The Delusion
The following quote by John Gerstner comes from Redeemer Presbyterian’s Bible Study on Romans (p. 45-6):
“…the way to God is wide open. There is nothing standing between the sinner and his God. He has immediate and unimpeded access to the Savior. There is nothing to hinder. No sin can hold [you] back, because God offers justification to the ungodly. Nothing now stands between the sinner and God but the sinner’s “good works.” Nothing can keep him from Christ but his delusion… that he has good works of his own that can satisfy God… All they need is need. All they need is nothing… But alas, sinners cannot part with their “virtues.” They have none that are not imaginary, but they are real to them. So grace becomes unreal. The real grace of God they spurn in order to hold on to the illusory virtues of their own. Their eyes fixed on a mirage, they will not drink real water. They die of thirst with water all about them.”
Per Keller – Gerstner again shows that what keeps people from Christ is not their sins, but the imagined value of their “virtues” and good works. It is not so much refusal to repent of their sins that damns them, but the refusal to repent of their “righteousness.” Only when they repent of both sin and righteousness can they be said to have had their “mouths stopped.”
Nothing Gives Peace Like This…
Doesn’t get better than this quote by Martin Luther (per Redeemer Presbyterian Church – Gospel 101 Study Guide):
“There is a righteousness which Paul calls “the righteousness of faith.” God imputes it to us apart from our works – in other words, it is passive righteousness… So then, have we nothing to do to obtain this righteousness? No, nothing at all! For this righteousness comes by doing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, but rather in knowing and believing this only – that Christ has gone to the right hand of the Father, not to become our judge, but to become for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness, our salvation! Now God sees no sin in us, for in this heavenly righteousness sin has no place. So now we may certainly think, “Although I still sin, I don’t despair, because Christ lives, who is both my righteousness and my eternal life.” In that righteousness I have no sin, no fear, no guilty conscience, no fear of death. I am indeed a sinner in this life of mine and in my own righteousness, but I have another life, another righteousness above this life, which is in Christ, the Son of God.
Christians never completely understand (this) themselves, and thus do not take advantage of it when they are troubled and tempted. So we have to constantly teach it, repeat it, and work it out in practice. Anyone who does not understand this righteousness or cherish it in the heart and conscience will continually be buffeted by fears and depression. Nothing gives peace like this passive righteousness. The troubled conscience has no cure for its desperation and feeling of unworthiness unless it takes hold of the forgiveness of sins by grace, offered free of charge in Jesus Christ, which is this passive or Christian righteousness… Once you are in Christ, the Law is the greatest guide for your life, but until you have Christian righteousness, all the law can do is to show you how sinful and condemned you are. But if we first receive Christian righteousness, then we can use the law, not for our salvation, but for his honor and glory, and to lovingly show our gratitude.
Made for Him
“You have made us for yourself; and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.”
-Augustine
Stop Tinkering
Per Buzzard Blog:
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Stop tinkering with your soul and look away to the perfect One.
-A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Thou Art My Loveliness, My Life, My Light, Beauty Alone to Me
I’m currently reading (2nd time) Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters by Tim Keller and wanted to share some things that I’ve come across with you. If you haven’t read this book, please pick it up and if you don’t have the $, I’ll buy it for you (seriously). I think it’s one of the best books ever written.
Throughout, Keller identifies things that we rely on to feel okay in this very challenging world. As the title of the book indicates, he specifically looks at money, sex (or relationships) and power, examining why we are drawn to them and then articulates their insufficiency to satisfy our deepest longings and needs. He doesn’t stop there… He then brings us to Jesus and reminds us of the true love that we were made for, the only hope that doesn’t disappoint, and the true Savior that truly saves. My take on what Keller is trying to communicate is this: God delights in us in Christ. If you are in Christ, you are God’s treasure. You are his beloved and he is absolutely pleased with you.
To give you a taste from the book, the following quote comes from the section on human relationships (p. 40)
The failure of romantic love as a solution to human problems is so much a part of modern man’s frustration… No human relationship can bear the burden of godhood… However much we may idealize and idolize him or her (the love partner), he/she inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection… After all, what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to this position? We want to be rid of our faults, of our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know our existence has not been in vain. We want redemption – nothing less. Needless to say, human partners cannot give this.
Keller goes on to discuss what will rid us of our faults, our feelings of nothingness, what will justifies us, what does enables us to know our existence has not been in vain and where our redemption does come from. (p.45, 47)
Jesus took upon himself our sins and died in our place. If we are deeply moved by the sight of his love for us, it detaches our hearts from other would-be saviors. We stop trying to redeem ourselves through our pursuits and relationships, because we are already redeemed. We stop trying to make others into saviors, because we have a Savior.
Who can I turn to who is so beautiful that he will enable me to escape all counterfeit gods? There is only one answer to this question. As the poet George Herbert wrote, looking at Jesus on the Cross: “Thou art my loveliness, my life, my light, Beauty alone to me.”
Sinner Saints
Per The Centrality of the Gospel (I highly recommend reading this article) by Tim Keller:
“Without a knowledge of our extreme sin, the payment of the cross seems trivial and does not electrify or transform. But without a knowledge of Christ’s completely satisfying life and death, the knowledge of sin would crush us or move us to deny and repress it. Take away either the knowledge of sin or the knowledge of grace and people’s lives are not changed. They will be crushed by the moral law or run from it angrily. So the gospel is not that we go from being irreligious to being religious, but that we realize that our reasons for both our religiosity and our irreligiosity were essentially the same and essentially wrong. We were seeking to be our own saviors and thereby keep control of our own life. When we trust in Christ as our Redeemer, we turn from trusting either self-determination or self-denial for our salvation – from either moralism or hedonism.”
The Gospel is for the Brokenhearted
Per Dan Weber (friend), per Of First Importance
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“The Law is for the proud and the Gospel for the brokenhearted.”
- Martin Luther
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I don’t know about you, but my heart sure could be more broken than it is. I have so much pride that God is yet to bring the hammer to (but it will happen sure enough).
Our Sins Put Him There
Per The Cross of Christ by John Stott, p. 18:
“For, whether we like it or not, we are involved. Our sins put him there. So, far from offering us flattery, the cross undermines our self-righteousness. We can stand before it only with a bowed head and a broken spirit. And there we remain until the Lord Jesus speaks to our hearts his word of pardon and acceptance, and we, gripped by his love and full of thanksgiving, go out into the world to live our lives in his service.”
Resisting Rest
The following quote succinctly describes the disease that many of us have.
“I resisted rest, fearing that if I stopped, I would fail – fail to earn “A”s, to earn enough money, to earn approval from friends and professors, to keep in shape… to please God. As hard as I worked, I was haunted by a deep, deep sense that I was never good enough and could never measure up to God’s standard for me. I knew in my head that my relationship with God relies more on His faithfulness than mine, but I was so fearful of spiritual complacency that I could not rest in His grace. I appended a string of “ifs” to “My grace is sufficient for you.” -Amanda Holm from the TEDS Graduate Scrawl
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Our souls resist rest. We cling to our futile efforts.
Rom 7:24-25 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
Because He Has Already Loved Us
“We try to live so that He will love us, rather than because He has already loved us.”
Lloyd Ogilvie
