Missing the Mark

A Parable about Sin

The great king called his first Lieutenant. “The strength of my army is in the archers,” he said. “Go into the ranks and find those who do not know the bow and teach them, that my army may be strong to defend us against my enemies. On the new moon I will hold a contest to see your progress.”

The Lieutenant knew that most of the foot soldiers were incapable of handling the bow. He did as the king commanded, but despised the king for asking him to do this thing.

He found twenty common soldiers and commanded them to appear before him for training the next day. He outfitted them with bows and quivers and lined them up. “Do you see the target before you?” he asked. Each nodded. Twenty paces in front of each man was the silhouette of an approaching warrior, black paint on a white cloth with a large red heart painted on the chest.

The Lieutenant raised his bow and shot three arrows at the target before him. The first went into the very center of the heart. The second pierced the cloth right beside the first and the third did the same.

“Shoot at the heart,” he called, “and do not miss.” The soldiers hesitated. None of them had handled a bow. They raised their weapons cautiously, drew the first arrow and shot at the target. Each missed.

To the ones whose arrows furrowed into the grass before the target, the Lieutenant yelled about how much it cost the kingdom to fletch arrows. For some, the arrows sailed over the straw bales and struck the stone wall behind the target. The Lieutenant cursed and berated them for breaking the tips. “Do you know how hard it is to sharpen and true an arrowhead?” he asked with a sneer. Others hit the stanchions that held the targets. “I told you not to do that,” the Lieutenant yelled, “It warps the arrow shaft!”

Day after day, the Lieutenant berated the soldiers for their inability to hit the heart on the target. Day after day, their resentment grew and many would have quit, except they were soldiers and could not.

On the new moon, the king called the Lieutenant. “Show me your archers,” he said. The Lieutenant began to make excuses. “They are lazy and incompetent, not fit for this noble task. I tried, but it is of no use. They continually do as I have told them not to do.”

The king was angry. “Show me your archers,” he demanded.

The king watched as one by one, each archer stood before him and tried to hit the target. In their fear of the Lieutenant and respect for the king, they failed. With much shame they made the same excuses as the Lieutenant, explaining how many things can go wrong and how hard archery is because of them.

The king called the Lieutenant and in his anger dismissed the Lieutenant from his service. Then the king called his son. “The strength of my army is in the archers,” he said. “Go into the ranks and find all those who do not know the bow and teach them, that my army may be strong to defend against my enemies. On the new moon I will hold a contest to see your progress.”

The Son knew that most of the foot soldiers would fail in handling the bow, but did as his father commanded out of joy that the king had asked him to do this thing.

He found twenty common soldiers and commanded them to appear before him for training the next day. He outfitted them with bows and quivers and lined them up. “Do you see the target before you?” he asked. Each nodded. Twenty paces in front of each man was the silhouette of an approaching warrior, black paint on a white cloth with a large red heart painted on the chest.

The Son raised his bow and shot three arrows. The first went into the very center of the heart. The second split the first from nock to tip and the third split the second in the same way.

“Shoot at the heart,” he called, “and do not miss.” The soldiers hesitated. None of them had ever handled a bow. They raised their weapons cautiously, drew their arrows and shot at the target. Each missed.

The son knew how long it had taken him to master the bow. He knew the pitfalls and the cost of warped shafts, dull tips and stripped fletchings. But he pulled the soldiers aside on by one. “Concentrate on the heart. Never lose this focus. You will lose fletchings. You will break shafts. You will dull the points of the arrows, but focus on the heart.”

Day by day he watched his minions inch their way forward, concentrating on the painted read hearts of the approaching warriors. With each failure, the Son patiently offered instruction, teaching, and correction on their technique. When a soldier would become lazy or unfocused, he would rebuke them carefully, bringing them back to the focus on the heart.

On the new moon, the king called his Son. “Show me your archers,” he said.

The king watched as one by one, each of the archers stood before him and tried to hit the target. They were afraid of the king and respected the Son, but each let his arrows fly. Many hit their mark in the red heart. Many missed. With each miss, the Son would turn to his father and say, “They are learning, as I had to learn.” The father would nod and smile. The last man was an excellent archer, consistently hitting the heart, but when he failed, the king noticed that his son was silent.

“How did you teach them?” The king asked when the contest was over.

“As you taught me,” said the Son, “with great patience, much grace and a singular focus on the heart.”

“The last man …” observed the king, “You offered no defense when he failed.”

The son looked down as if ashamed. “He is a talented archer, perhaps better than the others, but he resents using his talent to serve his king.”

The king was angry. “Throw him out. He is not fit to serve. In the heat of battle, he will seek his own interest above mine. As for the others,” the king smiled, “Put them all with my other archers. They have shown themselves worthy,” he said.

Making Sin Real

The word “Sin” is one of those words that I like to call a “stained glass word”. Except in the context of a joke or scorn, the word is seldom found outside the context of a religious discussion. The very use of it raises our hackles and sends a person (including us) off into some religious corner where we are trapped by our preconceptions and fear about the word.

If we examine “Sin” as a concept, however, we can discover that it is a real human condition that is experienced by everyone. By understanding the concept, we can escape the corner and live a freer life at every level.

The New Testament word for sin is the Greek word “Hamartia”. It is an archery term meaning to “miss the mark”. Try as you might, practice as you will, you still miss that bullseye.

Typically, most persons perceive sin to be something that one should not do, rather than the failure to do something positive, which is implied in “missing the mark”. Hamartia implies that you have a target and perhaps even a place on that target that you are trying to hit!

I struggled with what this “mark that I am trying to hit” was until it occurred to me that Paul, in Romans 14:23 gave us a very concise answer: “and everything that does not come from faith is sin” If we open our mind to the concept that the mark we are trying to hit is faith, then this verse becomes clear. With a little bit of linguistic liberty, shown in italics, the verse becomes:

“and everything that does not come from hiting the mark, misses the mark”

It is brutally tautological and almost ridiculous when we get it. The parable of the two archery instructors drives home the point of the difference that understanding this concept has on our lives and our approach to living a faithful life.

If we define our lives by all the things that we are not supposed to do, this endless list will ultimately overwhelm us, in addition to making us self-righteous about any success we might have. In addition, if causes us misunderstand grace or lose sight of grace completely, because our focus becomes a mammoth effort to avoid the unavoidable and at every turn there is failure and defeat.

If we define our lives by a simple, well defined target that we continually strive to hit and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus who never missed the mark and always got a “Robin Hood” (a modern phrase for splitting an arrow with a second arrow), then we know beforehand that though we will fail, we see that failing to hit the mark is part of learning to hit it. We become much more accepting of the failure in ourselves and in others, but this is a healthy acceptance of failure that keeps calling us higher to more success and does not leave us defeated.

I need to say here, that I am not calling for the abandonment of real boundaries that God has set, over which we are not allowed to step. The failure to stay within the moral boundaries that God has set for us falls into what I would categorize as “transgressions” of “stepping over” which is a different concept than sin, or our failure to hit the mark.

It is also true, that the real effect of missing the mark (sinning) is separation from God (Isaiah 59:1-2) and separation from other men. Our “mark missing” caused the death of Jesus and can never be trivialized in any of these contexts. However, God gives us much grace, because he knows we cannot be perfect and that as long as we are trying to hit the mark (faith) he knows we will get better and we are useful to his cause.

Below I have taken the liberty to take some of the multitudinous scriptures from the New Testament that use the word sin and replace “sin” in its various grammatical forms with the concept of “missing the mark” in a grammatically correct form. Read them carefully and thoughtfully, examining the difference in how they communicate grace and a positive view of sin.

James 4:17 “Any one then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, misses the mark.”

Romans 3;23 – “For all have missed the mark and fallen short of the glory of God.”

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of missing the mark is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Eph 4:26 – “In your anger, do not miss the mark.”

Or “In your anger, hit the mark.”

Heb 12:4 – “In your struggle to hit the mark, you have not resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”

I John 1:5-7 “…the blood of Jesus, His son, purifies us every time we miss the mark.”

I John 1:8-10 “If we claim to always hit the mark, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess that we miss the mark, he is faithful and just and will forgive us the mark missing and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not missed the mark, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

(God just wants us to admit that we miss the mark! What a concept)

I John 3:4-6 “Everyone who misses the mark, breaks the law; in fact missing the mark is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our mark missings. And he always hits the mark. No one who lives in him keeps on missing the mark. No one who continues to miss the mark has either seen him or known him.

This makes sense if the goal of our life (“the mark”) is faith.

I John 3:9 “No one who is born of God will continue to miss the mark, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on missing the mark.”

I John 5:18 “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to miss the mark …”

John 8:7 “When they kept on questioning him. He straightened up and said to them, ‘If any one of you has never missed the mark, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’”

James 2:8-9 “If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you miss the mark (perhaps miss the point) and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers.

I John 2:1-2 “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will hit the mark. But if any one does miss the mark, we have one who speaks to the father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice when we miss the mark, and not only for us, but also when the whole world misses the mark.

James 5:16 “Therefore, confess to each other when you miss the mark and pray for each other so that you may be healed.

I Peter 4:8 “Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of missed marks.”