New Morning Mercies #210

Grace frees you from faking what you don’t have and boasting about what you didn’t earn.

Faking is a big part of the culture of fallen humanity. Maybe you fake it when you tell a story in such a way that it makes you way more of a hero than when the incident actually happened. Perhaps you fake it when you make your job seem more important than it really is. Maybe you fake it when you finagle your way into buying a house that is way pricier than you can responsibly afford. Maybe you fake it when you try to work your way into friendships with people who are far more affluent and positioned than you’ll ever be. Perhaps your fakery is best seen when you act as if you have much more theological understanding than you really have or are much more committed to ministry than you really are. Perhaps you fake it when you present your marriage as being far more mature and peaceful than it’s ever been. Or maybe you’re a fake when you fail to reach out for help when you are at the end of your rope as a parent. Maybe your fakery is your unwillingness to confess to the person next to you that you struggle with the same area of sin that he or she has just confessed to. Maybe your fakery is in the big boundary that you have built between your polished public persona and the messier details of your private life. Maybe you fake yourself all the time by telling yourself that you’re more righteous than you are.

Here’s the question that you need to wrestle with: “Is there someplace or some way in my life where I’m a fake?” Is there someplace where, to yourself or others, you pretend to be something that you’re not or where you boast about something you didn’t actually do? I think there are artifacts of fakery in all of our lives because there is a desire in all of our hearts to be more independently wise, righteous, and strong than we really are.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:8–9). Praise God that his grace frees all of his children from their bondage to fakery. Why is this so? God’s grace offers you what you did not earn and forgives you for the wrongs you actually did. Grace radically alters your identity and your hope. Your identity is not in what you have achieved or in what the people around you think of what you have achieved. No, as a result of grace, your identity is rooted in the achievements of another. Your hope is not based on how well you are doing, but on what Jesus has done for you. Grace invites you to be real and honest. Grace allows you to live free of false hope and the faux identity of human fakery once and for all, and to rest in the honest and stable identity you have found in Jesus and his eternal work on your behalf.

For further study and encouragement: Matthew 6:1–4