do you want to see glory? “The heavens declare the glory of God”

Sometimes people are so busy trying to do great things for God they forget to look at his glory and therefore never quite behold it.

What if the work we put into our relationship with Christ more directly flowed from our already-secured position in him than from some idea that we’ve got to maintain our spiritual state?

As Dallas Willard says, “Grace is not opposed to effort, but is opposed to earning.”2 So it’s not about “letting go and letting God” or some other similarly sincere but shallow spiritual hooey.

The rhythm of listening to God in his Word gets frustrated by the distracting syncopation of the culture, like when the white people try clapping along to a song at church.

We are not holy because we work. We work because we are holy.

Let’s get the wax out of our ears. Let’s tune our hearts to Scripture and look for Jesus there. If we do that, I suspect we will find “Bible study” much less routine, much less boring. Jesus cannot be boring.

The point of the Christian life is not self-improvement or more Bible knowledge but Christlikeness.

It turns out that doing several things and consuming several things all at once not only stresses the brain but also prevents us from doing tasks and understanding information with accuracy.

Nobody can say with any integrity that they do not have time to do this. Nobody can say that they truly can’t afford to do this. In all honesty, you cannot afford not to do it.

These two rhythms form the dynamic of our friendship with the God of the universe. You can’t be good friends with someone you don’t listen to, and you can’t be good friends with someone you don’t talk to.

guts. He’d gotten off the treadmill of routine religion and found the rhythms of the kingdom. And it made him good friends with Jesus.

No, we don’t gather to enjoy our individuality in the same room; we meet each other as bringers of the gospel.

We could be honest about our sins and our struggles and we didn’t find those confessions exploited.

We saw what judgment does to the honest and it was very, very bitter. Then we tasted what grace does to the honest, and it was very, very sweet.

The church has got to be a place where it’s okay to not be okay.

The problem with this is that the entry point for the kingdom is the denial and crucifixion of self.

Jesus.” And when they had prayed, the place

It is my goal now, for as long as God would have me simply as a sheep and not a shepherd, to be as low-maintenance as I can manage for my church. When my pastor sees me coming—his name is Nathan (Hi, Nathan, if you’re reading this)—I want him not to inwardly sigh or tense up or have to marshal some extra patience or energy but to relax a little, smile, and feel safe.

We can all fall into this rut because we’re all basically spiritual screwups.

We spend a lot of money and commit a lot of gifts and talents and resources to making sure we don’t have to see what grace might do with the lights on.

If we can take anything away from a blunt comparison of the lists, it might be this: the solution to bad things we do isn’t good things to do but good things to be.

Look, I know religious people who don’t have sex, don’t get drunk, don’t see R-rated movies, et cetera—but who are loveless, joyless, impatient, unkind, ungentle, et cetera. So there we have the primary problem with so many approaches to Christian discipleship—they are predicated primarily on doing different rather than becoming different.

It’s as if God is saying, “You need faith to please me. Here, have some faith.”

But I wonder if it’s because the zeal of judgment is found most strongly in the young. When I was young(er), I knew everything. It was fantastic. There wasn’t a subject I couldn’t expound on and ignorance was no hindrance. As I get older, I see more of my own sin and thus become more humble. As I get older, I see more of my own flaws and thus become more patient. As I get older, I see more of my own weakness and slowness and inadequacy and thus become more gentle.

It’s funny but it’s not. I spent thirty years fighting a war that was over, struggling to believe God could love me, struggling to believe God could even stomach me, warring with the devil over where I belonged, warring with myself over where I stood.

So long as we are looking down at ourselves, we go into self-protection mode. But when we look up we can own up!

Once we discover that grace is oxygen, we can breathe freely.

I don’t know what you do with this, but I can’t yawn at it. It makes me stagger. That the holy God of the universe, to whom I owe my very life, would punish his own Son so he wouldn’t have to punish me is staggering. Because he loves me.

Our weakness is no hindrance to God. In fact, he seems to prefer it! If only because the less of us there is, the more of him shines through, and the more glory he gets.

Jesus is the point.