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

by Jared C. Wilson

The good news is that it is God who keeps us from failing; God ensures that we will stand before him blameless (Jude 24). This means that, no matter how you feel, if you are a follower of Jesus you are never truly stuck.

So we see that the Spirit is committed to making us more like Jesus. And in doing so, the Spirit is committed to making us more like the people we were designed to be.

The Holy Spirit is making us more like Jesus and at the same time more like our true selves.

The devil can turn even constructive criticism into a false accusation.

Part of resting in the reality that your true self is hidden with Christ in God is looking at the true self you keep hiding inside yourself.

But a big part of me also understands Christ’s resurrection doesn’t need me.

It can be okay when pieces of our wish dreams come true, and some of us might actually get the whole shebang, but it’s also dangerous to dwell in that imaginary world, because when our joy is placed anywhere but in Christ, we are setting ourselves up for incredible, crushing disappointment and spiritual and emotional disaster.

How would I know what my real idols are? Well, one of the litmus test questions I’ve been fond of giving out to others in diagnosing idolatry is this: What, if taken away from you, would cause you a great crisis of identity?

If I’m not in pastoral ministry, what am I?

God doesn’t need any more messiahs. He sent one. The job is finished. We are not needed. I am not needed. Ah, but I’m wanted. That’s liberating, isn’t it? To not be needed but wanted?

Maybe it’s time to take those visions—these idols—up the mountain.

Every time we lose our temper, we show our true self. “Oh, that wasn’t me!” we plead. “I’m so sorry, I lost my temper. I wasn’t myself.” Yes you were! That was the real you, finally. That was the realest you’ve been! Losing your temper is losing the pretense that you’re actually a good person. The real you is the you who comes out in times of trouble.

But here’s the good news. 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.

Every other religion in the world has man in the gutter trying to figure out how to get to heaven; only Christianity has heaven coming down to the gutter.

Sinners who trust in Jesus, since we are presently united to the risen, ascended, enthroned Jesus Christ, are recipients of and sharers in his perfect righteousness. So God never has to look for your holiness. You may see yourself as worthless and faithless, but God never has to look for your righteousness, because since you have been raised with Christ and since Christ is seated at God’s right hand, your holiness is also seated at his right hand.

The eschatological tension of “already” and “not yet” is as true of you as it is of the world. Only you will not be left behind. In fact, you can’t be, because in a real way, you are already there. You. Are. Already. There. Let me say it again: you’re here. But you’re also there. Really, you’re just waiting for yourself to show up. When it’s all said and done, in some way you’re going to get there and you’ll already be there waiting to greet yourself, and yourself is going to say to yourself, “I’m so glad you’re here! You made it! Now we can finally be a whole person.”

Oh, I can’t wait to be a whole person!

And here lies the sweet, complicated irony of the Christian life: over time we each become more and more like Jesus while at the same time becoming more and more our true selves.

And we—you and I—are terrible repenters. We don’t even know all the stuff we ought to repent of. None of us will get to that heavenly finish line perfectly repented.

I am not who they say I am; I am who God says I am, and I don’t have to be an Osteen fanboy to say that and think that. I just have to be a Christian.

We bring our pit and he brings his rope. But sometimes we are tempted to think he’d just as soon hang us with it as help us.

One day, while he was minding his own religious business, he got hijacked by grace, waylaid by Jesus Christ. Paul stepped into the bear trap of the gospel. And, ever after, he was “all in.” If he was in a pit, he was all in that pit. If that’s what Jesus had for him, he was down for it. Because he didn’t care if he lived or died, so long as he had Jesus.

When Paul says grace is sufficient, he means that grace is all we need. It’s not “fine.” It’s more than enough.

I think by “boasting in weakness” Paul means that we ought to own our weakness. To own up to it. It does not mean throwing a pity party. It does not mean having a martyr’s complex. It does not mean being Debbie Downer. It does not mean the kind of self-conscious self-deprecation that actually brings more attention to one’s self. It is not a false humility. It simply means owning up to the reality that if it were not for Jesus Christ, everything about us would blow apart in the gale-force hurricane of our own sin and frailty.

And while I used to think that “doing great things for God” felt like walking on water, I discovered that it very often feels more like drowning.

God was not trying to convince Moses that Moses was strong enough for the job. He was telling Moses that God himself was strong enough for the job.

Our weakness is no hindrance to God. In fact, he seems to prefer it!

Ever been undone from how done you are with suffering?

It is true that sometimes God doesn’t become our only hope until God becomes our only hope.

Grace is all-sufficient for weakness and for suffering because Jesus is all-sufficient.

To practice followship of Jesus is to believe the descriptions. It is to believe that around the corner where we cannot yet go is the most wonderful thing we could ever imagine—in fact, it is beyond imagination, beyond what we can conceive. Descriptions cannot do this revelation justice. We hear the rumors of this place, read the travelogues of those precious few who trembled as though dead after spending mere seconds in that sacred space, and though we do not see it, we believe. By God’s grace, we believe.

Similarly, I think heaven is way beyond our mental bounds. 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. Love wins, sure. But really, lurv wins.

Jesus is the point. He is the point of that world just as he is the point of this one.