The Christian life can easily become a list of tasks to accomplish, boxes to check, and making sure we’re living up to a certain standard that may or may not be a true requirement of the Christian life. It doesn’t help that we live in a society and culture where performance and being driven are valued so highly. That type of thinking is so prevalent and pervasive that it can find its way into Christianity as well. It’s easy for us to complicate the message and meaning of Christianity if we’re not careful to remember what defines Christianity at its core. Christianity can quickly become about what you do for God rather than what God has done for you.
1 John 4 was such an encouragement for me this week because I can easily get lost in the discouragement of not performing well enough as a Christian. Sometimes I use my own success or failures as a Christian to gauge if I’m doing it right or doing enough, but that’s not the message of Christianity. When we focus on what we do for God (or don’t), when we focus on our abilities or inabilities, when we focus solely on ourselves, we lose sight of where our strength and power comes from. And we lose sight of the reason why we’re accepted by God in the first place.
1 John 4:10 says, “This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.“ Our focus should always remain on the One who loved us first, on the One who did everything for us so that we could belong to a family. At the end of every day, whether or not we did it all right, whether or not we accomplished everything we needed to, whether or not you lived up to the standards you set for yourself, we can always be confident of one thing: God’s love for us doesn’t depend on anything we do or don’t do. God’s love is unconditional. And we can trust that God’s love is enough for us to feel accepted, valued, and secure.
