Already Sons
Here’s a quote from a friend, Brian Wildman. He left this as a comment on a previous post and it struck me. It pertains to the fact that we are sons of God in Christ now. It seems to me that the crucial factor here is belief. I could use a good dose of increased belief in what Christ has accomplished for me and who I am in Him.
I need to stop trying so hard to become something I already am — HIS.
My Righteousness is Jesus Christ Himself
The following quote comes from John Bunyan (a 17th century, English writer and preacher):
“But one day… this sentence fell upon my soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven”; and methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I say, as my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say to me “He wants my righteousness,” for that was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ himself, “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”
Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed… Oh! methought, Christ! Christ! there was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes… Now I could look from myself to him, and would reckon that all those graces of God that now were green on me, were yet but like those cracked groats and four-pence-half-pennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their gold is in their trunks at home: Oh! I saw my gold was in my trunk at home! In Christ my Lord and Saviour. Now Christ was all; all my righteousness, all my sanctification, and all my redemption.”
I Can Relate
I came across the following quote by Rose Marie Miller in Alan Kraft’s Good News for Those Trying Harder (great book):
“I love to be in control. I am addicted to duty, order, my rights, my ways, and to outward performance. I am outwardly moral, yet inside I am full of anxieties, fears and guilt. For years, I heard the words of the gospel, but I never heard the music.”
…..
I’ve barely heard the music, but the little music of the gospel that I have heard blows me away. The gospel sets me free from the need to control and my addictions to duty, order, rights, performance. I crave this music and yet my hearing comes only by grace.
I try so hard to hear it but am coming to understand that my efforts don’t tune my ears. God’s mercy does.
United with Beauty
Per C.S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory:
What more, you may ask, do we want? … We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
Soren Kierkegard’s Definition of Sin
Per Tim Keller’s interview with the Washington Post (2008)
“Sin is building your identity on anything besides God.”
…..
What are you relying on to feel okay? Is it being a good husband, wife, father, mother, son or daughter? Or are you relying on academic achievements, financial success, athletic ability, or even the amount of impact you are having on other people? The evil one is subtle and persistent in his efforts to sell us on relying on anything besides (or in addition to Jesus).
We need to rely exclusively on what Jesus did for us @ Calvary, period. We need to be found in Him alone. We bring nothing to the table; rather, He has accomplished all things and our life is found in Him and Him alone.
Nothing to Prove
Great quote by Jack Miller @ Justin Buzzard’s blog:
“You don’t have anything to prove to us or the world. The work is finished at Calvary, and that work has unlimited meaning and value. Keep your focus there.”
HT: Dash
Done, Done, Done
Check out the following from Dane Ortlund:
The gospel is not advice but news. Not telling us what to do but telling us what’s already been done.
Nothing In My Hand I Bring, Simply to Your Cross I Cling
From John Stott’s book, The Cross of Christ… One of the greatest reminders of the gospel that I have encountered.
“The proud human heart is there revealed. We insist on paying for what we have done. We cannot stand the humiliation of acknowledging our bankruptcy and allowing somebody else to pay for us. The notion that this somebody else should be God himself is just too much to take. We would rather perish than repent, rather lose ourselves than humble ourselves.
Moreover, only the gospel demands such an abject self-humbling on our part, for it alone teaches divine substitution as the only way of salvation. Other religions teach different forms of self-salvation. Hinduism, for example, makes a virtue of refusing to admit to sinfulness. In a lecture before the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, Swami Vivekanada said, “The Hindu refuses to call you sinners. Ye are the children of God; the sharers of immortal bliss, holy and perfect beings. Ye divinities on earth, sinners? It is a sin to call a man a sinner. It is a standing libel on human nature.” Besides, if it has to be conceded that human beings do sin, then Hinduism insists that they can save themselves.
As Brunner put it, “All other forms of religion – not to mention philosophy – deal with the problem of guilt apart from the intervention of God, and therefore they come to a cheap conclusion. In them man is spared the final humiliation of knowing that the Mediator must bear the punishment instead of him. To this yoke he need not submit. He is not stripped absolutely naked.”
But we cannot escape the embarrassment of standing stark naked before God. It is no use for us to try to cover up like Adam and Eve in the garden. Our attempts at self-justification are as ineffectual as their fig leaves. We have to acknowledge our nakedness, see the divine substitute wearing our filthy rags instead of us, and allow him to clothe us with his own righteousness. Nobody has ever put it better than Augustus Toplady in his immortal hymn “Rock off Ages”:
Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to your Cross I cling;
Naked, come to you for dress;
Helpless, look to you for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly;
Wash me, Savior or I die.
