Do-Overs, Tagbacks, and Getting Out of Jail Free

Remember do-overs? That safety net built into so many childhood games? If your first attempt didn’t go well, you could call do-over! and get a second chance. Remember that? The rules varied from game to game and from neighborhood to neighborhood as to how many do-overs one could have, but every child recognized the essential rightness of the concept. Sometimes we’d combine the do-over concept with the no tagback rule, which is to say if we were playing any of a hundred different versions of Tag, inevitably the most physically gifted kid would simply tag his tagged right back, before the tagged could get away. It was an unfair advantage, so all the other kids would get together to proclaim the no tagback rule, which eliminated that particular tactic. However, that move opened the door for the newly tagged kid (who was therefore “it” until he could tag someone else) to simply call do-over!

You may have heard preachers talk about grace as if it’s merely a heavenly example, a divine instance, of the classic do-over. It’s an appealing thought, evoking the innocence of childhood to convey a deep concept. It’s sweet, and pleasant—and wrong. Grace isn’t a do-over. If we could simply try again and get it right the second time, and if that were somehow good enough to satisfy the divine standard, what need would we have for grace? Do-over salvation is merely salvation by works renamed.

I heard a preacher once compare God’s grace to the Get Out of Jail Free card from Monopoly. I’m not so sure about that comparison either. It is true, grace makes a way for us to get out of “jail”, so to speak, and it costs us nothing. But it isn’t free, is it? It cost God everything. Think about it: God exists in an eternal now; time has no meaning for God. So the sense of loss and separation that Christ experienced—My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?.— is, in a sense an ever-present reality for the Godhead. They say time heals all wounds. But what if you don’t have the luxury of time to separate you from your deepest hurts and losses?

What is most emotionally impactful for me is that God never asks for a do-over. Even suffering as he has, as he does, as he will, he still considered the cost worth paying in order to redeem us. To redeem me! Who knew so much truth could be hidden inside a childhood game?

Peace . . .