justification

Who’s Doing The Work?

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Who is responsible for your maturity in Christ? Is it all about you and your obedience or is all the Holy Spirit’s doing?

Do you have days when you feel you’ve done nothing but blow it as a Christian? You haven’t loved well, you ran out of patience, you didn’t think about God for an instant.

What does God think of you when you’re in that condition?

“Return to your baptism everyday,” Luther said. Remember you died in Christ, were buried in him, and were resurrected in him. All your sins are forgiven and washed away. God sees them no more.

Paul would say,

“For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.” – Romans 6: 5-7

You have been set free to live as a believer in Christ.

Before faith, you were a slave to sin. You couldn’t love or serve God. The only things you could do were to:

1) live in darkness

2) provoke God’s wrath

3) heap judgment on yourself

But God, who in his mercy called you from death to life, who gave you the gift of faith to believe in Christ and him crucified, now enables you to freely love and serve him.

You are a freed slave learning to live as a free man or woman in union to Christ.

How does this work out in daily living?

Justifying faith is God acting upon you – you are a passive recipient. He changed your heart, he made you capable of believing the gospel. You didn’t produce that yourself. You had no power.

Sanctifying faith is accomplished by the Holy Spirit who causes you to desire God and enables you to obey God. This new action will result in your good works.

You will produce fruit.

So if you’re worried about how you’re doing, don’t be. Looking inside your heart will demoralize you. It’s not pretty in there.

The solution is to keep looking to Jesus.

He’s the author of your faith, and to God who will give you everything you need to keep loving and serving him.

Jesus Is A Happy Man

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Do you know that Christ is happy in his exalted state in heaven?

Every day, if that is how time is measured in heaven, he looks around and sees the results of his death on the cross for his people.

First, he sees the conversion and the salvation of sinners.

Second, he looks over the amazing expanse of heaven and sees it populated with the people he died and shed his blood for.

Third, he looks down on our world and sees so many coming into faith, taking baby steps in grace, others advancing in their faith, and still others strong as warriors in their faith, and this brings pleasure to his soul.

Fourth, he sees those arriving in heaven, having finished the race, and he rejoices!

Jesus is fully satisfied with his own sacrifice!

And if he’s satisfied, so is God the Father, and the Holy Spirit.

They rejoice together!

There is joy in heaven over you!

How To Get Rid of Yourself

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Is your self-image on the floor? You don’t like yourself and you’re certain others don’t either? You work yourself into a frenzy trying to be popular and liked, but you only fail. Is there any hope for you?

There’s good news for you. You’re not hopeless. There is a way to a healthy self-image but it’s not what you might think.

The pundits and psychologists will be happy to give you a list of rules (or a formula) for how to fix yourself. It goes like this:

1. exercise

2. eat right

3. only spend time with positive people

4. read or listen to inspirational teachers

5. do something for others

6. believe in yourself

That last one is particularly difficult if you don’t like yourself.

Have you seen a common theme with the all this?

It’s all about self.

Whenever you turn into yourself, you’ll have trouble. That’s because there are no answers there.

The rules don’t hold the answers either. Neither do the pundits and the therapists. They’ll either drive you to despair because you can’t live up to their recommendations, or to pride because you do live up to them and you feel superior to others. Either path is full of self.

The answer lies in the gospel.

The gospel doesn’t lie to you. It agrees with you. You are messed up. In fact you’re a sinner!

But the gospel doesn’t leave you there.

It tells you to repent and acknowledge that your whole life needs fixing. Why? Because it’s not God-centered.

Jesus came into the world to clean up the mess, die on the cross to pay for your sins, to fill you with his Spirit, and to take you to heaven.

What does this do for you?

It humbles you.  It makes you grateful to God. Now you can love him and serve others out of that gratitude.

You still might be asking, “But when all my sins and failures come back to haunt me again, how can I maintain a healthy self-image?”

You don’t need to feel better about yourself!

You don’t need to feel worse about yourself!

What the gospel does is get you off of yourself!

You are a new creature in Christ, your life in now hid with him in heaven. That’s your new image.

You no longer have to live a self-centered life.

Jesus rescued you from that treadmill.

Go out and shout for joy!

How To Stop Digging Your Own Grave

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I read C. H. Spurgeon’s devotional entry this morning in Morning and Evening. (If you don’t have a copy, buy one. It will make your soul smile.)

It was so stunning I am paraphrasing it here:

For he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21

Why are you depressed?

Are you flogging yourself over your sins and failures?

Look to Jesus and remember you are complete in him. You are in God’s sight as perfect as if you had never sinned; actually more than that, the Lord your Righteousness has wrapped you in his perfection, which is none other that the perfection of God himself.

You have learned to hate sin, but you have also learned than your sin is not yours anymore – it was placed upon Christ at the cross.

Your acceptance is not in yourself but in Christ. God completely accepts you today as he will when you stand before his throne in the last day. There you will be free of all corruption, as you are now. Grab a hold of this truth – you are perfect in Christ.

(http://www.amazon.com/Morning-Evening-Charles-Haddon-Spurgeon/dp/0883684101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1333576818&sr=8-1)

 

A Strange Story

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In the biblical drama, all our expectations, assumptions, and cherished ideas are thrown into question. God the judge bears the sentence that his own justice demands. The offended party becomes the redeemer; even as he is subjected to further acts of the most heinous violence from those he redeems. The outcasts become royal heirs, the outsiders become insiders and the insiders outsiders, those who thought they were righteous are in fact condemned and those who were beyond any hope of moral recovery are declared righteous. A strange story, indeed. – Michael Horton

For more by Michael Horton, please visit:

http://www.whitehorseinn.org/

Bug Off!

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God wants us to find our primary joy in our objectively declared justification, not in our subjectively perceived sanctification. — Jerry Bridges

I spent an afternoon visiting a Christian friend who was making herself sick remembering the failures, sins, and mistakes of her past. She was living in guilt, because as she said, “I see the consequences of my actions in the lives of my children every day.”

How many times a day do you do this?

How many times a day does the devil drag you there? This is one of his favorite  darts in his quiver.

Next time this happens pray like this:
“Devil, you’re going to have to do better than that. The blood of Jesus, my Savior, has paid the price of all of my sins, failures and mistakes. I stand firm in Him and I am as perfect as He is because I am robed in his righteousness. So go bother somebody else.” Then pray for your children. Remember the lives of the patriarchs, the life of David, the lives of countless others in the Scriptures that show their weaknesses, failures and sins, and yet God used them for his glory in spite of those things because they had faith in Christ. Take a look at the genealogy of our Lord’s in the gospel of Matthew if you need to be encouraged.

Oh, one more thing: there are no perfect people, only a perfect Savior.

Freedom!

~ godisnotlikeyou ~ 1 Comment

Holiness = Progress in obedience happens only when our hearts realize that God’s love for us does not depend on our progress in obedience.

Approval = You are already qualified. You don’t have to make the grade on your own or seek more approval from anyone. In Christ, you’re in! You’re accepted, affirmed, & validated. This also includes an inheritance that can never diminish, or disappear or be stripped away. You will be inheriting the new heavens and the new earth!

Power-Recognition-Fame = You are one of the saints in light. You’ve been united to Christ. You will always have his name, his presence, his character, and his reputation overshadowing and filling all that you are in your inmost being. Because Jesus was Someone (God of the Universe, God of Creation, God of Salvation and you are in him!), you’re free to be no one.

Security = You have been liberated out of darkness’s grip and transported into the kingdom of Jesus. You now are, and forever will be, safe and sound in Jesus-all because of what he long ago accomplished for you by his perfect obedience to God’s law for you and by his death on the cross for you.

– Jesus + Nothing = Everything by Tullian Tchividjian

Look To Jesus and Nobody Else

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by Octavius Winslow, 1856 (edited for
today’s reader by Larry E. Wilson, 2010)

Bible Verse

“Sanctify them in the truth; your Word is truth” (John 17:17).

Devotional

“How may I know that sin is being mortified in me?” is the anxious inquiry of many. We reply: by a weakening of its power.

When Christ subdues your iniquities, he does not eradicate them, but rather he weakens the strength of their root. The principle of sin remains, but it is impaired.

See it in the case of Peter. Before he fell, his easily besetting sin was self-confidence: “Even though they all fall away, I will not” (Mark 4:29). Behold him after his recovery, taking the low place at the feet of Jesus—and at the feet of the disciples too—meekly saying, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you” (John 21:17). No more self-praise, no more self-confidence—his sin was mortified by the Spirit and he became as a different man.

In this way, often the very outbreak of your sins may become the occasion of their deeper discovery and their more thorough subjection.

As well, do not overlook the power of the truth, by the instrumentality of which the Spirit mortifies sin in us: “Sanctify them in the truth.” The truth as it is in Jesus, revealed more clearly to the mind, and impressed more deeply on the heart, transforms the soul into its own divine and holy nature. Therefore, your spiritual and experiential acquaintance with the truth—especially with him who is essential Truth—will be the measure of the Spirit’s mortification of sin in your heart.

Is the Lord Jesus becoming increasingly precious to your soul? Are you growing in poverty of spirit? Are you growing in a deeper sense of your vileness, weakness, and unworthiness? Is your pride more abased? Is your self more crucified? Is God’s glory more simply sought? Does your heart more quickly shrink from sin? Is your conscience more sensitive to the touch of guilt? And do confession and cleansing become a more frequent habit? Are you growing in more love to all the saints—even to those who, though they do not adopt your entire creed, yet love and serve your Lord and Master? If so, then you may be assured that the Spirit is mortifying sin in you.

But oh, look away from everything to Jesus. Do not look within for sanctification; look up for it from Christ. He is as much your “sanctification” as he is your “righteousness” (1 Cor. 1:30). Your evidences, your comfort, your hope, do not spring from your fruitfulness, your mortification, or anything within you; they come solely and entirely from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Looking unto Jesus by faith is like removing the covering and opening the windows of a conservatory, to admit more freely the sun, beneath whose light and warmth the flowers and fruits expand and mature. Draw back the veil that conceals the Sun of Righteousness and let him shine in upon your soul. Then the mortification of all sin will follow, and the fruits of all holiness will abound.

Success At Last!

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Jesus shows you the goodness of God by sending him to succeed where you failed. You are in his triumphant procession. No longer do you have to work for God’s approval. If you are in Christ, God approves of you.

Adam in the garden failed, Israel in the wilderness failed, but where they couldn’t live up to God’s law, Jesus did. He is the better Adam, and he is the true Israel, who delighted to do God’s will. And that perfect record God has put into your account, so you are now as perfect as Jesus.

 

Gospel Transformation

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“The gospel transforms us in heart, mind, will, and actions precisely because it is not itself a message about our transformation. Nothing that I am or that I feel, choose, or do qualifies as Good News. On my best days, my experience of transformation is weak, but the gospel is an announcement of a certain state of affairs that exists because of something in God, not something in me; something that God has done, not something that I have done; the love in God’s heart which he has shown in his Son, not the love in my heart that I exhibit in my relationships. Precisely as the Good News of a completed, sufficient, and perfect work of God in Christ accomplished for me and outside of me in history, the gospel is ‘the power of God unto salvation’ not only at the beginning but throughout the Christian life. In fact, our sanctification is simply a lifelong process of letting that Good News sink in and responding appropriately; becoming the people whom God says that we already are in Christ.”

— Michael Horton