The first time I saw The Greatest Showman was during an 11 hour flight in the middle of the night. Despite the tiny airplane screen and headphones I couldn’t help but understand the craze over this movie score.
The award winning-music danced through the dark. The colourful characters owned the screen. And the motivating lyrics encompased it all, awakening my emotion, captivating my attention, stirring my heart, and inviting my voice to join in their battle cry.
I know that I deserve your love. There’s nothing I’m not worthy of. I’m not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me.
We live in a culture that constantly places an impossibly high standard of life and beauty in front of us. Subtly whispering that, if we can’t measure up, we aren’t enough.
Our hearts grasp at songs and messages like “This is Me” from The Greatest Showman because they offer a grain of hope. They tell us we don’t have to measure up to society’s standard, we can and should love ourselves because girl, we are already enough.
We have fallen from glory
“Girl you are enough” is a mantra our culture is quickly grasping onto. And it sounds so good – even Christian.
But this message couldn’t be farther from the truth of the gospel.
The gospel doesn’t tell us to love ourselves just the way we are. It tells us to deny ourselves and love others.
The Bible doesn’t teach that we are enough on our own or that we deserve the love of others and God. In reality, the Bible teaches that we have no real, lasting value or worth apart from Christ and we do not deserve God’s love.
Yes God created us with so much worth and value originally, because God is infinitely valuable and worthy and created us in His image. Before sin entered the world, we reflected and shared in God’s value and glory.
But when we sinned, we cut ourselves off from reflecting the value, worth, and glory of God. We became enemies of God and utterly empty of all that is good and valuable and lasting.
“We are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6)
If we believe that in and of ourselves we are enough to measure up to God’s perfect standard and that we deserve His love because of some value we possess, we are deceiving ourselves, denying the gospel, and walking in selfishness and pride.
Created to reflect a greater glory
Despair over our shortcomings and longing for perfection are good, God-given emotions and desires. But they are misplaced.
Because we were originally created to reflect the value, worth and surpassing glory of Jesus Christ, we all have an inner desire for that value, worth and glory to be restored to us.
But reaching within ourselves for confidence and contentment will never work. Our original glory and worth were never ours, they were always Christ’s. They can only be restored by God in Christ.
We chase after perfection in ourselves, scouring the malls, watching our diet, hitting the gym, getting buried in our textbooks, not realizing that we are utterly wretched in the sight of God. Not realizing that none of these things can restore the dead, ugly, sinfulness of our hearts.
Simultaneously, we despair over the fact that we cannot obtain lasting beauty and perfection and knowing that we can never measure up. Not realizing there is a glory that does not fade away that can be ours if we will only surrender our whole lives to Jesus.
The true gospel
“Girl, you’re enough” is not the gospel. The gospel is a much greater hope and reality.
You don’t have to be enough because Jesus already is.
We should despair of ourselves and lose all confidence in our ability to obtain enoughness. We cannot earn love and we do not deserve acceptance. The gospel begins by recognizing how far short we fall of God’s standard. And by admitting that we do not deserve His love, His sacrifice or His life.
And yet, the gospel continues with a way to gain incalculable value. It promises a way to obtain infinite worth.
The way is Jesus Christ.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.
“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence.” (Ephesians 1:3-7, emphasis added)
God desires to set us free from sin and cause us to, once again, reflect the infinite worth and value of Jesus.
It’s not because we are enough to deserve this. It’s not because we have any value that He looks on us and says “I love you.” It’s simply because He is so good. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
The truth is that we should stop chasing perfection, but not because we are already enough. We can stop chasing perfection because Jesus is already enough.
Instead of chasing perfection in ourselves, we should chase the Perfect One. He is offering to wash each of us in the blood of Jesus and clothe us in His righteousness and perfection.
Girl, Jesus is Enough
Jesus wants to fulfill and satisfy every part of you. He wants you to stop trying to be enough for yourself, for your family, for your friends.
He wants you to fall at His feet and admit that you don’t deserve His love and you can’t become enough on your own.
But fall at His feet anyway, believing that if you have Jesus, you have more than enough.