A SUCCESSFUL FAILURE 

"Under this divine system a person who has faith is now freely acquitted in the eyes of God by his generous dealing in the redemptive act of Christ Jesus… God has done this by wiping out the sins of the past… and showing in the present that God justifies every person who has faith in Jesus Christ… What happens to pride of achievement? There is no more room for it… the whole matter is now on a different plane--believing instead of achieving."  Romans 3:24-28 (selected-Phillips) 

Was Jesus a success?  He lived in a small town of no consequence.  His message was confined to a tiny segment of the population. His own chosen disciples were slow to learn, quick to doubt and easily ran away when the going got tough.  He so infuriated the religious and political powers that his days were numbered. He was arrested, tried and convicted while being abandoned by his best friends.  He suffered a humiliating, torturous death on the cross.

 Was Jesus a success?

 The answer is a resounding "Yes."  Jesus was a success because his life, ministry, death and resurrection, followed God's design, not the world's definitions.   By the world's definition he was an abject failure!  But Jesus' mind and heart were faithful to "divine things" not "human things". The divine plan was not about earthly "success" but eternal salvation. It was about personal sacrifice for the sake of the whole world, not personal gain. The divine plan called for Jesus to be obedient to the drastic steps God's love was willing to take on our behalf.

Jesus preached a different measure of success.  

• Instead of offering his disciples a "successful" ministry, he proclaimed, practiced and offered a sacrificial ministry.
• Instead of promising his followers they would always be "winners," he insisted they must learn to live with being seen by the world as "losers."
• Instead of promising security and protection he sent them out as "lambs among wolves."

I'll never forget a conversation I had with a man over a decade ago.  He was employed by a highly competitive marketing firm. He had been showing some signs of stress so I invited him to lunch to see how things were going for him. 

He said, "The way it works at my job is that when you get hired you get 100 points. When you make a mistake, you lose points. If it's a small mistake you lose one point, but if it is a big mistake, you lose three, or maybe five if it's really big. When you get down to 80 points, they fire you and hire somebody else."

Being naive in these matters, I asked him, "How do you gain points?"

With a steely gray expression of despair, he looked me right in the eye and said, "You almost can't - not unless you do something so extraordinary and so remarkable that it makes up for lost points!" 

It sounds brutal and unforgiving.  It was!  It is!  But that is the way of the world most of the time - the point system.  Out there in the world it's incredibly hard to gain any points, but so easy to lose them.  Whether it be at work, at school, peer groups, even at home we work so hard to preserve points, earn points.  The world pretty much runs on the points system.  Sometimes it is as blatant as my friend described; most of the time it is far more subtle and disguised, but nevertheless the point system is firmly entrenched.

 Think about your own life and attitude.  Think how quick you can be to deduct points from someone's life, or performance, or even friendship; and how stingy you may be at adding any points back on!

Christians are people who never lose sight of the gospel, as expressed in the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ--that no matter how many mistakes you make or sins you commit, as far as God is concerned you will never slip below "80 points" because Jesus is always re-setting your score to one hundred!