Keeping the Gospel in front of you daily is even more
important than making sure you eat three square meals a day. Continually reminding yourself of your
standing before God in Christ is essential if you are going to live as a
disciple of Jesus Christ in such a way as to render loving obedience to
Him. All our striving to live according
to the Law of God apart from a functional faith in the Gospel is both
frustrating and fruitless.
Yet a functional faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is
not a reliance upon having faith. A
functional faith is a joyful reliance upon Jesus Christ and the benefits we
received from him that secure our standing under grace before a holy God. Don’t take any comfort from having
faith. Don’t assure your soul that
because you have faith everything is okay with you. Confidence before God in your possessing
faith is to turn faith into the grounds of your salvation. This can be a form of pride! Rather faith boasts in the cross of Jesus
Christ. Faith looks outside of itself to
its saving object Jesus Christ. Drawing
a sense of spiritual well being from having faith is like praising yourself for
eating a lavish meal rather than praising the superb quality of the food and
the one who cooked the meal.
Faith certainly serves an important function in the
Christian life. You can’t be a Christian
without faith, just like you cannot be healthy without eating and
drinking. Yet the nutrients from
the food and the water or milk are what bring health to your body. Likewise it is Jesus Christ who sustains you
spiritually. Faith is not the power of
salvation, the Gospel is. Faith is
simply the empty hands that are opened to receive Christ. However, just like eating and drinking we
must continue to look to the Gospel in faith.
The Gospel is as necessary for us to live out the Christian life as it
is to begin the Christian life. The
Gospel not only justifies us and reconciles us to God and is what guarantees
eternal life, the Gospel is necessary if we are to mature and grow daily. The Gospel is the good news we need to hear
daily so we might be encouraged, lifted up and strengthened to resist temptation
and to press through with obedience to the Father. This is why we need to proclaim it to ourselves daily.
Do you know how to
preach the Gospel to yourself? Do you
know why this is so important? Many of
us theoretically believe that by trusting in Christ we have been forgiven and
justified before God. Yet, most of us as
Christians still carry the carcass of the Pharisee around in our hearts. A Pharisee basically is one who functionally
believes that it is by his or her performance that God’s favor and love are
secured and maintained. Some Pharisees
actually believe (like the believer who trusts in his or her faith) that they
perform well. They comfort their hearts
before God by looking at how well they live their lives (or think they are
living their lives). Their boast to
themselves and others and even to God is found in their performance. Christian Pharisees give a kind of lip
service to justification. “Oh, yes
Jesus saved me and I am forgiven and accepted before God by what He has done.” Yet underneath, in their heart their reliance
is really upon themselves. The problem
with the self-confident Christian Pharisee is they really do not see themselves
in light of the Law of God. This in
part is due to the fact that they look merely to the letter of the Law and not
to the spirit. This was the problem with
the rich young ruler who declared to Jesus after he listed the commandments,
“All of these I have kept from my youth.”
You see, the Gospel really does not go deep enough into
one’s heart and mind unless it is preceded by a robust and thorough
understanding of the doctrine of sin, particularly the Bible’s teaching on
total depravity and total inability due to original sin. Without an understanding of sin then all one
gets is “gospel light” at best and no Gospel in the worst case. The Pharisees of Jesus day diminished the
full scope of the law and hence failed to see just how sinful and needy they
were. Sadly, many professing Christians
do the same thing.
On the other end of the spectrum is the defeated
Pharisee. This is the guy or gal who
still believe that when push comes to shove, it is their performance that will
either secure God’s favor or lose God’s favor.
They confess faith in Christ but at the end of the day they remain
looking at how well or how poorly they have performed. There may be a few days when they see their
commitment to the Lord as working well.
During these brief episodes they may have some comfort, some assurance
that God really loves them. Yet sooner
or later, they will mess up and they dive into despair and fear for certainly
they have lost God’s love. How could God
love them after what they did and did again for the umpteenth time? They are still Pharisees, just defeated ones
who still hope (but they lose a bit more of it every time they sin) that they
can one day perform well and consistent enough for God to love them.
The Gospel really, really, really humbles you. You cannot truly believe the Gospel and think
for a moment that you perform well enough to either secure God’s favor on your
own or buttress the work of Christ, so at least in part, God’s accepts you for
what you have done. No, the Gospel
pulls the foundation of all self-confidence and self-righteousness out from
under our feet. The Gospel tells us
that unless we stand on Christ alone we do not stand at all before God. Yet, the Gospel really, really, really
comforts and encourages you. It
proclaims that having been justified by faith you have peace with God through
Jesus Christ through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace
in which we stand (Romans 5:1-2). It is
not your performance even after coming to Christ that secures you this standing
in grace but it is Christ’s performance.
Jesus Christ propitiated the wrath of God by his perfect
life sacrificed upon the Cross. The
infinite benefit of him doing this becomes yours through the gift of
justification. Once you rest in Christ
by faith God’s wrath is forever removed from you. There is therefore now no condemnation for
those who are in Christ Jesus. This is
true even when you sin! For the
believer God is indeed no longer angry because the believer in Jesus Christ has become a justified, restored and adopted child of God who is dearly and
forever loved by the Father.
Now holding to this Gospel by preaching it to yourself
daily has as its aim your personal holiness.
It is actually by believing the Gospel that you will find motivation and
power not to sin but to live a life of love for God that moves in the
trajectory of obedience. This does not
mean that you will not sin but it means that even when you do and feel sorry
for it and confess your sin, you have not lost God’s love by your sin, nor have
your restored God’s love by your repentance.
It is just that amazing. The more you see this the more of the Pharisee's carcass you lose - good riddance!
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