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If you don’t have time to read this right now, clip it and save it for later. And if you read it now, commit to rereading it. Then read it at least one more time.

It is rich, wise, and timely for all of us. It’s a quote from the great Lion of Princeton, B.B. Warfield (1851–1921), from his essay, “’Miserable-Sinner Christianity’ in the Hands of the Rationalists,” in The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, vol. 7, pp. 113-114.

(HT: Ryan Kelly)

We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all.

This is not true of us only “when we believe.”

It is just as true after we have believed.

It will continue to be true as long as we live.

Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be.

It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest.

There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place, or that can take a place along with Him.

We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace.

Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, we are still in ourselves just “miserable sinners”: “miserable sinners” saved by grace to be sure, but “miserable sinners” still, deserving in ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath. That is the attitude which the Reformers took, and that is the attitude which the Protestant world has learned from the Reformers to take, toward the relation of believers to Christ.

There is emphasized in this attitude the believer’s continued sinfulness in fact and in act; and his continued sense of his sinfulness. And this carries with it recognition of the necessity of unbroken penitence throughout life. The Christian is conceived fundamentally in other words as a penitent sinner.

But that is not all that is to be said: it is not even the main thing that must be said.

It is therefore gravely inadequate to describe the spirit of “miserable sinner Christianity” as “the spirit of continuous but not unhopeful penitence.” It is not merely that it is too negative a description, and that we must at least say, “the spirit of continuous though hopeful penitence.” It is wholly uncomprehending description, and misplaces the emphasis altogether.

The spirit of this Christianity is a spirit of penitent indeed, but overmastering exultation.

The attitude of the “miserable sinner” is not only not one of despair; it is not even one of depression; and not even one of hesitation or doubt; hope is too weak a word to apply to it.

It is an attitude of exultant joy.

Only this joy has its ground not in ourselves but in our Savior.

We are sinners and we know ourselves to be sinners, lost and helpless in ourselves.

But we are saved sinners; and it is our salvation which gives the tone to our life, a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert; for it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much, and who, loving, rejoices much.

The Furious Longing of God (and everything else that he’s written too

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The portrait of Peter, the rock who proved to be a sand pile, speaks to every ragamuffin across the generations.  Lloyd Ogilvie notes: “Peter had built his whole relationship with Jesus Christ on his assumed capacity to be adequate.  That’s why he took his denial of the Lord so hard.  His strength, loyalty, and faithfulness were his self-generated assets of discipleship.  The fallacy in Peter’s mind was this: he believed his relationship was dependent on his consistency in producing the qualities he thought had earned him the Lord’s approval.

“Many of us face the same problem.  We project into the Lord our own measured standard of acceptance.  Our whole understanding of him is based in a quid pro quo of bartered love.  He will love us if we are good, moral, and diligent.  But we have turned the tables; we try to live so that he will love us, rather than living because he has already loved us.”

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Almost daily I have to physically restrain my son. It is a physical battle to change his diaper and clean his body. Many times while cleaning and changing him I have been kicked in the face, bitten, smacked, clawed, or hit with flying objects. It is not all that uncommon to come away from a cleanup with a bloody lip or a new scratch.

Jake is the size of a small man now…and stronger than most full sized men. It takes at least two people to bathe him—one to hold him down, the other to scrub. My wife and I (and now my biggest teenage son) have developed a system of strength in numbers as we attempt to get in, get the job done, and get out without too much damage.

I must confess that on many mornings I leave Jake’s room dejected, hurt and emotionally drained. And many nights I find myself restraining the violent resistance of a struggling boy by wrapping him in my arms against his will and gently whispering, “I love you. I love you. I love you…no matter what.”

Most children are relational and have the ability to reciprocate affection. But what happens when the child cannot communicate love? How does the relationship between parent and child grow and thrive when the child is not relational? What bonds parent and child together when the child does not share in the affection? How do you care for someone that resists your care with violence and opposes your very presence even when your presence is for his good?

The only possible way to make any sense of this kind of relationship is to experience it through the truly unconditional love of God the Father. As I reflect on my seemingly one sided relationship with my son, I am forced to see how it is sometimes a portrait of my own relationship with God.

In the defiance of my son to be loved, cared for and washed clean, I am shown a portrait of the cross. The one-sided violence of love reveals a blurred vision of my own redemption, as a bloody, beaten, crucified Savior wraps me in His arms, subdues me with His affection and whispers in my ear, “I love you. I love you. I love you…no matter what.”

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In Tim Keller’s book, The Prodigal God, he proposes that, “Careful obedience to God’s law may serve as a strategy for rebelling against God.” In essence, he is saying that doing all the ‘right things’ we think bring us closer to God, can separate us from Him instead. Is he suggesting that we curtail our Bible study and start sleeping till noon on Sundays? The answer is most definitely NO.

From the pulpit, we hear sermon after sermon emphasizing the obedience that God expects. Obedience can become synonymous with regular church attendance, involvement in a ministry, and following the community covenant. Often unknowingly, this emphasis on obedience leads to a performance oriented Christianity. It begins to place a huge burden on us, by telling us to try and achieve something we never can. In doing so, convincing us that our personal performance is what merits God’s favor.

There is nothing wrong with obeying Gods commands; nothing wrong with going to Church; nothing wrong with striving to live every day for Him. However, I want to pose two questions… ‘Why do we do all of these things?’ and ‘What is behind our motivations?’

Church attendance, pursuit of success in Jesus’ name, and service to others become our Christianity, and why we see ourselves as children of God. Furthermore, these ‘good’ things are what we build our identity around, and where we find rest and peace. As a result, our obedience becomes a means to an end; we obey in order to attain salvation, or we obey because it makes us feel content in living a good Christian life.

Consider this quote from the soon to be president of Wheaton College, Dr. Phil Ryken:

“Knowing our acceptance in Christ, we must understand that we cannot be any more loved by the Father or any more saved by the Son. It is much easier to practice and preach the law, but God’s plan is grace.”

In every other major religion, the emphasis is placed on what one does in order to attain salvation. The same holds true under the law, and as Dr. Ryken points out, it is convenient to turn our faith into following a set of rules. This type of Christianity can lead down a deadly spiritual path, and is what Jesus criticized the Pharisees for.

For many Christians, it seems as if we miss the point as to why we live our Christian lives. Wheaton students know about salvation, about the story of Christ, even about Church history. If you ask anyone on campus what Christianity is all about, you will almost certainly get an answer reflecting that we are sinners saved by grace through faith in Jesus. We’ve sung the hymns a thousand times and have been taught about Jesus since our Sunday school days. We’ve now moved on to more important things like developing our systematic theology or learning the intricacies of implementing our faith into economics, politics, or philosophy. Amongst all of this, we forget the message at the heart of our faith, and the freedom that comes with this “good news.”

I want to suggest that we go back to the basics and consider the value in being saved by grace alone. The concept of grace completely offends our pride, and is why we tend to shy away from it. In some form or another, we want to be able to point towards our service to others, our church attendance, and our moral résumés and think that our efforts had some part to play. If not, what were they all for? Our inclination is to keep trying to include ourselves as part of the salvation process. This happens when we begin to believe that it’s Jesus plus our own efforts that bring us into right relationship with Him, when in fact it’s just Jesus.

So why am I writing about the gospel message of Jesus Christ to a college that is “for Christ and His Kingdom?” The truth is that even believers need to be reminded of the Gospel. I feel like I need to hear it everyday. It’s far too easy to reduce our faith down to performance where our good behavior merits our salvation and favor in Gods eyes.

The gospel is not about what we do for God; it’s about what He has done for us. The gospel says, ‘I am loved and accepted unconditionally, and therefore I believe and obey.’ When we truly grasp that, we begin to be transformed. We start to act out of love that comes from the knowledge that we have truly been set free.

In the hymn, It is Finished, James Proctor records these words:

Lay your deadly “doing” down—

Down at Jesus’ feet;

Stand in Him, in Him alone,

Gloriously complete.

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The great theologian B. B. Warfield on why the gospel is needed for believers:

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only when we believe. It is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be. It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest.

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It is an absolute and unique teaching in all the world, to teach people, through Christ, to live as if there were no law or wrath or punishment. In a sense, they do not exist any longer for the Christian, but only total grace and mercy for Christ’s sake. 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. In fact, to those outside of Christian righteousness, the law needs to be expounded in all its force. Why? So that people who think they have power to be righteous before God will be humbled by the law and understand they are sinners. Therefore we must be careful to use the law appropriately. If we used the law in order to be accepted by God through obedience, then Christian righteousness becomes mixed up with earned/moral righteousness in our minds. If we try to earn our righteousness by doing many good deeds, we actually do nothing. We neither please God through our works-righteousnessnor do we honor the purpose for which the law was given. 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. 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 becomefor 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, who knows no sin or death, but is eternal righteousness and eternal life.

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Stop tinkering with your soul and look away to the perfect One.

-A.W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God

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Paul Tripp, What Did You Expect? Redeeming the Realities of Marriage (pp. 51-52)

[God's] grace purposes to expose and free you from your bondage to you. His grace is meant to bring you to the end of yourself so that you willing finally begin to place your identity, your meaning and purpose, and your inner sense of well-being in him.

So he places you in a comprehensive relationship with another flawed person, and he places that relationship right in the middle of a very broken world.

To add to this, he designs circumstances for you that you would have never designed for yourself.

All this is meant to bring you to the end of yourself, because that is where true righteousness begins.

He wants you to give up.

He wants you to abandon your dream.

He wants you to face the futility of trying to manipulate the other person into your service.

He knows there is no life to be found in these things.

What does this practically mean?

It means the trouble that you face in your marriage is not an evidence of the failure of grace.

No, these troubles are grace.

They are tools God uses to pry us out of the stultifying confines of the kingdom of self so that we can be free to luxuriate in the big-sky glories of the kingdom of God.

This means that you and I will never understand our marriages and never be satisfied with them until we understand that marriage is not an end to itself.

No, the reality is that marriage has been designed by God to be a means to an end.

When you make it the end, bad things happen.

But when you begin to understand that it is a means to an end, then you begin to enjoy and see the value in things that you would not have been able to enjoy before.

Tripp doesn’t quote C.S. Lewis here, but Lewis often made a similar point about the difference between ultimate things and good things—between first things and secondary things—and knowing the difference. For example, in 1940 Lewis wrote:

[Sensual love] ceases to be a devil when it ceases to be a god.

So many things—nay every real thing—is good if only it will be humble and ordinate.

Or one of my favorite Lewis quotes:

When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now.

Insofar as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all.

When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased.

—C. S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis (8 November, 1952)