Good News for Weary Women (part 1)featured

This is a series of highlights from Elyse Fitzpatrick’s Good News for Weary Women. Post #1 is below, see #2 here, and #3 here.

As women, we are bombarded with messages competing for space in our hearts and minds. While the billion dollar self-help industry offers just two, five, ten, or thirty-seven steps to be beautiful, snag a husband, or raise obedient children, we need to look no further than Facebook or Instagram to be reminded of our failures to breastfeed, baby-wear, serve 100% made-from-scratch, locally-sourced, organic food, and provide our children or our friends with Pinterest-inspired parties. We read blog posts by well-meaning Christian women who remind us of the many ways we fail to live up to “Biblical Womanhood.” We read the latest research and realize we’ve been poisoning our children with tylenol or spray sunscreen. And we fall into bed at night exhausted, worn down, and weary.

In her book, Good News for Weary Women, Elyse Fitzpatrick (EF) offers a breath of fresh air for those of us who are tired of the day-in-day-out reminders of our “Not Enough-ness.” Echoing Jesus’s words in Matthew 11, she calls women to “Come to [Him], all who labor and are heavy laden, and [He] will give you rest” (v. 28).

Rules, Rules, and More Rules
The difficulty is, we love rules. We are like the Pharisees in Jesus’ day who accused Jesus of breaking the Sabbath by healing a man with a withered hand (Mark 3:1-6). God’s law did not forbid healing on the Sabbath, but the Pharisees added their own rules to Sabbath-keeping. Their rules made them feel extra-special-holy because they were going above and beyond what God had decreed. But Jesus did not praise their extra-special-holiness. No, he condemned them and warned others to beware of them (Mark 12:38-40).

EF gives a few examples of the ways we do this to ourselves and to each other:

Single women are made to feel that they are “less than” other women; women who are gifted for a career are made to feel that college or a career is a waste of time and that these women are resisting “God’s best” for them. Women whose interests, giftings, and opportunities do not fit the mold of post-industrial-revolution suburbia are disdained by other women who have been gifted with husbands, fruitful uteruses, and inclinations that better portray what has been elevated to the greatest expression of godliness for a woman: the stay-at-home mom. And stay-at-home moms are weighted with additional pressures: it’s not enough to be home; they must also serve on every committee, live in a perfectly decorated (and always clean) house, and have perfectly behaved children. (14)

It is not that all advice is bad. EF expresses gratitude for the advice she has received throughout her life (69). We see in Titus instruction for the older women to teach the younger women what is good, including practical counsel and principles of biblical womanhood (2:3-5). It is to our benefit to receive instruction from others in order to gain wisdom (Prov. 19:20). But when we elevate each other’s advice to the level of Scriptural mandate when there is actually room for Christian freedom, or when we promise each other favor with God as a result, we do each other great harm (47-48).

Longing to Be Okay
So why do we heap rules upon ourselves and each other? Martin Luther wrote that “we seek more laws to satisfy our conscience” (69). We all long to feel okay. This “okay-ness” in Biblical terms is justification (41). We want to be justified before God. We want to prove ourselves worthy of his love and smile. So we make a list and start on Monday and think, this time I’m going to stick to it! And maybe we do for a little while (and we feel quite proud of ourselves). But then we fail, once again, and fall into despair until the next set of rules comes along for us to try.

We think adding to God’s commands will make them easier to obey, but that is never the case. Even when we are trying to keep God’s commands without any of our own additions, if we are doing so out of an effort to prove ourselves to God it will only result in pride or despair. The law was never meant to produce obedience in us (Romans 3:20) but rather was “given for one primary reason: to make it clear to our hard, proud, and all-too-confident hearts that we can’t do it” (68).*

But–praise God!–that is not the end of the story. He did not leave us to keep trying harder with something that couldn’t get the job done. No, “God has done what the law…could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin the the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Romans 8:3-4). Even with our best efforts and extra rule-keeping, we could never justify ourselves before God. But He did it for us when, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).

Remembering this good news of the Gospel is the only way to put an end to the endless cycle of self-justification. The truth is, because of Christ:

We really are okay right now–and more okay than we could have hoped or imagined. We are okay before God, the One who sees us as we really are. We are okay because He has made us completely okay, completely forgiven, completely righteous. He has justified us and has done so because He loves us. We don’t have to try to justify ourselves anymore. We don’t have to try to make Him smile. He is already smiling. There is nothing more we need to make up for or prove or demand. We’ve been given everything our souls ever needed in Christ–and not because we earned it or because we were really good. It’s because He is really good. (42)

The Law in its Place
When we let the law do its work to expose our inability to obey, we stop looking inward to find the strength to try harder or do better. Instead, we are forced to look outside of ourselves to the only true source of help and hope, the Son of God who kept the law perfectly in our place. Ironically, when we look away from the thing we’re trying so hard to obey and look to Christ, who perfectly obeyed in our place, the law serves “to make us grateful for Christ’s perfect keeping of the law in our place…[and] to show us what grateful obedience and love for God and our neighbor should look like” (68).

When we obey God’s law out of gratitude for all that He has given us in Christ, we do not have to despair at our inevitable failures. Instead, we remember that we have a great high priest, Jesus, who sympathizes with our weaknesses because “in every respect [he] has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” And his record of obedience is ours! So, then, “with confidence [we] draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14-16).

Further, when we examine God’s law in light of the freedom we have in Christ, we can weigh advice carefully and “learn to recognize laws that have been made too broad or multiplied too specifically” (69). We can “iron those shirts…or don’t! Eat acai berry-laced gluten-free pancakes…or don’t. Get up at 4:17 a.m. to do your devotions…or don’t. The Lord has given you the freedom to seek to serve Him in whatever way He has wired you to.” (69). So we can repent of our attempts to earn our righteousness and rest in the righteousness of Another.

Remember the Gospel
The only way to obey from a heart filled with gratitude for all that Christ has done is to “let the [message] of Christ dwell in [us] richly” (Col. 3:16). Dear sisters, we must remember the Gospel. “We are already loved, already perfected, already approved of, already justified” (160).

If you are feeling weary under the weight of all that is expected of you–by yourself or by others, EF offers good news: “You don’t have to do anything more than believe the gospel for God to smile upon you. You already have His blessing, His protection, His grace, and the promise of deep peace. It’s all yours already. You can rest from your labor.” (181)

Footnote
*There are varying interpretations on the role of New Testament commands in motivating obedience. While I may differ from EF on some points, I would agree that any attempts to obey out of a desire to justify ourselves will only prove futile. Imperatives (commands) in the New Testament always flow out of indicatives (what Christ has already done).