The Boy Scout troop I was a part of when I was growing up was into target shooting. We had a rifle club so every Tuesday evening, we’d head to the range and practice shooting. Because the club was associated with the NRA, we could earn medals based on our scores. So we had motivation to hit bullseyes!
Our troop also used to go on an annual week-long trip when school let out. At one of these summer camps, the facility had bows, arrows, and targets. I like shooting rifles, but this was my chance to earn a merit badge in archery!
I did the work and got the badge, but I remember that the bow had more tension than I first thought it would. It wasn’t hard to pull back, but after a while, I would get tired. And that’s not good because when I’m weary, my hands would shake which would diminish my chances of getting good scores.
All this took place a long time ago, but not really. Target shooting illustrates the principle that we’re all aiming at something in life. We have goals that we want to achieve; we want to accomplish feats we can be proud of.
It’s not too hard to picture that God created us as archers or target shooters. If we set worthwhile goals for ourselves, put in the necessary practice, and exercise patience and discipline, we’ll succeed. This is how He designed us to operate.
But.
Yes, there’s a problem! It’s called sin.
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” – Romans 3:23
The Greek verb translated “sinned” is hamartano and it means “I miss the mark.”
Archery illustrates the meaning of the word. An archer aims the arrow to hit the bullseye. In relative terms, you can still get points, but in an absolute sense, not hitting the bullseye means failure.
Our rifle club used papers that had five targets printed on them. We would use a cable system to send out the papers 50 feet out and then we’d shoot at our paper five times; one shot per target. We’d then pull the paper back and get it graded. A bullseye got you 10 points, the next closes ring got you 9, and so on. The highest score you could earn was 50 points for a perfect paper of 5 bullseyes. That wasn’t easy to do, so it didn’t happen very often!
We could earn medals for less than perfect performances.
But you can tell from the illustration that God’s standards represent complete perfection. Bullseyes. And since we’re archers, the Lord requires bullseyes from us. Anything less and we’ve missed the mark.
People argue with God that they’re not so bad. They may not have gotten a bullseye, but at least they hit the target so they feel they deserve some credit.
But the Bible verse we quoted undermines this claim. We’re not as accurate as we assume. Actually, we’re in bad shape.
Here’s why.
Many biblical writers made use of a literary technique called “synonymous parallelism.” It’s a fancy phrase that means “saying the same thing twice.” To reduce it to a single word, it’s repetition.
In Romans 3:23, Paul repeats himself when he declares that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.
Let’s break down this verse into its components.
First we have the comment about sinning. Since the meaning of the verb is to miss the mark, we could use that term as a substitute for sin. In other words, we could rewrite the verse as follows (we’ll drop the conjunction “for”):
“All have missed the mark and fall short of the glory of God.”
Now let’s link up the ideas which repeat themselves. The verse expresses two types of thoughts, one negative and one positive. Missing and falling identify the negative idea, so let’s put those words in red.
“All have missed the mark and fall short of the glory of God.”
The positive notion is the goal; in this case, it’s the mark (or target) which Paul compares to glory. We’ll color them sky blue.
“All have missed the mark and fall short of the glory of God.”
Finally, we have a contrast between two parties. Paul mentions people and God as owners. We human beings own (or ought to own) our failures to hit the target and God possesses the glory of a bullseye. Let’s make those two green.
“All have missed the mark and fall short of the glory of God.”
See the connections?
Now let’s put everything together. In this verse, Paul contrasts God and people. We humans have aimed the arrows of our lives and have missed our targets. But how far off were we? Did we get close? Was it a near miss? Almost perfect?
Not quite!
We didn’t just miss the bullseye, we didn’t just miss the rings around the bullseye; we didn’t hit the target at all! Our arrows have fallen short of the target! They’re all stuck in the ground; none of them reached the paper! That’s total failure!
Paul uses archery to communicate how weak and ineffective we are without God. The Lord’s goal for us never changes; He wants us to experience His glory. But it’s something that we’ll never attain on our own.
And that bad news is what makes the good news so awesome!
“All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” – Romans 3:24
What God wills for us and what we could not accomplish on our own, He has provided through the work of His Son. Yes, the Bible reveals that we’re worse than we realize. But the gospel announces that through Jesus Christ, we can enjoy a blessing that’s greater than our experience has taught us is possible.
Sin is worse than we imagine. But grace is greater!
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