I Have No Idea If I Am Doing This Right

Everyone else in that playground appears to have been given a manual.

They seem to know things. There is a woman who mentions something in passing that you have never heard of, and a man who says a sentence to his child that you would never have thought of, and you go home and add both of them to a list that has been growing for about six years.

And underneath all of it is a question that never gets answered and never goes away: am I doing this right.

Now I want to tell you what this article is going to refuse to do, and it is going to feel like a refusal, and it is deliberate.

I am not going to tell you what right looks like. Not a definition, not five principles, not a warm reassuring version of a standard. Because if I answer the question, I have handed you a new exam with slightly different questions on it, and by next Tuesday you will be failing that one instead.

The relief here is not a better mark. It is the removal of the paper.

There is therefore now no condemnation

There is a sentence at the top of Romans 8 that arrives after several chapters of the most exhausting argument in the New Testament, and it lands like a door opening.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1, King James Version)

No condemnation.

Not: reduced condemnation. Not: a fairer assessment. Not: a lower pass mark that you can actually reach.

None. The verdict is not pending, it is not being calculated somewhere, and it is not going to be delivered later when the children are grown and the results come in.

And notice the word now. It is not describing a future state after you improve. It is describing the current position of somebody who is in Christ, on an ordinary Tuesday, in the middle of getting things wrong.

Romans 8:1 removes the verdict rather than adjusting it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach a parent who has been marking their own work every night for six years.

You are not under a verdict, and no assessment of your parenting has ever once been pending. Romans 8:1 says there is therefore now no condemnation, with no scale and no threshold attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the paper away rather than handing back a better mark.

Nobody in that playground knows

Here is a factual thing, and I say it flatly rather than kindly, because flat is more useful.

The woman who mentioned the thing you had not heard of goes home and worries about something else entirely. The man with the sentence you would not have thought of is quietly certain he is getting something important wrong, and if you asked him he could name it in about two seconds.

Everybody in that playground is doing what you are doing, which is comparing their inside to everybody else's outside.

Romans 8:1 does not grade anybody, and the Holy Spirit is not running a comparison between households.

That is not a nice thought to make you feel better. It is a description of the actual situation. There is no group of parents who know, and there never has been, and the manual you think you missed does not exist, and if it did it would not fit your child, who is not a general case.

You are not the only one without the manual, and no such document has ever once existed. The written word removes the verdict entirely rather than publishing the marks, and the Spirit of God is the one who stops a person comparing their inside to a playground's outside.

Write it down and put it in a drawer

So here is the assignment. It is odd and it is meant to be, and it is not a technique for anything.

Write down the one thing you are most worried you are getting wrong. And put the paper in a drawer.

One thing. The specific one that turns up at about eleven at night. Write it in plain words, the way you would say it if somebody you trusted asked you directly. Romans 8:1 has already settled the verdict, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a fear be written down without becoming a project.

Then fold it and put it in a drawer and shut the drawer.

You will notice what you are not being asked to do. You are not being asked to fix it, work on it, pray about it in a particular way, or discuss it with anybody. All of those would be actions taken by a person who is still sitting the exam. Romans 8:1 does not attach a corrective program to the removal, and the Holy Spirit is not asking for one either.

Putting it in a drawer is what you do with a thing that has been named and does not require a response. It is not denial, because you wrote it down. It is not a plan, because it is in a drawer.

Romans 8:1 takes the condemnation away without asking for a corrective program, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody names a fear and then simply closes a drawer on it.

You are able to name it and leave it named, and it has never once required a plan to follow it. Romans 8:1 removes the verdict without asking anybody to improve first, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a person shutting a drawer.