The Subtle Sin
I was reminded of ‘the subtle sin’ as I listened to Tim Keller’s sermon on the prodigal sons (if you have never listened to it, please do! you can access it here). In Luke 15, both the younger brother (guy who likes to party) and the elder brother (guy who looks down on the guy who likes to party) are both using their father. Neither of them want their father. Instead, they want the father’s things.
So often, I think that I’m living for God, but instead I’m actually trying to use him for other things. For example, I think that I’m living for God when I seek his help in loving my wife and kids, but in reality my strength is dependent on what my wife and kids think of me. The examples could continue on and if you want me to share some more, I’d be happy to.
I’m writing this quick post to say that we use God all the time to try and get the gifts, and… I don’t think we even realize we’re doing that most of the time. God is the gift that we truly need, have, and must pursue.
The Gospel is Distinct from Our Response to It
The following comes from Graeme Goldsworthy’s According to Plan (p. 81-83). I found these quotes to be particularly helpful as it reminds us that the gospel is not our response to the gospel. I think that we often confuse the gospel (what Christ did for us and who he is for us) with a proper response to the gospel (belief, faith, confession, etc.). May we lift up Christ repeatedly, showing to one another and the world his beauty. As we increasingly see him, we will fall more and more in love with him and act accordingly.
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The main message of the Bible about Jesus Christ can easily become mixed with all sorts of things that are related to it. We see this in the way people define the gospel or preach it. But it is important to keep the gospel itself clearly distinct from our response to it or from the results of it in our lives and in the world. If our proper response to the gospel message is faith, then we should not make faith part of the gospel itself. It would be absurd to call people to have faith in faith! While the new birth bears a close relationship to faith in Christ, it is a mistake to speak of the new birth as if it were itself the gospel. Faith in the new birth as such will not save us…
Related to the gospel event are other important aspects of God’s work which are not themselves the gospel. If we believe the gospel we will probably also believe these, but they are not the focus of our trust the way that the saving work of Jesus is. We do not preach them as the heart of our message to unbelievers….
We note that what you or I do in response to the gospel is not itself the gospel. You cannot say that repentance and faith are the gospel. They are what the Holy Spirit enables us to do about the gospel. If you tell unbelievers that they should trust Christ, believe the good news, or confess their sin, these things are undoubtedly true, but they are not the gospel. We must tell them what it is about Christ that they should trust, what the good news is so that they can believe it and why sins should be confessed.
Grace Comes First
HT: Tim Wilcoxsen
“…if anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says, “What have you that you did not receive?” (1 Cor. 4:7), and, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Cor. 15:10). (Council of Orange: Canon 6)
On Mine Arm They Shall Trust
The following comes from Spurgeon’s Morning by Morning (per Aug. 31st):
“On mine arm shall they trust.” – Isaiah 49:5…..In seasons of severe trial, the Christian has nothing on earth that he can trust to, and is therefore compelled to cast himself on his God alone. When his vessel is on its beam-ends, and no human deliverance can avail, he must simply and entirely trust himself to the providence and care of God. Happy storm that wrecks a man on such a rock as this! O blessed hurricane that drives the soul to God, and God alone! There is no getting at our God sometimes because of the multitude of our friends; but when a man is so poor, so friendless, so helpless, that he has nowhere else to turn, he flies into his Father’s arms, and is blessedly clasped therein! When he is burdened with troubles, so pressing and so peculiar that he cannot tell them to any but his God, he may be thankful for them; for he will learn more of his Lord then than at any other time. Oh, tempest-tossed believer, it is a happy trouble that drives thee to thy Father! Now that thou hast only thy God to trust to, see that thou puttest thy full confidence in Him. Dishonor not thy Lord and Master by unworthy doubts and fears; But be strong in faith, giving glory to God. Show the world that thy God is worth ten thousand worlds to thee. Show rich men how rich thou art in thy poverty when the Lord God is thy helper. Show the strong man how strong thou art in thy weakness and when underneath thee are the everlasting arms. Now is the time for feats of faith and valiant exploits. Be strong and very courageous, and the Lord thy God shall certainly, as surely as he built the heavens and the earth, glorify Himself in thy weakness, and magnify His might in the midst of thy distress. The grandeur of the arch of heaven would be spoiled if the sky were supported by a single visible column, and your faith would lose its glory if it rested on anything discernible by the carnal eye. May the Holy Spirit give you rest in Jesus this day.
He Will Certainly Satisfy Those Longings
The following comes from Charles Spurgeon’s Morning by Morning (Per August 22nd). I read this last night per the prompting of my wife, and the Spirit accompanied these words as I read. I hunger for Christ, I long for Him, and upon reading these words last night I was filled with joy that this hunger and longing will certainly be satisfied. I hope that you will experience this as well.
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“I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, that I am sick of love.”
Song of Solomon 5:8
Such is the language of the believer panting after present fellowship with Jesus, he is sick for his Lord. Gracious souls are never perfectly at ease except they are in a state of nearness to Christ; for when they are away from him they lose their peace. The nearer to him, the nearer to the perfect calm of heaven; the nearer to him, the fuller the heart is, not only of peace, but of life, and vigour, and joy, for these all depend on constant intercourse with Jesus. What the sun is to the day, what the moon is to the night, what the dew is to the flower, such is Jesus Christ to us. What bread is to the hungry, clothing to the naked, the shadow of a great rock to the traveller in a weary land, such is Jesus Christ to us; and, therefore, if we are not consciously one with him, little marvel if our spirit cries in the words of the Song, “I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.” This earnest longing after Jesus has a blessing attending it: “Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after righteousness”; and therefore, supremely blessed are they who thirst after the Righteous One. Blessed is that hunger, since it comes from God: if I may not have the full-blown blessedness of being filled, I would seek the same blessedness in its sweet bud-pining in emptiness and eagerness till I am filled with Christ. If I may not feed on Jesus, it shall be next door to heaven to hunger and thirst after him. There is a hallowedness about that hunger, since it sparkles among the beatitudes of our Lord. But the blessing involves a promise. Such hungry ones “shall be filled” with what they are desiring. If Christ thus causes us to long after himself, he will certainly satisfy those longings; and when he does come to us, as come he will, oh, how sweet it will be!
Like this:
The Central Focus of Parenting
The following comes from Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Tedd Tripp:
The central focus of child rearing is to bring children to a sober assessment of themselves as sinners. They must understand the mercy of God, who offered Christ as a sacrifice for sinners. How is that accomplished? You must address the heart as the fountain of behavior, and the conscience as the God-given judge of right and wrong. The cross of Christ must be the central focus of your child rearing.
You want to see your child live a life that is embedded in the rich soil of Christ’s gracious work. The focal point of your discipline and correction must be your children seeing their utter inability to do the things that God requires unless they know the help and strength of God. Your correction must hold the standard of righteousness as high as God holds it. God’s standard is correct behavior flowing from a heart that loves God and has God’s glory as the sole purpose of life. This is not native to your children (nor to their parents). Discipline exposes your child’s inability to love his sister from his heart, or genuinely to prefer others before himself. Discipline leads to the cross of Christ where sinful people are forgiven. Sinners who come to Jesus in repentance and faith find grace and mercy. Jesus’ redemptive work entails forgiveness, internal transformation, and empowerment to live new lives.
The alternative is to reduce the standard to what may be fairly expected of your children without the grace of God. The alternative is to give them a law they can keep. The alternative is a lesser standard that does not require grace and does not cast them on Christ, but rather on their own resources.
I have spoken to many parents who feared they were producing little hypocrites who were proud and self-righteous. Hypocrisy and self-righteousness is the result of giving children a keepable law and telling them to be good. To the extent they are successful, they become like the Pharisees, people whose exterior is clean, while inside they are full of dirt and filth. The genius of Pharisaism was that it reduced the law to a keepable standard of externals that any self-disciplined person could do. In their pride and self-righteousness, they rejected Christ.
Correction and shepherding must focus on Christ. It is only in Christ that the child who has strayed and has experienced conviction of sin may find hope, forgiveness, salvation, and power to live.
Why Do You Lack Peace?
My primary response to my own dysfunction is to blame other people, the world, circumstances and even God. Norman Grubb helped me see that my lack of peace is the direct result of my sin, and my unwillingness to expose my sin to the light. (Per Continuous Revival by Norman Grubb):
We all can recognize that as a beautiful description of the abiding presence of Jesus in the heart, His peace, joy and presence filling us to overflowing, with no shadow between. We can see the clear sparkling water of life welling up within and flowing over the thirsty souls around through look, and word, and deed. But here comes the point of it in this message of revival. We are to recognize that “cups running over” is the NORMAL daily experience of the believer walking with Jesus, not the abnormal or occasional, but the normal, continuous experience. But that just isn’t so in the lives of practically all of us. Those cups running over get pretty muddled up; other things besides the joy of the Lord flow out of us. We are often much more conscious of emptiness, or dryness, or hardness, or disturbance, or fear, or worry than we are of the fulness of His presence and overflowing joy and peace. And now comes the point. What stops that moment-by-moment flow? The answer is only one — Sin. But we by no means usually accept or recognize that. We have many other more convenient names for those disturbances of heart. We say it is nerves that cause us to speak impatiently — not sin. We say it is tiredness that causes us to speak the sharp word at home — not sin. We say it is the pressure of work which causes us to lose our peace, get worried, act or speak hastily — not sin. We say it is our difficult or hurtful neighbor who causes us resentment or dislike, or even hate — but not sin. Anything but sin. We go to psychiatrists or psychologists to get inner problems unravelled — tension, strain, disquiet, dispeace — but anything which causes the cups to cease running over is SIN.
As High As The Heavens Are Above The Earth…
Psalm 103:10-14
(10) He does not deal with us according to our sins,
nor repay us according to our iniquities.
(11) For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
(12) as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.
(13) As a father shows compassion to his children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.
(14) For he knows our frame;
he remembers that we are dust.
Who Is Saving You?
The following comes from By Grace Alone by Sinclair Ferguson (p.75-76):
Your salvation rests not on what you have done but on what Christ has done. You, therefore, can be sure of it, no matter how weak the faith by which you hold on to Christ, no matter how strong the attacks and accusations of Satan may be.
Remember that you are not saved by increased levels of holiness, however desirable it is that you should reach them. Indeed, while we often say that we are “saved by faith” or by “faith in Christ,” as Benjamin B. Warfield shrewdly comments, it is not been faith in Christ that saves us. It is Christ who saves us – through faith. Your faith is a poor and crumbling thing, as is your spiritual service. Jesus Christ alone is qualified and able to save you because of what He has done. Cling to anything else and you are relying on flotsam and jetsam floating on a perilous sea. It will bring you down under the waves. If you should ever experience anything like the satanic attack Bunyan’s Christian endured, you will be lost. But cling to Christ Jesus and His righteousness, and nothing can sink you.
When you grasp that, you begin to realize why and how it is that you can live in the face of such demonic attacks as these. You are not pushed back on your own resources or spiritual qualities. You are able to rest exclusively on what Jesus Christ has done for you. For what He has done for you is absolutely perfect.
What Christ is doing in you is still incomplete. But in what Jesus Christ has done for you there is not a single tiny crack that the satanic arrows can penetrate. Jesus Christ is your shield.
