Missing the target:
I heard it again the other day in church by a good man meaning well as he explained that mankind, left to his own devices, falls short of God’s standard of excellence. The Biblical declaration is Romans 3:23 which reads, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Today when we talk about falling short of the glory of God we tend to mince words and soften things so that we do not offend people. On Christmas Eve it was, “Everyone falls short of God’s standards,” as though meaning God has standards of excellence for everything, and because we humans are not perfect, as God is perfect, whatever we attempt in whatever field of endeavor, falls short. This is true but very misleading however, because it makes God like the red bulls eye in a target a mere 50 feet away that someone is trying to hit with a bow and arrow. He lets fly and misses three inches to the right and we call that “falling short of the glory of God” or “missing the mark/target.” That is a poor picture of what you and I and every single person who has ever lived, is living and will live does in trying to measure up to God’s standards for everything.
If we want to stick with the archery illustration, try this instead; God’s standard of perfection is like the red bulls eye in a target, but the target is 10,000 miles away. Try as we might, our greatest efforts will end up being nowhere near the target and should instead humble us! Consider that 10,000 miles is 52,800,000 feet; with that in mind, now weigh the “excellence” in being able to send the arrow a full mile, 5280 feet (which for a human being is really hard to do using a foot bow, and much less standing up), yet we are so very quick in matters of ethics and morality to look at the guy next to us, see that he sends his arrows a mere 800 feet, and quickly pat ourselves on the back because compared to him, our 1500 foot efforts look most impressive indeed! The problem however is that God does not give a rip about us comparing ourselves to others, because everything we think and say and do is always and only judged in comparison to Him.
This puts us in an awful and desperate predicament. As Paul wrote in Romans 3:20, “by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight. . . ,” meaning we cannot be good enough in our thinking, our speaking and our actions for God to accept us as we are, regardless of how kind and generous and friendly and loving and patient etc . . .we are, just like and arrow of effort that flies 1000 feet is not very impressive when the intended target was 52, 800,000 feet away. We are undone and without hope in the world unless something miraculous happens, and that is where Christ comes in, the One who alone is able to strengthen our feeble arms, lift our bows, string our arrows and hit the target every single time.
More on this to come.