About seven years ago, I had a realization that changed everything for me.
In 2017, I was on a mission trip in Hawaii and had several meaningful conversations with a friend. We talked about the Christian faith and how Jesus is the center of our lives. Like the crystal-clear waters of a Hawaiian beach, one thing became undeniably clear: the center of my spiritual universe does not revolve around me.
For over thirty years of my life, I was shaped by two meta-stories in my Adventist upbringing and education: “God is so faithful” and “Be more faithful.” This last narrative, “Be more faithful,” dominated my spiritual and experiential universe for most of my life, especially in my twenties.
I even wrote a song in my late twenties highlighting this be-more-faithful worldview. Here are a few lines from “Where Are They?”
I have often heard the stories of great men,
There was one who gathered stones laid beside the brook,
He placed one in a sling and slung it round and round,
Before you count to ten, Goliath’s tumbling down.
Where are the Davids today?
Little did she know, she would rise to the top.
A simple Jewish girl became a nation’s queen.
She saved her Jewish race from destruction and death.
We are raised like her for such a time as this.
Where are the Esthers today?
Where are the saints who keep the commandments of our God?
Where are the faithful ones who will stand though the heavens fall?
Where are they? Those who’ll stand before the kings and rulers of this world and fight for Jesus’ name.
Though many fall away, I will follow Jesus.
Though many fall away, I will follow Jesus.
Can you sense the depth in the lyrics? “Be more faithful.” While this message might sound sweet, urging us to “be faithful at all costs,” it often carries a bitterness beneath its surface.
Now, is there anything wrong with galvanizing people to be more obedient? Not at all. But to primarily build my spiritual universe on my unflinching faithfulness is a recipe for disaster. The story of the prodigal son in Luke 15 illustrates the futility of perfectionism.
Is there anything wrong with galvanizing people to be more obedient? Not at all. But to primarily build my spiritual universe on my unflinching faithfulness is a recipe for disaster.
Three ways of life
In the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32), Jesus differentiates between three vastly different ways of living.
1. Relativism (human unfaithfulness)
The younger brother in the story disrespects his father by asking him for his portion of the inheritance while his father is still alive. He is unfaithful to his father, leaves home, and wastes all his money on reckless living. What is the result of his heedless unfaithfulness? He ends up with no money in his pockets and ends up eating with pigs. He reminds us that there is no lasting joy when we live apart from God. Immorality and relativism ultimately destroy us.
2. Legalism (human faithfulness)
The younger brother comes home and his dad throws him a big party. The older brother is upset because his dad never gave him a goat for his perfect obedience and faithfulness to his father’s commands. Furiously he told his dad: “Look, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might celebrate with my friends” (Luke 15:29, NIV).
Here’s a sad twist in the story: the older brother’s careful law-keeping caused him to reject his dad. The irony is that even though he lived with his father, the older brother (like his younger brother before he came home) is separated and distant from his dad.[i] While the younger brother was lost in his recklessness, the older brother was lost in his self-righteousness.[ii] The story of the older brother teaches us that a hyper-focused obsession with our faithfulness (i.e. legalism, perfectionism, behavioralism) can unintentionally and ironically lead us to distance ourselves from God. Thus, like immorality, an overly fixated obsession with our morality can destroy us, too.
We’ve learned that an immoral way of life is futile, and a life that is primarily focused on my faithfulness is also hopeless. Is there a third and better way? Yes. It is called the gospel.
3. Gospel (God’s faithfulness)
The word “gospel,” which appears for the first time in the book of Matthew (Matt. 4:23), is the word euangelion in the Greek. Euangelion means “God’s good news to humans” and “good news as proclamation.”[iii] In the New Testament, “the word group euangelion (good news), euangelizo (proclaim good news), and euangelistes (one who proclaims good news) occurs at least 133 times.”[iv] Since the gospel is God’s good news (and not ours), the object of our faith is God, not us. The primary focus of Scripture is never about us; rather, the primary focus is about God and what He has done in and through His Son, Jesus Christ.
Back to the story of the prodigal “sons.”[v] The gospel appears in two places in the story. First, we see God’s unconditional love in the father’s love for his younger son. He receives the younger brother back with open arms. (The irony is that there was no celebration for the older, self-righteous brother.) Second, the gospel is beautifully illustrated at the beginning of the parable. Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them” (Luke 15:11, NIV). The Greek word for property is bios, by which we get the word “life.” The property was “life” for his family, the financial basis for their livelihood.
Did you catch the significance of the father’s sacrifice? “So he divided his property [bios] between them.” Not only does the father divide his property for the younger son who asks for it, but he “gives his life” to the older brother who didn’t even ask for it. Jesus, sharing this parable with the self-righteous Pharisees, was telling the hyper-focused law-keepers (who were scathing law-shamers) that He was going to give his life for both immoral and moralistic people. God is so faithful that He gives His life for all—immoral and moralistic people.
Great is His faithfulness (not mine)
From my own experience, I can attest that living apart from Jesus or obsessively focusing on following His laws both lead to a form of personal suffering. In fact, a life centered on “obedience first” can be perilous because self-righteousness operates like carbon monoxide—it’s a silent killer. I might appear virtuous on the outside by attending church, reading the Bible, returning tithes, serving the community, and sharing my faith, but inside, I can be decaying. Self-righteousness is an illusion that deceives me into thinking, ‘I’m doing all the right things, so I deserve salvation.’ Yet, this self-righteousness quietly undermines my spiritual well-being and is a source of my demise.
So, where is the best place to anchor our faith? Not in our faithfulness, that’s for sure. The hymn writer Thomas Chisholm knew where to anchor his faith:
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
as Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be.
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning, new mercies I see;
all I have needed Thy hand hath provided:
great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
So here is the best place to anchor our spiritual and experiential universe: Christ’s faithfulness as revealed by His death on Calvary.[vi] Great is Christ’s faithfulness! Not mine. How can my sacrifice compare to Christ’s sacrifice?
“And at three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ (which means ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’)” (Mark 15:34, NIV).
I might pat myself on the back for my faithfulness, but unlike Jesus, I will never know what it feels like to carry the weight of the world’s sin on my shoulders and feel eternally separated from Father. And because of His unfathomable and unconditional love, Jesus gave His life for all His unrighteous and self-righteous children. I’m thankful that God’s unconditional love (demonstrated by the coming, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus) has been the solvent that has freed me from the I-need-to-do-better-so-that-God-can-love-me myth.
Christ’s sacrifice, not mine, is the sweet reality that can turn the world right-side-up. Let’s not be like the foolish man who built his house on the sand of his self-righteous certainty. Let’s be like the wise man who built his house on the solid Rock.
[i] Timothy Keller, The Prodigal God (Penguin Books, 2011), 37. Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.
[ii] Ellen G. White, Christ’s Object Lessons (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1900), 207. Ellen White writes about this predicament: “When he should have found an abiding joy in his father’s presence, his mind has rested upon the profit to accrue from his circumspect life. His words show that it is for this he has foregone the pleasures of sin.” The older brother was trying to find lasting joy in his faithfulness.
[iii] Frederick W. Danker, Walter Bauer, and William Arndt, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 402.
[iv] Timothy Keller, Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012), 29.
[v] Really, there are two prodigal sons. The word prodigal means “reckless.” The younger brother was reckless in his unrighteousness, but the older brother was reckless with his self-righteousness.
[vi] Ellen G. White, Letters and Manuscripts, vol. 6, Manuscript 31, 1890(Ellen G. White Estate). Retrieved from https://egwwritings.org/book/b14056. “There is one great central truth to be kept ever before the mind in the searching of the Scriptures—Christ and Him crucified. Every other truth is invested with influence and power corresponding to its relation to this theme.”