Thoughts... Mark the Misses

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Patrick Ng

The central theme of the Bible is the fall of man and redemption through the sacrifice of God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ (Jn 3:16). Paul wrote, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rm 3:23-24). There would be no necessity for redemption if not for sin.

Sin, which is “hamartano” in Greek, is defined as “missing the mark”. To miss a mark means to fail to hit the intended target. This is an apt definition of sin. God has given us a set of rules to live by. He wants us to strictly live by this set of rules and to be perfect like He is perfect (Mt 5:48, II Tim 3:17). When we fail to live by these rules, we sin, that is, we miss the mark. We fail to achieve a perfect score.

We have stumbled in life and will continue to be at fault at one time or another throughout our lifetime. And that made us less than perfect (Jas 3:2). We have sinned, and that put us in direct confrontation with God. The Bible states that “if we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God” (Heb 10:26-27).

Although missing the mark would separate us from God, we need not adopt the attitude that we would eventually be alienated from God because we would continue sinning. Instead of developing a habit of missing the mark, which we always do, we should begin to mark the misses!

As a uniformed officer, I went through weapon training where shooting is one of the training components. The aim of the shooting training is to hone me to be a marksman. If I were able to hit my targets above a stipulated percentage, I would be considered a marksman. In other words, I cannot afford to miss too many targets. To ensure that I will always hit my mark, my trainer would stand behind me during the training shoot to mark my misses. He did not want me to only know that I have missed the mark. He also wanted me to know where my misses were so that I know where to aim the next time I shoot.

I thought that the experience is a model on how we should conduct ourselves as a church. Although Christ has redeemed us with His blood, we will continue to sin (I Jn 1:8-10). Instead of merely acknowledging that we have sinned, it would be helpful for us to find out where we have sinned and seek to eradicate the sins from our lives. In my shooting training, I have a trainer to mark my misses. It would greatly benefit our souls if we can mark the misses of one another and tell each other where to aim so as not to miss the mark (Jas 5:20).