Nothing Left to Prove, Fear, or Hide

Some thoughts for the anxious part of us all

Last I checked, there were over 85,000 self-help books available. Their popularity reveals in us an insatiable longing for more and better.

Why else would so many of us spend so many hours and resources on things like education, exercise, and therapy?

Why else would we make resolutions year after year?

Most of us are frustrated with ourselves in some way. We know intuitively that we were made for more and groan under the weight of this longing (Romans 8:22-24). Our frustration can be a hopeful sign of what’s to come, like a woman battling the pains of childbirth. We might call it a holy dissatisfaction that anticipates what we know will one day come true: we will be like Jesus Christ, and we will see him as he is (1 John 3:2-3).

Our primal longing to “do better and be better” suggests that deep down, we don’t actually believe that to err is human. Jesus’s bold instruction to “be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect” and the fact that we confess our sins betray this idea. As the image of God, it is in our hardwiring to wish more for and from ourselves.

As Blaise Pascal wrote in Pensees:

“The greatness of man is so evident, that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature we call in man wretchedness; by which we recognize that, his nature being like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his. Who is unhappy at not being a king, except a deposed king?”

We are meant to grow, improve, and get unstuck. But how do we do so?

When Paul taught about how Christians grow, he focused on desire:

“Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.” (Galatians 5:16-18)

You are not under law. This means the ominous threat of God’s judgment is not a threat to us. On the cross, Jesus took the punishment that our sins deserve, thus moving our judgment day from the future to the past. We are forgiven for every single sin and mistake. We have nothing left to fear.

Did you know that the most repeated command in the Bible is “Do not fear?” 365 times, to be exact. One for each day of each calendar year.

God is with us and for us. Who, then, can be against us (Romans 8:31)?

Being “in Christ” and not under law also means God considers us perfect. We have nothing left to prove. The impeccably virtuous life of Jesus Christ—his love, his joy, his peace, his patience, his kindness, his faithfulness, his gentleness, and his self-control—are forever credited to us because of the cross:

“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)

We need no pedigrees or pedestals.

Through faith, we are blameless in God’s eyes, positionally perfect, not because of our goodness but because of his.

In Jesus, we are also loved by God in the longest, widest, highest, and deepest way. Nothing can separate us from that love—not even we ourselves (Romans 8:31-39). Therefore, we have nothing left to hide. We can strip off our religious masks, leave the impostor behind, and start living in freedom, “naked and unashamed” before the eyes of the Judge who has now become our Savior.

With our lives bound up in his finished work, we are the recipients of God’s blessing pronounced over Jesus at his baptism: beloved daughters and sons with whom the Father is well pleased. In Jesus, the Father has no punitive anger left for us. In Jesus, the Father takes great delight in us, will quiet us with his love, and rejoices over us with loud lullabies (Zephaniah 3:17). In Jesus, the Father invites us to address him intimately. He is our Abba, meaning “Daddy” or “Papa.”

This is how God sees us.

It is also how God wants us to see him.

In Christ, we are safe with God.

In Christ, we are treasured by God. And deeply so.

As Dallas Willard once said, this means that the universe is always, in the ultimate sense of the word, safe.

Through the finished work of Jesus, we can now assume the identity that God has given us. As Brennan Manning said:

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.”

We are simultaneously sinners and saints, but defined in Christ solely as the latter. We are fully known and fully loved, always exposed but never rejected.

The cross closed the gap between our lack and God’s abundance, between our sinfulness and God’s holiness. The cross was God’s final pronouncement made over us, before any of us drew our first breath:

The last words of Jesus’ life, “It is finished,” are now the very first words of your life in him. I hope they can also be the words that begin the new year for you.

Do you believe in Christ as your Lord and Savior? Do you believe that God loves you not because of the good in you, but because of the good in Christ? Do you believe that the life, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is enough to secure this for you? Then consider the work finished.

As a child of God, you are emancipated from being a slave to wearying religion or hollow philosophy that demands that you earn, prove, or measure up. The burden is not on you to become your own savior. All pressure is off! You can put your heart entirely in God’s hands, knowing that he has also put his heart in yours.

Jesus famously said:

“Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28-30)

As much as we all hope to achieve things in 2024, my prayer for you as well as myself is that we would know God’s rest.

Happy 2024. I pray it will be your best year yet.