Do you long for your students to know the light burden and easy yoke of Christ in Matthew 11? Teach teenagers to run to Christ, to see him on the cross, and hear him declare to them: “It is finished.”
The answer then to perfectionism is not working harder but resting in Jesus’ work and worth. Our perfection—our identity and worth—is found in his. Whether or not we or our children achieve certain goals, are honored or noticed for our accomplishments, or perfectly excel at anything are not what gives us value.
It is only through identity in Christ that the “do not cheat” can be an act of loving God, not just a Christianized metric of performance and approval.
Children should work knowing their identity lies in being redeemed by a loving God, not in being the family messiah.
In justification, the God of love is pursuing his lost children, reconciling us to himself.
We may cloak it as “wanting them to do well,” but deep down we are trying to supply some inner need that was meant to be filled by Christ himself.
Grace is the source for all life lived in the kingdom of the Son of God, and it is marked by righteousness, peace, and joy instead of me and my load of stuff.
