I love sports. I always have. Throughout the years, I’ve participated in several sports in many ways. I’ve been a player, a coach, and an armchair observer and analyst. I even helped organize and manage a paper football league and a bicycle racing club in my younger days. As you can see, I enjoyed the competition.
But there is more to it than just the competition. I also like how sports can be a great reflection on life. One of the ways that it reflects life is that one’s level of success is based almost solely on one’s performance. If you think about it, almost all of life is performance-based. From our school years through our working years, the rewards we get are often based on how well we perform.
Some people think that that is the way God is too. They believe he judges us based on our performance. In other words, how well we follow God’s law and how obedient we are to his commandments determines our eternal destiny.
If that is the case, then what is the standard? How obedient would we have to be? At what point do we cross the line from being good enough to be accepted by God to being bad enough to be rejected?
According to what is written in the Bible, the standard would seem to be perfection. In his famous Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called for those in attendance to be perfect just as God is perfect (Matthew 5:48). James said, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it (James 2:10).” And in Deuteronomy 28, we read that the nation of Israel would be blessed if they fully obeyed God and carefully followed all his commandments and would be cursed if they didn’t.
Talk about an impossible standard. If that is what would be required, what hope would there be for anyone? I mean, think about it. Even Adam and Eve couldn’t fully obey God and carefully follow his commandments, and they only had one that they had to follow – don’t eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
If Adam and Eve failed with one, what chance would we have to follow over 600 commands in the Law of Moses that are found in the first five books of the Bible? We don’t even do well with just the ten that were written on stone tablets. As Paul wrote, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).”
So then what hope do we have? Our hope is found in the fact that our performance is not the standard that God applies. As we learn from Paul, it is not by our works, or our performance, that we are saved (Ephesians 2:9). Instead, it is by God’s grace that we have been saved, through faith in Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:8). God’s grace and our salvation are a gift from God. We did nothing to earn it or deserve it. We would be lost without God’s magnificent grace. And that is why his grace is absolutely essential.
