Mark Galli compares the biomechanics of the golf swing with sanctification and the ethics of Christian life at Christianity Today.
In the course of his article he writes:
We are in the bad habit of thinking that ethics is a REAL SERIOUS BUSINESS, that our welfare and the welfare of the world depend on its proper execution. Not quite. The gospel is the end of ethics in this sense. In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. The welfare of the world is a settled issue. Someone has already won the Masters. The key question for believers is not “What are you going to do to earn God’s blessing, or to attain a good life, or to thank God for all he has done for you, or to make the world a better place?” No, it’s “What are you going to do now that you don’t have to do anything?”
The wonderful thing about the gospel is that it takes ethics away as duty and gives it back as joy—precisely because we don’t have to do it anymore but get to do it in freedom. We golfers don’t look forward to spending four or five hours on a course hoping that, if we play perfectly, we’ll finally enjoy ourselves. No, we step onto the course with a sense of joy because we already love the game, even though we’re going to fail 97 out of a hundred times over the next few hours! Similarly, we don’t try to live the perfect life because, once we do, then we’ll be able to relax and enjoy life. No, it’s because we now can relax and enjoy life—thanks to grace—that we try to live the perfect life. Ethics is the golf swing of life.
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