If there is one thing that I’m good at, it’s failing. And I am quite sure that I am not alone in this skill. The entire human race specializes in failing. Everything from the most minuscule detail, to really important things we continually drop the ball on. For some it seems we can never get it right. We are constantly glitching out every step of the way.<\/p>\n
Some of us, exhausted from our failing, readily admit it. We’re tired of being screw-ups. Others of us aren’t as easily ready to admit that we suck at life. Whether you show it or put on some facade that you’ve got it all together, the fact remains that we people are perpetual failures. We simply don’t live up to the standards. We fall devastatingly short of society’s demand for perfection and greatness and are continually frustrated with the fact that we can never even be good enough to make ourselves satisfied with our effort, let alone our loved ones we continually let down. Let’s not even talk about God’s standards; we can’t even hold a candle to that.<\/p>\n
So basically there’s two options for failures. Trying harder and doing better isn’t an option. Because if we’re honest no matter how hard we try and no matter how much we improve, we never improve enough. So option one is to fake it. Just put on a mask and act like you’ve got it all together. Of course, everyone will know you’re a liar and that you’re really a big mess inside, but at least you appear nice and tidy. Since faking never fixes the problem the next option is just to embrace our failures. However, that doesn’t really work either. Embracing your failures doesn’t keep you from failing and it doesn’t fix you. You just end up looking proud of sucking.<\/p>\n
Since all of our options are terrible options that don’t help anything, let me suggest a third option. Repent and believe the gospel. Many of us seem to have this idea that we have to have it all together – not so. The gospel is for those who don’t have it all together. The gospel is for failures. The greatest news is that God outed us at the cross. At the cross God declared that the entire human race is a bunch failures, crackpots, and screw-ups; and that we would need a rescuer, a redeemer, a savior – Jesus. Jesus came to save losers. Jesus died to save failures, crackpots, and screw-ups. Jesus succeeded in every part of life that we failed, for us.<\/p>\n
God doesn’t just embrace us when we succeed and get it right. God doesn’t love us more when we do really good. The cross pronounced that God has loved us intensely in the midst of our mess ups and He proved it by killing His Son for our failures. Christ became our failures and gave us His perfection.<\/p>\n
God has loved us intensely in the midst of our mess, and He has loved us intentionally to get us out of our mess. God doesn’t just blindly love us in our mess. That’s not the message the cross sends. The cross says that God loves us despite of our failings and Jesus is in the process of rescuing us from them. God doesn’t leave us to fail. He’s making us better.<\/p>\n
One day all of our failings will be done away with and we will stand perfected in the presence of the only perfect One who has perfected us. One day there will be no more failing because Christ has triumphed over our failures.<\/p>\n
“Try harder, do better, believe in yourself, you can do it” is not the gospel. It’s a recipe for disaster. It’s a self-help, self righteous rejection of Christ and His righteousness.<\/p>\n
You’re a failure, you can’t do it, Jesus is perfect for you, He can do it. Repent and believe upon Christ. Denounce your own shallow righteousness and cling to the coat tail of Christ’s righteousness.<\/p>\n
If you’re a failure, the gospel is for you.<\/p>\n
The gospel is for failures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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San Antonio put up a 67-15 record over the course of the season that included a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Sports"","block_context":{"text":"Sports","link":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/category\/sports\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1034,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/million-dollar-gospel\/","url_meta":{"origin":448,"position":2},"title":"Million Dollar Gospel","author":"Joshua Jenkins","date":"June 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 The movie, Million Dollar Arm, is one of my top five favorite baseball movies. I recently re-watched the movie for the first time in a while. As I re-watched the film, I caught on to a few details that I had overlooked before. Primarily, I noticed two little quotes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Film"","block_context":{"text":"Film","link":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/category\/film\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":470,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/book-review-onward-by-russell-moore\/","url_meta":{"origin":448,"position":3},"title":"Book Review: Onward by Russell Moore","author":"Joshua Jenkins","date":"November 17, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The Bible Belt is teetering toward collapse, and I say let it fall.\" You cannot even escape the introduction to Russell Moore's,\u00a0Onward\u00a0without hearing canon blasts of gospel truth. This book takes on the nature of the gospel in the sense that the gospel is both offensive and life giving.\u00a0Onward\u00a0is chalked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"book\"","block_context":{"text":"book","link":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/tag\/book\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2015\/11\/onward-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2015\/11\/onward-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2015\/11\/onward-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2015\/11\/onward-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2015\/11\/onward-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":752,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/god-only-saves-by-grace\/","url_meta":{"origin":448,"position":4},"title":"God Only Saves By Grace","author":"Joshua Jenkins","date":"February 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The gospel is an unrelenting assault on graceless religion, on all the ways we try to avoid grace.\" + Scotty Smith As I read this quote from the commentary notes in the Gospel Transformation Bible, the grace of God struck me upside the head. Christianity is the only religion where\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"by\"","block_context":{"text":"by","link":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/tag\/by\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":465,"url":"https:\/\/themajestysmen.com\/joshuajenkins\/book-review-the-story-of-everything-by-jared-c-wilson\/","url_meta":{"origin":448,"position":5},"title":"Book Review: The Story of Everything by Jared C. Wilson","author":"Joshua Jenkins","date":"November 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently listened to a lecture where the professor noted that only 9% of professing Christians live their lives according to a biblical worldview. While I am not sure on the complete accuracy of the statistic, I am sure that it is not far off. This is an epidemic. 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