New Morning Mercies #319

We dream of having perfect relationships, but in reality, relationships are messy. God has mercy for that mess.

I have been married for many years. I have a wonderful wife (I have hoped for years that she won’t realize what a bad deal she got!). From a distance, you would conclude that we basically have a problem-free marriage. But our relationship is still messy. We typically spend Mondays together. We love these days and enjoy the ability to spend them with one another. But somewhere in the middle of one recent Monday, a misunderstanding erupted between us. We both got a bit defensive. The tension was obvious. Too much silence followed until we asked one another’s forgiveness. “Too minor to worry about,” you say, but these are the moments we live in.

I tell people all the time that we don’t just live in big, important moments. We make only a few grand decisions in our entire lives. Most of us won’t have a biography written about us. After we die, most of our personal history will die with us, forgotten. We live in little moments, so the character of our relationships is not set in three or four big moments, but in ten thousand little moments of life. What do the little moments of your relationships look like? How are you dealing with the messiness that lives there?

The reality is that you and I have never had a relationship in our lives that hasn’t disappointed us in some way. Why is this so universally true? It is true because we all carry into each of our relationships something that is destructive to them. It is something that produces antisocial instincts in all of us. It’s something that can make us impatient, self-serving, irritable, proud, critical, and demanding. This relationally destructive thing is sin. Second Corinthians 5:15 tells us that Jesus came so that “those who live might no longer live for themselves.” Yes, it is true—the DNA of sin is selfishness. It causes us all to be far too self-focused and self-absorbed. It reduces the field of our normal concern down to our wants, our needs, and our feelings. It makes us all too entitled and all too demanding. It causes us to be quicker to mete out judgment than to extend mercy. It makes us unwilling to overlook minor offenses. It makes us hold onto what we should have long since forgiven. It makes us self-righteously defensive instead of being ready to confess. The mess of relationships is the mess of sin.

Admitting that the mess of relationships is the mess of sin is a major step toward hope. It is the very “me-ism” of sin from which Jesus came to deliver us by his life, death, and resurrection. This means there is grace for every messy moment. You enter into that grace by admitting just how much you need it.

For further study and encouragement: Ephesians 4:17–32