I lived according to the goodness gospel for far too long. But God pursued me.<\/p>\n
He used multiple people to reveal my goodness addiction and to show me both His true nature and the truth of what He had done for me at the cross. He used my husband most of all.<\/p>\n
About a year into our marriage, Kyle and I got into a life-changing fight. I snapped at him about something trivial, and instead of snapping back, he just calmly left the room. As soon as he left, I felt ashamed. Why had I gotten so angry about something of such small consequence? Why would I choose to hurt my husband like that? With my tail between my legs, I went to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d I said, pleading with my eyes for him to release me of what I\u2019d done.<\/p>\n
\u201cI forgive you,\u201d he said, and he meant it. He actually smiled as he said it.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s it? I thought. No penance required, no pouting, no silent treatment, no dumping on of shame, nothing? It\u2019s just forgiven that easily?<\/p>\n
My eyes must have revealed my uncertainty because he reached out for my hand and pulled me to his lap. Then he wrapped his arms around me, looked me in the eyes and reiterated, \u201cI forgive you. I love you, Christine.\u201d<\/p>\n
As we embraced, the Lord whispered to my heart deaf to true forgiveness and grace. I don\u2019t keep a record of wrongs or hold your sin over your head. When you confess something to me, I forgive you. I delight in you.<\/p>\n
God, through the book of Galatians, had begun showing me how little I truly understood of the Gospel. Instead of the true Gospel, I was living by what the apostle Paul called the \u201cperverted\u201d gospel, one of works and dead religion. My heart and mind were starting to wake up to the truth because my husband had become a pastor, and our new ministry life was shining a bright light on my self-sufficiency and attempts at self-justification. I could not meet ministry\u2019s demands — and I certainly could not love according to bootstrap religion.<\/p>\n
The beacon of light, simultaneously convicting and life-giving, was Galatians 5:4: \u201cYou have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law.\u201d That is exactly how I felt — like an outsider standing apart from Christ, nose plastered to the glass, trying desperately to earn my belonging. At the same time, I rejected any of Christ\u2019s advances toward me out of shame over my failures and out of my stubborn self-determination.<\/p>\n
This passage described how I\u2019d felt most of my Christian life: entangled, weighed down under a heavy yoke, in bondage, in debt and, most of all, as if I were estranged from Christ. It also showed me why I felt that way: my obsession with goodness had nullified Christ\u2019s work in my life. Because I hadn\u2019t gone His way, I was on my own.<\/p>\n
But He eventually got to me. He showed me that I sat in a jail cell with an open door but kept putting the chains back on myself instead of running free. He walked alongside me as I discovered the futility of trying to be good by myself, and He offered to rescue me, showing me what measure of grace He had already given me at the cross and at the moment I believed.<\/p>\n
In time I realized that He loved me, not because of what I did but because of what He did through Christ on the cross. I finally ran wildly to His grace-filled arms, done with my chains. What had always felt like duty and obligation now felt like crazy freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I lived according to the goodness gospel for far too long. But God pursued me. He used multiple people to reveal my goodness addiction and to show me both His true nature and the truth of what He had done for me at the cross. He used my husband most of all. About a year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3813,527,2648],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}