“…All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” – Isaiah 64:6.
As I’ve already admitted, I’m a perfectionist. My natural tendency is to try to do everything perfect. I wanted to be the perfect Christian, perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect whatever.
Several years ago, God began teaching me about grace and setting me free from all the rules I had set up for myself. I started to truly understand that a life of faith is not lived by following the rules, but by following the Spirit. I suppose the truth is that you may not even be able to tell the difference by looking from the outside of a person. Yet the difference on the inside is phenomenal.
Jesus spoke about the blindness of the “white-washed” Pharisees, claiming that the tax collectors and sinners were often more likely to repent because their sin was easy for all to recognize. The Pharisees were respected in society because they looked good on the outside, while the sinners were judged and rejected because they looked bad on the outside. Yet, to God all sin is the same and “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).
It seems to me that the “sinners” had a great advantage; they could easily see their need for God’s grace and mercy. This tends to humble you. Like the Pharisees, my perfectionist personality created a sense of pride and independence that actually, rather than being pleasing to God, as I believed, was a stumbling block.
I learned to enjoy the freedom in Christ that I was experiencing. “Whom the Son has set free will be free indeed” (John 8:36). Eventually, however, this freedom was not totally satisfying because, while I was able to understand what a Christian is not, I still could not quite grasp what a Christian really is. Furthermore, I still was not finding that intimacy with God for which I have longed since I was 15 years old.
It’s strange how you can understand something with your mind for years, and then one day God manages to get it into your heart and it comes alive. Lately, God seems to be getting through to me about things I thought I understood, and the result is that I feel like a blind woman who’s been given sight.
Long ago, I understood how simple a relationship with God is, before I complicated it. My good works are filthy rags. I don’t need to strive to win God’s approval. I don’t need to worry about tomorrow. I don’t need to achieve my own holiness (and I couldn’t if I tried; which I did). I don’t need to attain intimacy with Christ. I simply need to trust God like a little child and take one day at a time.