Thursday, February 6

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Oh, that my actions would consistently reflect your decrees! Then I will not be ashamed when I compare my life with your commands.

—Psalm 119:5-6

Let’s just say for a moment that the standard for getting into heaven is being able to long-jump all the way across the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. (It’s not, of course, but just humor me for a moment here.) Imagine that the standard has been set, and everyone knows the expectation. Some people train for this moment from early childhood, building their muscles and doing exercises to improve their jumping abilities. Some athletic types are inherently better suited for the event than others. And some people have longer legs, giving them an inborn advantage over their peers.

When it comes time to jump, however, no one could ever come close. Maybe the person with short legs who hadn’t trained at all would make it a few feet. Perhaps the person with the strong quads would make it a foot farther than the average person. And maybe the Olympic long jumper would set a world record, launching his body a whopping 29 ½ feet.

But do you know what? It wouldn’t matter, because none of them would come anywhere near the goal. None of them would get far enough to even see the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, let alone jump there. Even if one person jumped three times as far as everyone else, they would all be so far from the target that the difference would be practically indiscernible. Whether you made it one foot across the ocean or 30, the more important issue is the thousands of nautical miles you have yet to go.

Now obviously, the standard for reaching heaven has nothing to do with crossing the ocean in a single bound. But the measure is something equally as impossible. The standard for entering a perfect heaven in the presence of a perfect God is perfection—that is, perfect obedience to all of God’s commands. With that as the mark, we are all sunk—whether we’ve been training to obey God’s commands our whole lives or whether this is new for us; whether we’ve been trying hard to live up to perfection or whether we gave up long ago.

No matter who we are or how hard we try, we’ll never attain perfection. Because here’s the thing: the standard isn’t how we measure up to other people; the standard is how we measure up to perfection. It’s not enough to say, “Hey, at least I’ve never killed anyone” or “At least I’m a better person than my next-door neighbor.” The better question is how we measure up to God’s perfect laws.

But there is good news for all of us who know we can never make the jump to perfection: God sent his perfect Son, Jesus Christ, to be the bridge from us to God. Because of him, we no longer have to strive and strain in an attempt to make our way to him. Instead, God searches after us and makes us worthy of his perfect standard—not because of our effort or training or inherent goodness, but because he gives us his perfection.

That is good news for all of us, no matter what how far we’d make it in the standing long jump.

Do you tend to think of obedience in relation to how you measure up to other people or how you measure up to God’s standards? In what ways does your perspective need to change?

—Stephanie Rische