Last week in a press conference, UGA football coach Mark Richt provided a rich gospel perspective on his life and vocation:
“I love the game of football. I love my job. I love Georgia. But what I do is not who I am,” Richt said. “I think sometimes if we become what we do, and then things aren’t going just right, then all of a sudden our entire world falls apart. I’ve got a faith in my Lord and savior Jesus Christ, and I know that God loves me and is going to take care of me. I just truly believe that. When all the games are done and all of life is lived, I know where I’ll be for eternity.”
He is right. What I do, whether good or bad, does not define who I am. The imputed righteousness of Jesus defines who I am. I have been graced. I am a forgiven, beloved Son of the Father. That is who I am.
I think a driving force for most of my life has been about trying to prove something—mainly that I am somebody. Maybe you can relate. This issue is identity, and it plays out in a thousand ways.
This kind of self-understanding may be one of the keys to living the gospel, spoken by the main character in ABC's new television series, Body of Evidence:
"Whatever you've heard about me, it's worse."
If I can consciously clothe myself in the gift-righteousness of Jesus, I can say that. Nothing left to prove or protect. Only glorying and boasting in the cross of Jesus.
Each month I attend the North Georgia New Church Network, a group of church planters and church planting coaches who meet to consult with, pray for and equip each other as missionaries to our small part of the world. During our prayer time at our last meeting, we were challenged to confess a particular fear that robs us of joy, peace and hope. My confession was the fear of failure—the fear that the church plant I am about to lead will crash and burn. But my fear really is much deeper than failure, which actually is just a fruit of a deeper root issue. I really fear what will happen to my name. My reputation. However, the gospel teaches me that in light of the cross, my name is already mud. The cross says that I have failed far worse than I think! In fact, I'm such a mess that Jesus had to live and die for my failure.
But you know, I'm okay with being a failure in the past. But I don't like having to be helpless, weak and needy now. I want to move past my own present and complete need for a Savior-Sanctifier-Empowerer. But that is what the gospel gives me. Through the sheer grace of God in Jesus, I have been given a new reputation and identity that cannot be smeared: I am an extravagantly loved, forgiven, propitiated, justified, redeemed, adopted son of the King. Knowing that gives me a radical freedom. Freedom from the judgement and penalty of sin, and freedom to pursue wild adventures that can only succeed if God allows. And so, whether the church grows to maturity, or withers and dies, either way, by sheer grace, I am an extravagantly loved, forgiven, propitiated, justified, redeemed, adopted son of the King. That's what Paul says so clearly when he writes in Romans 8, "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons..."
In the gospel, there is freedom to fail. So in these next weeks, months and years, I am pursuing the risky adventure of church planting, taking God up on his promise.
