Chapter 3
Flawless Love
I don’t have to be perfect, or have the perfect life, to be loved.
For such a simple truth, my mind finds this reality a difficult one to grasp, especially in light of my experiences with other flawed human beings. Offering grace, God brings us—the broken, empty, and highly flawed—near to Him. Not because we’re worthy. Not because He needs us. And most certainly not because we’ve achieved perfection.
Underscoring how we cannot earn God’s love through human effort, Romans 3:27 says, “Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on obeying the law. It is based on faith.” Later in this same letter, Paul shows us just how different God’s standard of merit is from ours. With our skewed human view, we might be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice of love for someone we considered worthy, “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Romans 5:8).
In an exchange defying human reason, the perfection of Christ becomes our own through the ultimate gift of love: His death for ours (1 Peter 1:18–19). It was a perfect plan because He is a perfect God: “He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect. Everything he does is just and fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong; how just and upright he is!” (Deuteronomy 32:4).
No greater demonstration of love exists than to know that, in spite of our failures, God enjoys being in relationship with us. Even knowing this truth, though, we spend far too much time running from our own sense of inadequacy. We misunderstand the heart of what Christ has done for us when our constant goal becomes effort without error, a life minus any mistakes, and relationships void of any lack.
Not only is the act of pretending a wearying endeavor, but it’s difficult to love others well when we expect so much from ourselves. For some, the constant demand for perfect we place on ourselves begins to affect what we expect of others. Hard on ourselves, we become hard on others. If those we love never see us practicing the language of grace in what we expect of ourselves, our message will be marred by the weight we place on our own performance.
For others, the struggle isn’t so much rooted in expecting perfection from themselves. Rather, it’s the unrelenting need they have for life to meet their expectations—and that includes the relationships they form with those around them. Life isn’t good, and love isn’t really love, unless they’re continually satisfied. The fear of missing out on what life should be giving them, or focusing on what others appear to have, fuels their sense of inadequacy.
Knowing that the way has been made perfect through Christ’s blood, the enemy does whatever he can to convince us we are unacceptable to both God and others. Trapped in self–effort, we try harder, plan better, and persist in lying to ourselves that perfect is not only possible but necessary in order to truly feel loved. But in the midst of our mess, God persistently pursues us.
Relationships riddled with fear, especially the fear of failure or fear of missing out, serve as an indicator that “we have not fully experienced [God’s] perfect love” (1 John 4:18). First John 4:16–17 tells us, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect.” God is not shaken by my inadequacies, and He is not depending on my perfection, but I am most certainly relying on His. My relationship with Him is an invitation to rest in His complete sufficiency. Here is real love: He is perfect, and I am not.
The apostle Paul put it this way: “I don’t mean to say that I have already… reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us” (Philippians 3:12–14).
Failure will indeed come, but how we respond to it indicates the source of our confidence: if we fear failure, our hope has been misplaced. But if we see failure as means of growth, we will not fear its presence. Instead, it becomes a tool of learning through which God “makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
When we allow the Holy Spirit to change the way we think about lack or failure, we will no longer spend our energy trying to anticipate and answer every deficiency. We no longer fear the presence of our inadequacies or the absence of love. Instead, we learn to view ourselves and others from the lens of His perfection. Confident in His flawless love, the kind of love that “expels all fear,” we are set free—to love Him, ourselves, and those around us (1 John 4:18–19).
Chapter Questions:
1. How can fear be an indicator that we do not rightly understand God’s love?
2. Of the relationships in your life, which ones either knowingly or unwittingly send you the message that your acceptance is directly tied to the degree to which you can avoid failure?
3. How can the way we respond to our own imperfections demonstrate to others that they don’t have to be perfect to remain confident of our love for them?
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