Watching the slalom ski completion during the Olympics, it easy to be amazed at the strength, stamina, agility, and skill of the athletes. They fly down steep sections of the course I would be careful to walk down, making razor sharp turns from one gate to the next, using their speed and agility to reach the finish line hundredths of a second sooner than their competition.

Such athletic prowess is amazing to watch. And the reward is a chance to be one of three people in the world who can stand at a podium and receive a medal that belongs to that particular event.

As I was watching, I saw one of the skiers begin what looked like a record-setting run. The commentators were buzzing about his accuracy and speed. About two-thirds of the way down the mountain course, he took a turn a bit wide and then tried to correct for the next gate. He misjudged the turn and missed the gate before him. In that instant, the run was over. All the work he put in before didn’t matter. Any phenomenal skiing he might have done afterwards was irrelevant. This error, though wholly unintentional, disqualified him for a medal.

This is unfair. Can’t we factor in the years of hard training and sacrifice he devoted to this great endeavor? What about his character and the friends who appreciate him, don’t they matter? Why not give some credit for the fact that he can perform better than 99% of the general population on any given day? Isn’t it unjust to deprive him of an award for what he did, what he tried to do, and the accomplishments he made? It’s just not right. Why not award him Olympic gold anyway?

Most people who are sports enthusiasts would not agree with the sentiments of the previous paragraph. They realize that even though we may empathize with anyone whose heroic effort fails, we cannot award medals to competitors based on their good intentions and their nearly great accomplishments. That’s not the philosophy of sports competition at the Olympic level.

Oddly enough, we often fault the God of the Bible because he does not adjust his standards of righteousness for us as we ski down the mountain of life and miss some gates along the way. We sometimes demand that the one who is perfect and who defines in himself righteousness, holiness, and truth adapt to a relative standard that would never work in Olympic competition.

The parallel between the slalom and the moral ski slope of life is great. We’ve got to stay on the course all the way without any deviation from absolute truth. James states, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (See James 2:10.) In short, we must either behave sinlessly all our lives, or we will be disqualified. The course of life is long, dangerous, and filled with temptations that we don’t always resist. And we can’t take another run at it. That’s bad news, because it means that none of us can stand before God on the basis of our own merit at the end of our lives.

The good news is that there is one—Christ—who skied the course perfectly. And he invites us to come to him in repentance seeking forgiveness. He offers a trade out of his love for us. Through his grace he’s willing to take our disqualification notice and the eternal judgment that goes with it and trade it for his Olympic gold. But we must give up the notion that our relatively good performance is enough. It won’t cut it in the Olympics. And it certainly won’t meet God’s much higher standard. We must let go of our pride and humbly accept that which we cannot earn. And then we can find out what it means to be winners.