Another analogy, if you will permit me. I’ve been thinking about how I would describe “the law” and how I would describe the guilt I sometimes feel for not measuring up to the person I wish to be. If you are like me (and I know that some of you are) you regularly struggle with the idea of not being good enough and are exhausted by the idea of striving towards something unobtainable. Although we know that the sinless life is impossible, that doesn’t stop us from wanting to get as close as possible, and it doesn’t stop us from feeling guilty. In fact, guilt is a sign of an impossible goal, so feeling guilty about not being perfect kind of seems to add up.
An word picture I’ve been using recently to describe the Christian life was jumping to the moon. No matter how hard you tried, you are not getting there on your own, and even though trying harder might be good to show that you seriously care about getting there, the smart thing to do would be to just get in a rocket ship and have someone else fly you there.
I’m going to tweak that picture a little bit and go with a swimming race instead.
Lets saw God created man, but because man was such a sinner, there was a separation between us. A big one. Lets say, just for kicks, that God lives in California. He said “Hey guys, you can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can either try to swim over here, or I can swim back and forth and pull you along on a rope. The choice is yours, but just to let you know, there is no way you are going to make it on your own.”
Man says “sounds like a good deal, but I don’t want to be a burden/I really want to try to do this on my own/I don’t think I deserve a free ride/I don’t honestly believe you/ I need the workout anyway, etc....
And so he decided to swim for himself.
Everyone drowned.
The thing is, even though everyone drowned, people were pretty sure that it was still doable. Maybe people had almost made it. Maybe they just needed to try a little bit harder. Maybe a little bit more training would make the difference. After all, no one really knew how big the Pacific Ocean was, and they always figured that China couldn’t be THAT far away or else God wouldn’t have asked us to swim there in the first place.
God thought this was odd, and wanted to convince everyone that they really really were going to drown if they tried to swim on their own. So he set up a swimming lane with mile markers. He gave them a path, he let them know how far they had swum so far, and even let them know how much further they had to go. The point of this was, people would hopefully realize that even the best swimmers never even made it %1 of the way there. The swimming lane was supposed to convince people to let Jesus pull them along himself instead of them trying to make the impossible swim.
And for some people it worked. Other people misinterpreted it as a death sentence “Don’t go in that swimming lane or you’ll drown. God put it there to kill us.” Although that was...somewhat true, it entirely missed the point.
Other people thought they understood the point but still weren’t able to embrace it in it’s entirety. They asked Jesus to come pull them along, but as they were being pulled along they kept trying to keep up with Jesus. They felt bad that he was doing all the hard work and wanted to be part of it too. They said “I’d feel better if I pitched in some too. After all, this guy shouldn’t have to carry me the whole way all by himself!”
But these people felt terrible. They realized pretty quickly that compared to Jesus, they were awful swimmers. And some of them felt like no matter how hard they tried, they weren’t really getting a lot better either. They felt guilty and stupid as they get dragged along like a floating log and knew that despite their best efforts they were really just weighing Jesus down. They would think to themselves “ok I’ll just try to swim really good for a mile, that will help....ok maybe a half mile....or a quarter. I can’t do anything right, why even bother trying?”
They were appalled at the idea of asking for Jesus’ help and then taking advantage of Him by completely ignoring him and doing their own thing over the course of their whole trip. They had seen people do this in the past and they thought it was awful. They didn’t want to be insincere and ungrateful deadbeats that napped or goofed off through a free ride.
But there was another alternative. There were a few people that actually enjoyed the ride. These people knew that they didn’t have to swim, but they did anyway because it was fun. They thought “This Jesus guy is pretty great, and he’s a good swimmer, I’m going to try to be like him.” But as their arms failed and their muscles got tired, instead of concentrating on their failure they just became more impressed with the man that was pulling them along, and as mile after mile passed by they said “wow, this guy is really something else... I could NEVER have done this by myself. What a cool ride! I hope this guy goes back to get my friends because I’m pretty sure we’d all be in trouble without him.” And so, when they were able, these people would swim along, not to help Jesus, not to catch up to him, but to share the journey with him, because it felt right. When these people became exhausted it was not the exhaustion of failure, but the exhaustion of a day well spent playing with friends, skiing, biking, playing basketball, or whatever your favorite activity is. Going to bed tired with muscles that are sore from fun is an entirely different feeling than going to be tired from muscles that are sore from unfinished work.
And so the point of the swimming lane, was to convince people of their own inadequacy, and to give them some type of idea, some measurement, some way that they could at least begin to grasp the glory of God and what he had done for them. It was life giving and inspiring. And every failure, every mile missed or every time one had to stop swimming, should have been a reminder of God’s power and His mercy, not another fresh indictment or reminder of guilt. For he did not put out a swimming lane to dishearten anyone, but he came so that he could bring life, and bring it abundantly.
