Forgiveness Without Limits: How the Cross Cured Me of My Performance-Driven Perfectionism
“Would you still love me if I didn’t tidy my room?”
I look up at my five-year-old daughter in surprise, her question catching me off guard. “Of course I would,” I reply. Pondering this for a minute, she presses me further.
“Would you still love me if I went to jail?”
“Yes,” I reassure her again, while internally scheduling a conversation about making wise choices for a later date. “I’m your mommy. I will always love you, no matter what you do.”
Not quite finished with her line of questioning, she has evidently saved the best one for last. “Mommy, would you still love me if . . . I didn’t love you back?”
Her earnest question strikes me like a sucker-punch to the gut, yet I recognize a deeper heart issue at play here. I have always assumed my daughter is completely secure in my love for her—a love without limits. But her desire to find out exactly where those limits lie tells me that, perhaps, she isn’t quite as convinced of it as I had first thought.
The Pursuit of Perfection
This is not new ground for me. It is an area I, too, have wrestled with over the years. Frequently characterizing myself as a “self-confessed perfectionist,” I have taken pride in my seemingly innate desire to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, making sure everything is just as it should be. But the obvious downside to this character trait is that no one can possibly be perfect all the time—if at all. And when failure or criticism inevitably come, it can be deeply crushing, even causing me to question who I am and how much I am worth.
When I first moved to the United States eleven years ago, it was necessary for me to relinquish my career as a speech and language pathologist. Yet I was unaware just how much of my identity was wrapped up in my profession until it was taken away from me. In response to this sudden void in my life, I found myself striving to prove to myself and others that I still mattered, that I was still worth something to society. If I could only just work harder and do a great job in whatever I was asked to do, I reasoned, I could make up for this missing part of my identity.
This faulty thinking followed me into motherhood. Embarking on a new season as a stay-at-home mom, I was at a loss. In all honesty, most of the time I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Still, I strove to do it “right,” following the motherhood experts as though their advice was gospel, until my neurodiverse child arrived and blew those rulebooks right out of the water. I couldn’t easily get her to sleep, to eat, or to talk on schedule, and she even ended up in hospital at three weeks old with feeding issues. How could I not see this as a massive failure of my parenting? But I kept on going—pushing myself and my baby to follow all the rules, trying to measure my worth in parenting points and failing miserably.
Why was I trying so hard? Who was I really trying to impress? It seemed like my pursuit of perfectionism was not an innocent character trait after all, but was rooted in my insecurity and an unhealthy desire to please. Instead of resting in the security of God’s love for me, I was propelled to seek validation in achieving a perfect score as a wife, a mom, a professional . . . you name it. Perfectionism was my path to proving my worth, and not only was it a stressful and heavy burden to bear, but it was a far cry from the life God had called me to live.
The Grace-Driven Cure
Some of the early books in the Old Testament can read like a list of rules that were required to be strictly followed by God’s people; failure to obey them often resulted in the onset of sudden and unpleasant punishment. Given my perfectionist tendencies, I can relate to the predictable legalism of such a system. Like a modern-day Pharisee, I, too, have been guilty of focusing on the “rulebook” concerning my faith rather than the relationship. I have, like the older brother in the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11–32), felt injustice and bitterness toward those who have messed up outrageously while I have done my best to live the “right” way, questioning the fairness of their apparent “free pass” to heaven. Yet this attitude is no innocent perfectionism; it’s pride. And as a Christian, I am called to take a posture of humility—the very opposite of pride—recognizing that all have fallen short of the standard God requires as written in his Law. No one is worthy. All are deserving of death—even trying-so-hard-to-be-perfect little me.
A life of prideful striving was never God’s design for us. Through the cross, Christ changed the narrative. In a radical act of sacrificial love, he paid our outstanding, impossible-to-redeem debt, and in doing so ripped up the rulebook, stamping each shredded piece of paper with one single word: grace.
This abundant life-giving grace is ours, and even more outrageously, we have done nothing to earn it (Eph. 2:8–9). We are like a student who gets a failing grade but still passes the exam or a prisoner who gets a stay of execution while an innocent man offers to take the punishment on the prisoner’s behalf. Even the condemned criminal who hung on the cross next to Jesus was given a pass to Heaven minutes before his crucifixion because of his sincere faith in Jesus (Luke 23:42–43).
Free for all who ask and plentiful to all who repent of their sin, this is forgiveness without limits. It is radical hope for the broken and weary; it is freedom for those enslaved in performance-driven faith. And if we will only live in light of that forgiveness , it could change everything.
Forgiveness Without Limits
Recognizing that I am unable to earn God’s favor in my own strength is a humbling revelation. It brings me to my knees at the foot of the cross—broken and vulnerable, no longer able to rely on the achievements, accolades, or attributes I have leaned on for so long. It brings me to the end of myself and forces me to accept that salvation is in Jesus alone; that I am loved by him despite my unworthiness, not because of anything I have done to earn it.
In the cross we truly understand there is absolutely nothing we can do to earn God’s love, or even more reassuringly, lose it. We can never reach the end of his forgiveness; we can never fall too far for his love to reach us. As Paul writes in Romans 8:38–39,
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our identity, then, is wholly secure in God’s love. It isn’t a conditional relationship, likely to be influenced by our success—or lack of it—in a given area but is steadfast and permanent, rooted in Christ. And when we truly understand this and see that the pursuit of prideful perfectionism is pointless, we become free from the pressures of a performance-driven life to walk in the peace of who he has called us to be.
For me this looks like repenting daily of my pride, laying down my propensity to strive, and resting in His love. It also means choosing to love others extravagantly as an outpouring of his grace. Not because I have to, or because I want to earn extra brownie points, but because I want to. In the light of my Savior’s love for imperfect me, I’m compelled to.
As Paul writes in Ephesians 5:1–2: “Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (NIV).
It’s a tall order. To love like Christ looks a lot like forgiving without limits—loving the broken, the lost, the difficult, the undesirable, the angry, the foreigner, the outcast, the person who has offended or even wounded us. Why? Because grace is offered to all. There is no perfect person, only perfect love. And we can only find it when we look to the cross.
A striving, pressure-driven life may take us far in this world, but it won’t lead us closer to God’s heart. And it doesn’t usually pour out the fragrance of grace that is so desperately needed. We live in a world full of people who struggle to understand who they are and how much they are loved, and, as believers saved by grace, we have the wonderful opportunity and Spirit-powered capacity to show them this love. But only if we are able to accept it for ourselves first.
* * *
“Father, would you still love me if . . . ”
No matter how you might finish that question, you can rest assured that God’s answer will always be yes, absolutely yes. In fact, the cross has already answered any question of his love for us. “[He] put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were no use whatever to him” (Rom. 5:6–8 MSG).
No matter what insecurity issues we might carry with us today, we know that the cross is our ultimate cure, and in this mighty act of love, our perfectionism can be put in its place for good.
Vicki Bentley is a Scottish native who now lives in upstate New York with her husband and two young daughters. She is an associate editor for Torn Curtain Publishing and writes regularly on faith, anxiety, and neurodiverse parenting. As a writer and editor, it is her greatest joy to cultivate and shape words that speak transformative grace-filled truth into the hearts and lives of others. You can connect with her on her blog, Facebook, or Instagram.