A Perfect Score

The other night I was watching the Olympics. The men’s super giant slalom, a part of alpine skiing, was on. The sport basically combines the speed of downhill skiing with the technical turning of the giant slalom. There are a series of gates that the athletes must pass through as they try to make it down the hill as fast as possible. The skiers race down the hill at incredible speeds as they try to win the gold medal. I was amazed at how close the competition was. In fact, the American skier who won the silver medal had a total time only four one-hundredths of a second longer than the Austrian who won and only beat the Norwegian bronze medalist by forty-two hundredths of a second. Those are incredibly close scores!

As I was thinking about it, I started thinking about another prize we are striving for. It’s not an olympic medal but rather the gift of eternal life and a future of dwelling with God! But, much like the Olympics, a little mistake could cost us everything. Even a sin as small as a four hundredth second delay could keep us out of heaven. That seems discouraging, since the Bible tells us that every one of us has sinned. But it doesn’t stop there! “Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life” (Romans 5:18). Paul, of course, is talking about the death of Jesus through which His perfect life was imputed to us. Because of His death, our score doesn’t count anymore, whether it was 4 hundredths of a second or 4 minutes off. Through Him, we have a perfect score and can win the prize set before us. Won’t you accept that free gift today?