The Men of Iron Minute

by Chad Zueck | Director of Content Creation

Making the Cut

The Open Championship is played at St. Andrews, the birthplace of golf. Golf is a challenging sport that deceives the casual observer into thinking it is easy. In golf and life, the difference between good and great is slight. The sports channels are flooded with green hues from the countryside, the old city’s charm, and the cavernous sand bunkers that look like remnants of a bombing run. Woods, Nicklaus, and Ballesteros are among the golf immortals who have tasted sweet victory on this epic course. The Open Championship, also known as the British Open, is the oldest golf tournament in the world. Professional golf, except for a new contest that just popped up, is a four-day play-in tournament, and players want to make the weekend to get paid and win the tournament. A fortunate golfer makes it into the weekend based upon their play and how they have scored compared to their competition. Those around golf refer to this as “making the cut.” Making the cut is performance-based.

Healthy competition promotes honesty, integrity, and grit; unhealthy competition generates division, hatred, and strife. Competition is good for business as it drives the cost down for the consumer, and competition is good for kids to learn the life skills of hard work and handling letdowns and losses. Even so, competition is a limited good.

The perversion of original sin brings many men into the corrupted belief that they must be good to be loved and accepted by God. The glory of the Gospel is that even though we are not good enough, nor can we ever perform well enough, God loves and accepts.

True believers, we are told, have access to the Father by one Spirit, and they are saved into God’s family by God’s power. Christians live as more than conquerors in Christ Jesus, tearing down strongholds so we can fight the good fight.[1]

With God, making the cut is about acceptance, not performance. His grace is sufficient, and our best efforts never will be. Celebrate this truth today.

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[1]Ephesians 2:18-19; Romans 8:37; 2 Corinthians 10:4; 1 Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7