Art for Jesus - in Japan

The "perfection" of the New Testament is spoken in terms of faith and love. Not sinlessness. Sin isn't good and we've got to ask for His help getting rid of it in our lives, but the gospel is not about sin-management... and if we make the gospel just about that, we'll keep fighting a losing battle while trying to appear holier and happier -- and the world sees right through that (often a lot clearer than we do).

A lot of us Christians (likely most of us) still look at "grace" as a path to keeping the law -- that "faith" came in order to help us obey the tutor better, so to speak. Hey, I fall into this thinking naturally, too, by the way! We don't realize that our message is not perfection or some magic way to be perfect. Our message is not that the Spirit will indwell us for the purpose of making us law-keepers. Instead our message is grace. Our message is that Christ has done it for us already! And now, as children of God, we can be free to grow up looking up to Daddy, growing up as His child.

The perfection of the gospel is a perfection of faith -- of trusting in God no matter what -- and a perfection of love -- of letting Him love through us and choosing His love instead of choosing what we rationalize as being "justice" for ourselves. What speaks best to the unbelieving world is those very two things -- faith and love -- because it is in these two things that they've got huge holes in their hearts. These are things that the world cannot give, but that can only be found in God.

And, often these things come out best through the cracks of our weaknesses, our trials, our tribulations, our brokennesses, our "falls from grace", so to speak. We try to cover up our weaknesses and present what we think are our "strengths" to the world (our good behavior, etc.). But our "strengths" aren't really strengths, so the world sees our frequent failures and shakes its head or gets a good laugh at our expense. In contrast, Paul boasted of his weaknesses and thus proclaimed Christ's strength.

In Christianity we try to draw these "perfect pictures" of the Bible and paradise which are meant to be inspiring, but often they simply feel lifeless, dead, and uninspiring. I think we should paint our weaknesses and brokennesses more. Like David's psalms. A lot of folks in the world can, do, and will relate to that better.