It can be confusing, this Gospel of wild grace. I think that’s why Paul goes to such great lengths to attempt to explain it in the book of Romans.

And despite all we have at our fingertips in the Bible, we still ask ourselves: but if God will still love me the same whether I sin or don’t sin, why does my sin matter?

I stopped asking this question when I had a child, because having a child answers about half as many questions as it brings up, and this is one of those questions it answers. You don’t wonder any longer how God can love us and hate our sin when your anger burns hot and sudden against your toddler deliberately doing something unsafe. You don’t wonder how God can hate our sin and yet love us completely when you see the utter helplessness of your DNA curled up against your chest, then holding his head up, then feeding himself, walking, running . . . you don’t wonder because you know what it is like to love somebody that you had a hand in making.

But even though I feel like I understand, I know that this is only a vague glimpse into how God loves us because my love for Littlefoot is limited by the amount of love I have for my own DNA. I see pieces of myself in him, pieces that aren’t sin but that I don’t like, and I have to learn to love those pieces too. When God sees His image in us, that image is utterly perfect. There is no struggle for Him to accept any part of us that reflects Him, and that is all He sees. Because of Jesus’ labor on the cross, we are born again as entirely His.

The life we now live here, in this body that’s decaying, is a process of becoming more and more transformed into the person that God already sees us to be. God is not limited by time and space; He is not ignorant of our sin, but in the eyes of God our sin has already been dealt with even as we are in the midst of sinning. And this is why it is so wildly inappropriate for us to consider “getting away” with sin.

Our obsession needs to be Christ and Him alone. Our behavior falls in line when we seek Him. And this is why I love Philippians Chapter 3, because nearly two years ago I finally understood what it was saying and things have never been the same since. The weight of guilt was eradicated; the obsession with my own goodness was turned upside down. I could finally see this for what it was: pride. For years I claimed to understand that my pity-parties were rooted in pride; I said I knew that low self-esteem was just pride dressed up in rags. Yet I continued to pursue a form of godliness while denying its power. I lived in defeat. I was seeking to be good enough for God, and in so doing was declaring that God had not already made me good enough for Him. What a lie.

I can’t say it’s easy, living by faith, but it is not complicated. Trust and obey. Put Christ first. All the rest sorts itself out.