Chapter 2
Chapter 2 Performance and Acceptance by Cameron Cole 66 T his grade 1s going to be on your permanent record. Colleges will see this."
I remember that oft-repeated phrase that teachers reiterated, starting in the ninth grade. It created a sense of dread and anxiety deep in my gut with each pronouncement. I perceived that teachers were holding it over our heads, as if they held the key to the door of our futures.
Prior to high school, we played after school with foam sabers, but now the stakes were raised: now it seemed like we were playing with real swords. What this meant to me was that every assignment—every test, every quiz, every paper, every homework grade—had bearing and determination over my future. One slip-up, one off day, one unit of math that I didn't understand, one week of missed school, one week of slacking off and—Boom!—my college dreams would explode into a million pieces of shattered glass. A single mediocre mark on my résumé would destroy all of my hopes for the future.
This pressure resulted in a persistent undercurrent of anxiety that was so ever-present it became as normal as breathing.
Fear pervaded my life. School felt like the grounds where my entire future depended on my performance on every single test
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and every single assignment. I carried the weight that only God could carry.
The ugliness of this pressure manifested itself my sophomore year, when I got my first "F" on a chemistry test. The 44 written in bright red ink revealed my profound inadequacy.
When a vessel contains so much heat and energy and pressure and it builds, and builds, and builds, what happens? It explodes.
I exploded.
I took the test paper, crushed it inside my intensely clenched fist, then unraveled the small wad and tore it into a hundred pieces. With the teacher watching. My stunned classmates— eyes wide open—watched their nice, well-mannered peer transform into a total enraged psycho.
To whom was my fury directed? Not the teacher. Not God.
Not my classmates. J was the object of my own wrath. I poured down judgment on myself as I screamed under my breath.
You stupid idiot. You moron. You are such a stupid piece of trash. How could you be so dumb. \ hate to admit it, but the words
I used to describe myself were far more profane than that.
I wasn't even embarrassed at my toddler-style tantrum and my profanity-laced self-shaming. To me, my inadequacy was so flagrantly obvious that I couldn't understand why my outrageous reaction surprised my peers.
The pressure and performance all pointed in one direction: my college résumé. In the fourth grade, after placing in the top five in the southeastern United States in the 100-yard backstroke,
I asked my mother if I could put this accolade on my 'college résumé. Even in elementary school, the culture had ingrained this formula in my head: life is for building your college résumé, your college résumé is for getting into the highest ranked school possible, the highest ranked school possible is for ensuring a life of happiness. We all knew the inversion of this formula: failure to build a satisfactory résumé means failure to attend top-ranked school, which means failure in life itself. To attend a mediocre college or (God forbid) to not attend college at all certainly meant you would spend most of your adult life sleeping in a gutter.
Performance and Acceptance
Résumé-building consumed my life. Every activity had to be added to this growing document. Every waking minute involved studying or extracurriculars.
I even invested time between events at swim meets studying vocabulary for the SAT.
High school life was a four-year, all-consuming strategy, with a goal of optimizing maximal acceptances to as many U.S. News and World Report Top 25 colleges as possible.
As a result, every single endeavor took on life-and-death stakes because, in my mind, my future happiness and well-being hinged on my performance in high school and on the quality of my résumé. Even though I did have a spectacular résumé and I did get into the highly-ranked college of my choice, I look back on my adolescent self as an unhappy person. I felt as if I lived ina locked closet, chained to a treadmill that never stopped running.
I. Was. Miserable.
THE Jesus | WisH | KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL Résumés are not a modern invention, and they don't only relate to colleges and jobs. The apostle Paul listed his religious résumé in Philippians 3 when he wrote, "If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless" (vv. 4b—6).
Before Paul came into a saving relationship with Jesus, he was a spiritual rock star in the Jewish faith. He had religious status through birth. As one circumcised on the eighth day, and of the people of Israel, he was a pure-blooded Jew, which meant something in those days. As a person born of the tribe of Benjamin, he was from the most prestigious of the Israelite clans. As a "Hebrew of Hebrews," this meant that his family spoke Hebrew, which was a status merit badge among Jews.
From a Jewish standpoint, people would have envied Paul's status. He was the kid from the "right" family. He reeked of impressiveness.
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While the first half of the apostle's résumé contained attributes that he was born with, the second half had everything to . do with his achievements. Paul practiced Judaism as a Pharisee, the strictest, most respected sect of Jews. As a persecutor of Christians, he demonstrated the highest passion and intensity.
With regard to observing the law, his observance of the Jewish rituals and regulations neared perfection.
Paul earned the perfect religious résumé. If he were an athlete, he would have been All-American with dozens of scholarship offers and a chance to play in the pros. If he were a student, he would have had a 36 on the ACT, 5's on all of his AP test, and acceptances from Ivy League schools. If his thing had been social media popularity, he would've had 20,000 friends on Instagram and a YouTube channel with a million subscribers.
He had reached the top.
But here's the problem: Paul was miserable.
However, like me, Paul never realized this until he tasted the freedom of the gospel and the joy of a relationship with Christ. When he turned his life over to Christ, he found a peace, hope, and love that he had never tasted before. He experienced such satisfaction that he deemed his past deeds as "rubbish" (or "dung," as some translators interpret it—see Philippians 3:8 css).
In Paul's former life, he had to earn his righteousness every day. He had to win God's approval with each religious challenge.
Each new day constituted a proving ground. Each moment a risk of falling from perfection into failure and shame.
I don't know about you, but I can relate to Paul. Every day as a teenager, I felt so much pressure to be impressive and I experienced so much fear of imperfection. Paul and I had two misunderstandings.
First: you may not realize this, but, because of our sinful nature, we all live with an impulse to create our own righteousness through performance. We all have this sense that we are not quite good enough. This sense is actually true. As sinners, all people "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23b). In order to enter into relationship with a holy God, we must have all of
Performance and Acceptance
our sins washed away. We need his righteousness to cleanse us—so we can be completely loved and accepted by God.
All sinners have the same initial misunderstanding about righteousness. We try to earn it through performance, which we might pursue in sports, popularity, school, morality, or appearance. Where performance pressure exists, we try our best to succeed.
Second: my obsessive pursuit of the perfect college résumé was really just a manifestation of me trying to make myself
"enough" in God's eyes and my own. It was me trying to manufacture my own righteousness. This striving exhausted me.
Why? Because only God can make us righteous through grace.
I was a Christian. I had asked Jesus to be my Savior as a third grader. I attended church weekly, read my Bible, and shared the gospel with others. I primarily understood the gospel as my ticket into heaven. I did not realize that the gospel gave me peace, freedom, and comfort in this life.
This changed when my life of performance finally ran me into a spell of deep depression and anxiety. My pastor told me,
"The gospel is rest. The gospel means Jesus carries the burden of your life. The gospel means you will never have to prove yourself again." For the first time in my life, I realized that I was enough. Jesus had given me his righteousness as a free gift. God had made me enough by grace through faith. And, like Paul, all my successes seemed like garbage compared to the peace and comfort of knowing the gospel of grace.
As I continued to grow in this truth, I no longer felt pressure to perform or to earn my own righteousness. I was able to remember, even in the midst of temptation, "I don't have to be impressive. Christ has made me enough."
THE Jesus | WANT You To KNow What I wish I had known—and what I want for you—is to know that you are enough through Christ. You don't have to prove yourself. You don't have to impress anyone. If you trust in
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God's grace through Jesus Christ, rather than your own spiritual performance, you will know the Lord has made you perfectly acceptable in his eyes. There is nothing more to prove.
Rest in comfort: through Christ, you are enough.
DEVOTIONAL QUESTIONS
Read Philippians 3:1—11.
What do you think Paul meant when he said, "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (v. 8a)?
The author of chapter 2 describes how true worth is rooted in the gospel. Describe the gospel. What does it mean to your 3.
In what ways do you feel like you are not enough?
What things do you do to try to make yourself feel better? How can resting in the perfection and love of Jesus make a difference?
THE GOSPEL (noun): The good news of God's grace and redemption for sinners through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the primary message of the Bible and of Christianity.
What this means for you: When you trust the gospel, you can live freely before a God who delights in you. Because of Jesus, there is nothing you can or can't do that will make him love you any less.
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Grief it Erinaithy by Mac Harris M y whole world skidded to a stop.
Moments earlier, I had been studying for a math quiz in the same room as my brothers and parents. Aside from the portable hospital bed, IV pumps, and life-support equipment keeping my dad alive in our basement, it might have looked like a normal scene.
But a series of coughs broke the stillness, and suddenly my brothers and I were rushed out of the room, whisked upstairs to sit in stunned silence with my uncles. My dad's year-and-a-halflong battle with cancer should have prepared me for that moment; instead, the reality of death paralyzed and swallowed me whole.
I was thirteen when my dad died, and I had all kinds of people lovingly tell me that I was going through something no kid should have to endure. But the truth is, the loss of a loved one is one of the few constants in life; death doesn't wait to strike until you're out of high school and "mature" enough to handle it.
So there I was, a grieving eighth grader with no idea how to grieve. My two younger brothers and I reacted in different ways—with anger, depression, withdrawal—and tried to cope with sports, academics, and anything that reminded us of dad.
As the oldest, I felt a particular responsibility to be the "man of the house" (a hilarious notion when I think back), to care for my
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mom and brothers. I did everything I could to be like my dad, trying to hold onto his memory by emulating his love for college football, working hard in school, and cracking dry jokes.
At the same time, I hardened myself. In contrast to the tears and emotional outbursts of my mom and brothers, I thought I had to be the one who was tough and strong and steady. I had to bury my pain so deep that it couldn't resurface, hiding under layers upon layers of anything that would distract me from the emptiness I felt inside. I didn't want to feel weak, sad, or acknowledge that I had experienced a life-altering loss, so I projected a performance-based put-togetherness for all the world to see.
More than anything, however, this brave face obscured an emotional and spiritual numbness, as well as a chorus of doubts rattling around inside my head: Maybe I should have prayed more.
Why hadn't I spent more time with Dad? Can I even trust a God who let him die?
While I tried to hide my scars, minimize my loss, and numb the pain, God graciously covered me with the love of other dadlike figures. Instead of mending my heart with one person, God blessed me with a youth pastor who welcomed me into fellowship, a high schooler who drove me to and from practices, and a friend's dad who sacrificed time to invest in me and my brothers.
As I tried to distract myself, God slowly but surely used these men to chip away at the defenses I had hastily constructed to cover my grief. I spent years burying my painful emotions and hiding from the real grief I never allowed myself to feel. But my senior year of college, my college minister sat me down for a moment of brutal honesty. In the midst of trying to figure out my plans for after graduation, he asked me a simple, surprising question: "Have you ever grieved the loss of your dad?"
I was taken aback and unsure why this was relevant. I stumbled over an answer and told him I was fine. After all, it had almost been a decade, and time heals all wounds, right? But he saw right through me. On a napkin (that I've kept to this day), he drew a crude (yet elegant) diagram of a canyon. Between where
I was standing on one side of the canyon and where I wanted
Grief and Empathy
to go on the opposite side was a deep valley. Like Yoda sending Luke into the cave full of his fears in The Empire Strikes Back, my college pastor offered a simple yet invaluable lesson: to get to the new life and healing and joy that I desired, I had to go through the death and sorrow. I was stuck, trying to get to the other side, but unwilling to walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness.
I wanted to build a magical bridge and walk right over my hurt, but that's not the way of the Lord. Instead, he uses our scars and sorrows not for punishment, but to grow us and lead us, for it is "through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22b).
THE Jesus | WisH | KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL A lifetime of Sunday school had taught me that the good news— the best news—was that Jesus could comfort me through this valley. But it was difficult to believe. How could he comfort me, here and now?
Like my campus minister said, God calls us to walk through the valley of the shadow of darkness and death. There's no way around it. But there's also no one-size-fits-all formula for grieving. Some days, I wanted nothing more than a hug from a friend.
On other days, a simple kind word from my mom would send me over the edge. Sometimes, I found comfort hiding in a crowd, or felt even lonelier surrounded by friends who couldn't possibly understand what I was going through. I might be kept up at night by the suffocating straitjacket of loss, or wrestle with guilt for not feeling more heartbroken. The point is, no matter what our grieving looks like, we can't hide from it, but we also can't just wash it away with theological truths. We need something more.
The Christianity I knew in high school met me in my loss with the truths that God was good, and that he was sovereign over my sorrow. Well-intentioned friends and family tried to comfort me—with pity I rarely wanted—offering platitudes or cherry-picked verses like Romans 8:28: "And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." And don't get me
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wrong: God is good, and he is sovereign, and these were truths that I needed to hear.
But faced with that chasm of darkness, they were not the only truths I needed to hear.
The notion that "God will turn your suffering into something good" is absolutely true, but if that's all you hear, it's an incomplete view of God. When we exclusively think of Jesus as the Son of God or King or Lord—all biblical and beautiful truths—we can lose sight of his tender, intimate, and loving humanity.
Our God isn't a distant and impersonal deity; rather, he humbled himself and took on our humanity (see Philippians
2:5—-11). Jesus wasn't just any man, he was "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah
53:3a). Jesus knows our deepest pain, loss, and grief because he lived each of those things.
Not only can he identify with our deepest hurt, but we know that his heart breaks when our hearts break. Though
Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, when he saw Mary's tears, he couldn't help but weep himself (see John
11:28—37). Think about that! The God and Savior of the world broke down in tears because his friend was grieving. The loneliness of loss can feel soul-crushing, but it is powerful to remember we are never crying alone.
As Dane Ortlund writes in his book Gentle and Lowly, "In our pain, Jesus is pained; in our suffering, he feels the suffering as his own even though it isn't."' And more than any of us, Jesus understands loss. Not only was he abandoned by the crowds, his family, and his friends, but Jesus experienced a cosmic loss that we cannot even begin to comprehend. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he cried from the cross, experiencing the separation and loss of his Father in heaven—an incomparable loneliness (Matthew 27:46b).
So in the most real, intimate, and loving way possible, Jesus 1. Dane C. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2020), 46. .
Grief and Empathy
only understands our pain, but he endures it with us. I wish I had known as a teenager that, even more than the best earthly friend or loved one, our God shoulders our burdens, weeps with us in our grief, and sits in our sorrow. When we need a tender touch, he draws near. When we want to curl up in isolation, he sits with us, holding our hand (see Psalm 73:23). When we want to vent to someone who understands, he lends a listening ear.
Ortlund quips that Jesus "will never lob down a pep talk from heaven. He cannot bear to hold himself at a distance. Nothing can hold him back. His heart is too bound up with yours."
THE Jesus | WANT You To KNow I'm a lot closer to being in high school than many of the other writers here. As a result, I'm still learning how to navigate this whole "grief" thing along with you. But if you have lost a friend or a loved one, know you are not alone. Your story and your loss are real, and God doesn't want you to shrink away from it.
Instead, he invites you to walk through the muck and the _ mire of mourning and sit right in the emotions you wish you could escape. This isn't some trick or test of faith, but God's good purpose for healing and making all things new. In the midst of your grief and loss, I invite you to read the Psalms and cry out to God with the psalmist; cling to God, for he will uphold you
(see Psalm 63:8). No matter how alone you feel, Jesus invites you to take him by the hand and wade into your sorrows together.
Finally, I want to encourage you in your prayers. Whether praying for yourself or for someone you love, know that God hears your prayers and that they have power. After my dad died, many people told me that God sometimes says "no" to physical healing. While this is technically true, the Bible offers an even better hope: sometimes, God's answer is simply "not yet."
One day, we know for certain that "he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things
2. Ortlund, Gentle and Lowly, 50.
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have passed away" (Revelation 21:4, emphasis mine).
For many of us, God may have answered our prayers for healing differently than we imagined, but they have not fallen on deaf ears.
Not only does Jesus comfort us in our grief today, but someday soon, God will complete his work of redemption. Our deepest pains will fade into a distant memory as we rejoice together in our resurrected, restored, and eternal bodies.
DEVOTIONAL QUESTIONS
Read Isaiah 53:3.
In this passage, the prophet describes the future sufferings of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. In what ways can you relate to the suffering described?
The author of chapter 3 describes how he tried to skip over the hard parts of grief. Jesus invites you to share the traumatic parts of your own story with him, that he might accompany you along the way. What might you share with him today?
What part of Jesus's life and death might give you assurance that he is trustworthy to carry your burdens?
SYMPATHY VS. EMPATHY (nouns): Having sympathy involves having compassion for another person, even though you can't identify with their suffering. Having empathy involves compassion with understanding. It is a shared experience.
What this means for you: Because Jesus is an empathetic God, he identifies with your struggles and pain. He understands your every weakness and invites you to draw near.
Misfits and the Arrival of God by Michelle Ami Reyes M y existence in high school sometimes felt like one extended experience of humiliation.
The boys in my grade had a running joke about the way I looked. One time, as I sat down in a classroom, a boy stood up and shouted, "Hey, look at Michelle! She's so ugly." Never in my life had I wanted to be more invisible than in that moment. I still remember the way all eyes turned to look at me, and an immediate roar of laughter erupted across the room. I heard one girl ask out loud, "Why are you so dark anyways?" Another guy leaned over and said, "You know no one's ever going to date you, right?"
All I could do was hang my shoulders low and sink down as far as I could into my chair, hoping it would swallow me whole.
I was the lone brown-skinned Indian girl in an all-white town. No one in my school, my church, or my neighborhood looked like me or lived life like me. But I had the same desires as everyone else in high school: I wanted friends, I wanted to fit in, to be liked, maybe even to have a boyfriend.
The boy's words in class that day lingered with me: you know no one's ever going to date you. The boys in my grade had an awful ranking system. They openly discussed how pretty each of the girls were. They'd rank them and say who they would want to date first, second, etc. You get the picture. It was horrible. Boys should
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never treat girls in this way. Ever. Girls should never be reduced to sexual objects and valued because of their looks. Nevertheless,
I was never included on these lists because of my brown skin. I'm glad now that I wasn't part of those lists, but back then I continually felt mortified that I was known as the ugly and un-dateable girl.
| To make matters worse, some of the kids called me "Pocahontas," a name they hoped would make me feel insulted.
I was the brunt of a sad joke, made sadder still by the fact that I was being misidentified for a Native American woman, and even worse that a Native American woman was used as a racial slur against me. None of this was okay.
Eventually, the shame was too much to bear and I started trying to hide my Indianness. I wore long-sleeved shirts to hide my arms. I stopped wearing traditional Indian clothes in public.
I also stopped bringing Indian food to lunch because my peers made fun of how it looked and smelled. This type of food-shaming is wrong and it continues today.
I told myself that hiding my real self was worth it. If I could figure out how to act like the cool kids, dress like the pretty girls, do my hair the way they did, or talk the way they did, then maybe my peers wouldn't make fun of me in class anymore, exclude me from parties, or say my culture was weird.
Unfortunately, this led to a different problem. When people first got to know me, they'd ask questions like, "You're sort of Indian, right?" My Indian friends and cousins would constantly tell me that I wasn't a true Indian. All of a sudden, I didn't know who I was anymore or how I was supposed to live my life. As a bicultural, second-generation Indian American, I wasn't fully
Asian, but I wasn't really white either. I had no friends and, above all else, I didn't understand why God made me the way he did.
I really wish that someone would have told me in high school that who I was, as a bicultural Indian American girl, mattered. I wish I could have had a Bible as a kid that depicted
Jesus as a brown-skinned man. I wish one of my pastors or Bible teachers would have told me that I was created with a beautiful,
Misfits andthe Arrival of God #23 God-given, cultural identity. I was born and raised in a Christian home and throughout high school I loved Jesus with all my heart. But I had no idea that Jesus was a brown-skinned person like me. I had no idea that he experienced similar insults and rejections during his life on earth. I wish that someone could have mapped this out for me when I was in high school, so that I could have looked to him for encouragement.
THE Jesus | WisH | KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL My life has always been one of straddling fences and living in the in-between. Being Indian American means being a mestizo: a person in between worlds and never fully fitting in anywhere.
It means being misunderstood, miscategorized, and misplaced.
But I'm not the only one who was created as a mestizo. Jesus was a person between worlds long before I was. In his incarnate form, he too had a bicultural identity.
First, Jesus is both God and man. This is what we mean when we talk about the incarnation. Jesus steps outside of his original nature in heaven to become a man on earth. He is a celestial immigrant who leaves the realms of heaven to pitch his tent among men.
Second, he is born as a brown-skinned disenfranchised Jew in a Roman world. Matthew 2:13 clearly identifies Jesus as a refugee. The classic modern-day definition of a refugee is a person/ family forced to flee their homeland for fear of persecution. This is exactly what happens to Jesus as a little boy, when Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt in order to save his life.
For much of his earthly life, Jesus experiences racial taunts and insults. One of his own disciples, Nathaniel, when he first hears of Jesus's origins, remarks, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" (John 1:46a). After all, it was a poor and overlooked town. But God chooses Nazareth to be the hometown of our King.
In John 8, the religious leaders try to insult Jesus by calling him a demon and a Samaritan (a people group who were halfJew and half-Gentile). At that time there was extreme racial tension between Jews and Samaritans. The leaders use the word
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Samaritan as a racial slur—intended to shame Jesus's identity.
But Jesus is not bothered by this taunt. Instead, these experiences propel his ministry forward.
Since Jesus is treated as a misfit and pushed to the margin, he also knows how to best love and care for others at the margins.
He is an outsider himself and so he identifies especially with other outsiders. The same Jesus who is called a Samaritan is the One who goes out of his way to find and love a Samaritan (see John
4). The same Jesus who is called a demon is the One who heals the demon-possessed (see Luke 8). The same Jesus who is mocked for his hometown, seeks out his disciples from similar towns and villages. He doesn't visit the big cities or invite the wealthy, beautiful, or talented. Instead, Jesus seeks his disciples in Galilee, a rural region that was largely insignificant in the world's eyes, with a population of about 300,000 scattered in some two hundred villages. It's here that he first calls blue-collared fisherman to follow him.
You see, Jesus understood loneliness. He was rejected for many reasons, including the color of his skin and his ethnicity.
Luke 9:58 tells us, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Jesus knew how it felt to be misunderstood, to not ever feel at home in this world, and to be rejected. But for Jesus, all of these experiences were worth it. Despite the pain and the hardships he endured, he embraced being a misfit to meet us where we are. He acquired our customs, languages, and pains in order to care for us, to heal us, and to unite us. In fact, it is through his death and resurrection that Jesus embraced the way of suffering, the taunts, the pains of rejection, and even death so that we could be invited into his family among equals.
THE Jesus | WANT You To KNow Maybe you are a misfit like me because of your skin color. Or maybe you're a misfit for other reasons. Whatever the case, or whatever you've been told, I want you to know that Jesus identifies with your feelings of isolation and misunderstanding; he
Misfits andthe Arrival of God 2% was a misfit too. He knows your pain and identifies with your struggles. He welcomes you to come and share your heart and hurts with him.
Moreover, know that your experiences and feelings as a misfit can actually be a gift. It's the misfits who have a high radar for people on the margins. You know when someone is being bullied or shamed, because you've been there, and you also know how to empathize, care, and love on the hurting. This is how you can point people to Jesus.
Whatever it is that sets you apart, you have a powerful role to play in the kingdom of God. You are the bridge builders.
Because you stand in the gap, you can fight for unity and reconciliation in a way that no one else can. As a mestizo—neither fully in one world or the other—you can be Christ's representatives to the world around you.
You are deeply loved by God. Rejoice and live in this freedom.
DEVOTIONAL QUESTIONS
Read Luke 8:26—38.
According to the text, how did the townspeople respond to this outsider—a wild man possessed by demons?
- How does Jesus respond to him?
Theauthorofchapter 4 defines the wordmestizoasa person in between worlds and never fully fitting in anywhere.
It means being misunderstood, miscategorized, and misplaced. Have you ever felt like a mestizo?
The Bible affirms that Jesus loved mestizos—after all, he himself was one. How does this inform the way that you view and treat yourself, as well as others who are different, on the margins, or outsiders?
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LLL LNA ONLI TNT INA fo | INCARNATION (noun): The event when God | came down to earth and took on human flesh in the person of Jesus.
What this means for you: Because Jesus came | to earth and experienced the pains of life, he can identify with your suffering. You can identify with | him as a human being who was both hungry and | thirsty, hot and cold. He suffered grief and sorrow and utter agony as he was crucified on the cross.
"ne "ny "y o "epeansreaeatereseeeteengse repeated testa apa sangha ya ae etapa
Myatt Reputation and Righteousness by Kristen Hatton had no business trying out for the cheerleading squad. I was a letterman on the soccer team with no prior cheerleading experience. But earning a spot on the squad was more about popularity, and less about skill.
For several weeks, I'd race from soccer practice to cheer practice. My soccer coach was furious. She couldn't comprehend why a rising senior would willingly abandon her starting position and leadership role for a place on the cheerleading squad. I had my reasons.
I envisioned myself at pep rallies and games, with all the underclassmen, including my freshman sister's friends, looking up to me. The only real obstacle (so I thought) in making the cut was the judges' approval at the prescreening tryout. My pride convinced me that the student body's vote would secure my spot.
Even when I couldn't master a back handspring, I rationalized that my spirit would make up for it. When the day finally arrived for pre-screening tryouts, I put on my ankle brace from a recent soccer injury, hoping it might earn some leniency from the judges. I reasoned that less precision would be expected from someone with an injury. I couldn't have been more wrong.
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When the list of those who made the cut was posted, I raced to the school with other cheerleader hopefuls. As we crowded in on each other, trying to view the list, I began to panic.
Where is my name? I can't find it! Was it accidentally left off?
Wishful thinking.
I had to face the difficult reality that I would not be a cheerleader. I tried covering my disappointment as I congratulated those standing by me whose names were on the list, including many of my good friends. Secretly, I was filled with envy. I didn't want to watch them cheering at football games, while I stood in the bleachers.
I began questioning God. Clearly the other girls weren't nearly as deserving as me. I rationalized my superiority—in popularity, school spirit, and outward actions. I was especially upset about one cheerleader in particular. She wasn't even a believer!
Why her and not me, God? I am the one living right. I should be the one who gets rewarded.
Until this point in time, I had considered myself an asset to God's kingdom. I assumed he was pretty thankful to have me on his team. After all, I brought a host of achievements.
I went to church every Sunday, was involved with the youth group, Young Life, and Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I had my daily quiet time and even wrote a quiet time devotional for my youth group's weekly publication. On top of all that, I didn't drink or even go to parties. I was confused as to why God would not honor my obedience or want someone like me in a position of influence. Even more nonsensical to me was the fact he would give that status to a non-Christian party girl.
Oh, how foolish I was.
THE Jesus | WisH | KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL As I reflect back on the cheerleading incident, I realize that I was seeking my own glory and setting my hope there. I was completely unaware of the depth of my own sinfulness; I didn't even see my need for a Savior.
Reputation and Righteousness
Now don't get me wrong—as a believer I identified as a sinner, but only in a generic sort of way. I viewed sin as outward behavior—and on the outside, I looked pretty good! I was careful to hide my ugly, inward desires like selfishness, pride, and my intense need for praise.
It's painful to peel away masks of perfection and performance and allow others to see me as I really am. Who I really was (and am) is sinful, selfish, and self-consumed. Who wants anyone to see that? But when my eyes saw sin as more than just behavior, I began to see my heart's true condition. I realized that I was no better than the cheerleader who earned my coveted spot. In fact, we were equal in the sense that we were both sinners deserving judgment and wrath. Thankfully, God extends grace to the guilty. And so he sent his Son.
I eventually learned that Jesus didn't come just to die for us.
He came to live for us. And because he did, we've been given a better righteousness. You see, before Jesus could be our perfect sacrifice, he had to first accomplish living the perfect life required by God. For it was through his perfect living that he became the unblemished, sacrificial lamb.
Not only was Christ fully perfect and fully God, but he was also fully human. And it was in the fullness of his humanity that he never had.a jealous thought. He never looked down on others or viewed himself as superior. He was never selfish with his time. He never snapped at his brother or disrespected his parents. He never secretly hoped someone else would mess up or look bad. He never sought revenge. He never sinned in any way, big or small, inwardly or outwardly.
Therefore, at the cross when Jesus took on all of our sin (past, present, and future), he exchanged it for his perfection.
And it is his perfect righteousness that covers us completely, making us acceptable to God.
Practically, this means when pride continues to pop up in my life or when I manipulatively work to get my way, I am free to admit my selfish and sinful motives. I don't have to pretend it's not true, self-justify, or cover up. Instead, when I am
THEJESUS | WISH! KNEW IN HIGH SCHOOL
confronted with my sin, I am free to seek forgiveness from God and others. I am also free from shame. I don't have to punish myself for my sin. Because Christ was perfect for me, God sees me as perfect. He is my righteousness.
As a teenager, I lived as if my good performance—my outward obedience and faith—earned God's blessings, like a position on the cheer squad. I looked down on others who failed to live up to my self-righteous standards (as if I were God but without any of his mercy). I failed to see my own sin.
Ironically, though I ascribed to the Christian belief that salvation comes by faith, I lived a works-based theology. This led to endless striving and the judgment of others. But the gospel I know now comes with surprising freedom. I now see myself as a sinner saved by grace. And because Jesus has freed me of my sin, I no longer need to hide, pretend, self-justify, or self-atone for my sin. I am free before God, and free to love others.
THE Jesus | WANT You To KNow My hope is that you also will experience the freedom that comes in knowing, as Tim Keller said, "we're far worse than we ever imagined, and far more loved than we could ever dream."' We don't need to be perfect; Christ is perfect for us. We don't need to hide our sin; we are forgiven.
In Christ, you have a better righteousness than anything you could ever attain on your own. In Christ alone, you are fully and forever forgiven.
DEVOTIONAL QUESTIONS
Read Romans 3:23—24.
In this passage, the apostle Paul offers a solution to our fallen nature. What is it?
The author of chapter 5 describes her feelings of superiority to others, particularly the girl who took
1. Tim Keller, Twitter Post, February 15, 2015, https://twitter.com/ timkellernyc/status/567005542770810880?lang=en.
Reputation and Righteousness
her place on the cheerleading squad. Take a minute to consider your own sinfulness. Where are you in need of repentance?
We have all "fallen short" and are in need of a Savior.
The grace given to us in Jesus allows us to both name our sin and also claim it forgiven. How can you live out this truth today?
JUSTIFICATION (noun): The two-fold process whereby a person's sins are forgiven and they, through faith, receive the perfect righteousness of Christ.
What this means for you: Because of Christ's perfect righteousness, you are now declared righteous and perfectly acceptable to God. As a result, you can feel comfortable in your own skin. There is nothing you can do to make yourself more or less worthy to God.