When I Feel I Am Not Good EnoughНамуна

When I Feel I'm Not Good Enough

So were some of you

Read carefully: "Or do you not know that those who do injustice will have no part in the kingdom of God? Do not deceive yourselves: neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor deceivers, shall enter the kingdom of God. And so were some of you. But you have washed away your sins, you have been sanctified, you have been justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Corinthians 6:10-11). The sins mentioned in this passage result in immeasurable pain, brokenness, and sorrow. Despair. Self-loathing. Bitterness.

Read again the words that say: "And so were some of you. But you have washed away your sins, you have been sanctified, you have been acquitted..." (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Jesus had personal experiences of brokenness, rejection, scorn, reproach, failure, suffering, despair, and feelings of God-forsakenness. After all, it was the Master himself who cried out in "despair" on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He was rejected, ridiculed, despised and spat at by people, slapped, beaten and eventually killed. He is, so the Word teaches us, the Man of Sorrows, familiar with pain and suffering. He is the one who was pierced for us and was a failure in the eyes of the world. He is the Stone that the builders disapproved of and rejected. But God made Him the Cornerstone. Likewise, God wants to make us living stones for his building.

The God of Jacob is a God of incomprehensible grace, strange grace, irrevocable grace, for the gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of grace upon grace: Out of His abundance we have all received grace upon grace (John 1:16). He knew we would need grace upon grace.