Remember when you were a kid and you got your report card? And you had to take it home and get your parents to sign it? The teacher would hand out envelopes with your name on the top, and in it was this thin piece of paper (sometimes white, sometimes blue), containing all your subjects for the year, your behavior, your social adaptability, and, gulp, comments from the teacher, and next to each subject was a handwritten letter or number denoting how you fared that report period. Sometimes it would just be an "S" for satisfactory, or "N" for needs improvement; later on, the grades would change to a scale--1 through 4, or A through F--a scale rating you on your performance compared to the rest of the class. School was always easy for me, so anything less than an A+ would make my knees knock as I handed the report card over to my father to review--he knew my capabilities, and held me to a high standard. I would bask in his praise, and vow to work as hard as I could to maintain those straight As, or eliminate anything less than perfection.
Report cards and grading scales permeate our daily life--sports teams and cheerleader squads are denoted as "A" or "B" teams, and everything from stocks, insurance, food, movies and construction materials are rated and graded. Little wonder we humans grade ourselves. The problem with grading ourselves, though, is we grade ourselves on our human scale, in human terms. No, let's be more specific, more on point--I grade MYSELF. Constantly. I compare my actions, my thoughts, my responses, pretty much everything, to the WORLD's standard of what is acceptable. And then, even if I use the correct yardstick to measure myself, i.e. the Bible, I look at myself through some distorted lenses and see myself how I was, before I became a new creation in Christ. I am perpetually trying to improve, to get the best grade, to bring home that report card of all As, but I always fall short. I fail...sometimes a little, sometimes miserably...but I can guarantee you, I will always fail. I will always fall short.
I go to my God in prayer, in supplication, in a panic sometimes, holding out my report card for the day, or the week, or my lifetime, and I am ashamed. Instead of all As, all I see is my failures--Ds and Fs and lots of checkmarks for "needing improvement." I am despondent. I will never be good enough to spend eternity with Him.
Except for God's grace.
Because almost 2000 years ago, on Good Friday, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to the cross, holding all our report cards. All of our sins, our well meaning intentions, our failures, our paltry attempts at holiness, all of it...loaded on the cross, in the thorns that pierced his brow, the stripes he bore. He took it ALL, and covered us with HIS grace, HIS perfection, HIS report card of straight As.
And THAT, my friend, is what God sees when we look up at him and he looks back at us. He sees the perfection that is His Son, because Christ took our sins, and, get this, SEPARATED himself from His Father, because God cannot even look at sin. He redeemed us, we are justified, and report cards just do not matter any more.
What an awesome, awe-inspiring feeling! To know for certain that God sees only His perfect Son when He sees me. What a beautiful thing, this amazing grace. That saved a wretch like me.
"For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5:21)
P.S. Thanks, Brian, for putting this analogy in my head!
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