Am I Good Enough?

Have you ever looked at yourself and thought, “I should be better than this”?

I have. And, to be honest, I’m often right.

We know ourselves really well. We know where we fall short. We know when we are too busy to do the things that really matter, but then we look back at the day (or week, or month) and see how much time we actually spent doing things less important. We could have been playing with our kids, but we were clocking in from home to check e-mails or plan tomorrow’s meeting. We could have been reading something to grow ourselves, but we binge-watched Netflix instead. We could have had quiet time and rest, but instead we scrolled relentlessly through Facebook and Instagram every five minutes.

We know when we’ve handled situations wrong. We know when we’ve lost our cool with people where we should have been patient. We know when we let our loved ones down, even if we didn’t mean to. We know when we’re falling behind in our goals, even if everybody else thinks we’re doing amazing (even if we really are!). We know when we’ve made moral failures and we know the pain we’ve caused.

So, with all that inside knowledge of where we’re falling short, we can tend to be pretty unhappy with ourselves. And if we aren’t even pleased with ourselves, it can be pretty easy to wonder how God could be pleased with us.

If I’m not even good enough for myself, how could I ever be good enough for God?

Ephesians 2:4-5,8-9 says, “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love that He had for us, made us alive with the Messiah even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by Grace! For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift — not from works, so that no one can boast.”

I love this because it teaches us two things.

First, it teaches that God loves us in the midst of our mistakes. The verse says that he made us alive even though we were dead in trespasses. That means that even though we were falling short, which brings darkness, chaos, drama, less-than-the-best — death — into our lives, He still loved us. If you are Christian, you believe that giving place to these death-bringing things in our lives actually alienates us from God, and they are actions punishable by God. While we deserved punishment, God instead gave us pardon. He did so in Christ. And He did so because of His love for us.

Second, the passage teaches that our question should not be, “Am I good enough?” but should be, “Is Christ good enough?” And the answer is, “Yes.” If it is by grace, as a result of God’s own love, not from any action that we’ve done that God has removed us from death and brought us to life, then any amount of failure, shortcoming, missing the mark, or death that we may find ourselves in does not disqualify us from His love. Our actions may deserve punishment, but Christ took that punishment on Himself so that we don’t have to pay the penalty ourselves. When we question whether or not God’s love is still there for us, we’re actually asking if Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is powerful enough to pay the penalty for us; we are actually trying to earn something that was only given as a gift, unable to be earned.

I believe we should be reflective. We should look at our lives and recognize where we fall short, and we should absolutely do our best to remedy those failures. We should strive to do our best with every opportunity, we should strive for moral excellence, we should strive to bring life and not death to the people around us. We should strive to please God. But I also believe we have to remember that we don’t earn God’s love. He loves us because He is Love. He created us to walk with us. When we decided we would rather live our own way, and when we make this same decision multiple times a day through little decisions and actions that are less than loving, less than generous, less than our best, He still initiated love by sending Christ to bring us out of that death and into life.

We have to know that we can do better, and we have an obligation to strive to do so. But we also have to know that God’s love for us is not based on the question, “Am I good enough?” It is only based on the question, “Is Christ good enough?” And the answer to that question, thankfully, is a resounding, “Yes!”