No matter how much we confess our failures, are forgiven for our failures, and exchange our failures for Christ’s righteousness, as long as we are in this world we are going to fail. Again and again and again. This keeps us humble, keeps us dependent, and keeps us looking to Christ. But, above all, it keeps us looking toward heaven, the place where failures will never be known again. Will we remember our failures there? Yes, but not with any pain, only as covered by Christ’s pardon, and only to turn up the volume of our praise:
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. (Rev. 1:5–6)
We will also see our failures from a whole new perspective, not just our moral and spiritual failures but also our relational and vocational disappointments. We will see God’s wise providence in allowing that relationship breakup, that interview disaster, that lost job, that failed exam. When God reframes our failures by putting the golden frame of His wise sovereignty all around them, they are transformed from ugly abstract randomness to beautifully crafted designs.
Will we experience any failures there? No, never. We will not fail, and neither will anyone else. The tears of disappointment will be part of the deluge wiped out of our eyes (Rev. 21:4). Heaven will be one great and long success story: moral success, spiritual success, intellectual success, physical success, relational success, vocational success, ecclesiastical success.
So, yes, our present failures should drive us to Christ, but they should also make us long for heaven, to hasten the day when the pain of failure and the torture of disappointment will be gone forever.