Felt moved to write this the other day. Sharing it here in case someone needs it.

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I have a confession: I get pretty sweary sometimes.

I try to present my authentic self online, but I admit it’s a cleaned up version of myself. My online persona is a lot closer to who I try to be offline. But it’s a lot easier to edit yourself online, and to hide your faults.

Of which I have many. Swearing is just the tip of the iceberg. I have a real anger problem. I’ve come a long way, but sometimes I have an explosive temper. I believe it’s not a sin to drink alcohol in moderation, but sometimes I overdo it. I have a problem with gluttony. I’m not a great housekeeper. I can be passive-aggressive. I have to diligently guard my heart against pride. I can get real snarky, and I have a perverse sense of humor, and a mean streak I’m not proud of.

And that’s not counting the much longer list of sinful habits I’ve managed to overcome in the twenty years since I got serious about my faith. Or all the backsliding I did before that.

Why am I sharing this?

Because I think a lot of Christian influencers get the gospel twisted around. They present a gospel of “repent and clean yourself up first and then come to Christ.” Or a gospel that says you have to look and act a certain way, or you can lose your salvation, or you were never really saved in the first place.

That’s not the gospel. The gospel is grace.

Not hyper-grace. Not grace at the expense of sanctification and striving for set-apartness.

But grace to do it imperfectly. To do it slowly. To fail, fall and get back up, over and over and over again, as many times as it takes. Grace that is full of compassion, that understands that we’re fallen and made of dust and the spirit is often willing but the flesh is so weak.

The incomparable, incomprehensible grace of a perfect Father who sees his kids struggling and messing up and instead of admonishing or punishing, uses those failures as teachable moments to help us grow up to be chips off the old block. Whose love is so deep and wide and full and unfathomable that we need the Holy Spirit to enable us to even begin to understand it.

And even then, so many of us don’t understand just how much He loves us, and how gracious and forgiving He is toward us, and as a result so many of us present to the world an angry, unloving, disapproving God who dangles salvation before us and then yanks it out from under us at the slightest transgression. But that’s not who He is.

He is for us. He’s stacked the deck in our favor. He cast our Accuser out of Heaven and replaced him with His own Son who is both our advocate and our judge, who also already paid the penalty for our failures. He gives us everything we need to succeed, and as long as there’s breath in our lungs we never run out of chances. Just as He never runs out of forgiveness.

What does he want from us, then, if he doesn’t want perfect holiness? Actually, he does want us to be perfectly holy, but that’s something He will do, not us, and He, not we, will get all the glory. He’s already done it positionally by covering us with Christ’s perfect holiness. At the resurrection, He’ll finish the job, replacing our fallen, dusty bodies with brand new ones that are completely sanctified.

But what does He desire from us in the meantime?

He wants our complete devotion, and our complete trust, and obedience that is a natural product of those things. Obedience that isn’t perfect but is born from love and a sincere desire to please Him, and trust that He is good and He loves us and knows what’s best for us.

Obedience that’s based on how good He is, not showing everyone how good we are.

None of us are good. But by His grace, we’re forgiven, we’re accepted, and we’re so very loved.