Flawlessly Loved

Anxiety may be my most consistent default mode. I at times may have called it "hyperactivity" because that makes it sound cuter and more endearing. Sometimes I may call it high strung because that points to something that happens when you have too much coffee and can therefore be blamed on external circumstances. But, I think if I'm honest, anxiety is actually fear. Its not the kind of fear like that of bears or circus clowns or El Guapo in the Three Amigos. Its that fear of not completing my to do list, of what people will think when they hear what I have to say or see the choice I've made, of not making the correct decision about something important or any number of other circumstances that are truly out of my control but about which I would indeed prefer a certain outcome.

So, apart from the Gospel my options are to toughen up, get over it or just find a good strong drug to deal with that condition. My old Pharisee might say, "the Bible says to be anxious for nothing, but you are anxious for everything...perhaps you are not really even a Christian!" or "If you would just practice this four step principle, reciting these particular verses over and over like an incantation, then you could rid yourself of this anxiety!"

1 John explains to me that perfect love, which comes from God alone, casts out all fear. This is because fear has to do with punishment (condemnation, shame, guilt, rejection, disapproval, etc.) and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are "in Christ". How can that be?
Song of Solomon depicts the Lover describing the Beloved as "flawless", when the book itself acknowledges her flaws.

But what is the consistent story of the Bible from Genesis-Revelation? From the very beginning it is that the image of God wanted to be God, and to do so without God. At that very moment, God kindly and graciously drew His people back under His care and promised to redeem them. He promises to complete the good work that He has begun. He gives us faith because even when we want to, we just can't muster it up in ourselves. He can sort through our conflicting emotions, mixed motives and blurry sight. Yet, even when the promise was given to Adam and Eve and believed by them, they and their progeny continued to live as if they had been left alone to redeem themselves.

That seems to be at the heart of my anxiety. This reflexive tendency that God has given me lots of clues and I've got to figure out the puzzle or win a scavenger hunt under the pressure of some imminent doom is the source of my anxiety. I am called a child of God not because I am choice, as Edmund Clowney says, but because I am chosen. And I am chosen not because I am flawless, but because the love of my Redeemer and effectiveness of His work on my behalf is. It is in His flawlessness that I can trust. My heart may wander hourly, my faithfulness shifts like the tide, my sight comes and goes, but His will cannot and will not be thwarted, even by my sometimes unintentional and more often very intentional flaws.

I am thankful that He has not given me His Word as a compilation of principles by which to make myself into His image by my own strength and determination but rather, He has given me Himself, the exact representation of the Father and the One in whom all the law and prophets find their fulfillment. What in the world could my to do list being completed add to that? Oh would my heart begin to find rest and safety and peace in the only one who is able to keep me from falling. He is faithful and He will do it.