Being Clean

"It's not what goes into your body that defiles you; 

you are defiled by what comes from your heart."

Mark 7:15

One of the many reasons I love Mark's account of Jesus' life is the way Mark depicts Jesus as confrontational. From the very beginning of Mark, Jesus comes proclaiming the Kingdom of God. In doing so, he confronts our tendency to make ourselves the king of our own little kingdom. He challenges our reality by confronting our misconceptions of who we are, and who we think God is. 

One passage in which Jesus does this is in Mark 7:1-23. You see, going all the way back in the Old Testament, there is a big problem. Because humankind fell into sin, we cannot come into the presence of God unless we are clean (spotless, without blemish, blameless, without sin). In fact, this is a very big deal to God. That is why in Leviticus there are extensive rules about cleanliness and purity. That is why  there was a day of atonement once a year, and the high priest who was to go before God and atone for the sins of the people had to spend a week preparing himself, washing himself, making sure he was clean. 

This may seem odd, but think of it this way. When we go to meet an important person or have an important event, we also prepare for it. We will take a shower, get a haircut, put on make up, wear our nicest clothes, etc... The same goes for how we are supposed to approach God.

Imagine you own a house. It is perfectly white. It is painted white on the outside, the carpet is white, all the couches are white, the walls are white, the tables are white; everything is bright shining white. Now imagine a person covered in mud comes to your door and wants to come in. It's not going to happen. This is also a reality between us and God. This is why there were the Old Testament purity laws. 

And this is where Mark 7 comes in. Jesus, interacting with the pharisees, confronts their misconceptions. In this passage, the Pharisees had a problem because Jesus' disciples weren't following the traditional purity laws. For example, they weren't washing their hands before they ate, they don't wash their cups and plates the proper way. For the pharisees, this was how we maintained our purity before God. 

I love how Jesus challenges the Pharisees. He doesn't come at them attacking their zeal to be pure. Rather, he gets at the heart of the problem (literally and figuratively). Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah and says to them, 

"These people honor me with their lips, 

but their hearts are far from me.

Their worship is farce, 

for they teach man-made ideas as the commands from God" Mark 7:6-7

The problem was that the pharisees thought they could make themselves clean by their own actions. They thought they could be pure before God through religious acts. Jesus confronts this by stating the real problem. The real problem isn't that on the outside they are unclean or impure, it's that their hearts are jacked up. The real problem is a heart problem. The pharisees may have performed religious acts of cleanliness, but their hearts were filthy. 

At this point, it's easy to point at the pharisees and jeer at their ignorance. However, we are not any different. We may not look to Old Testament laws to save face before God, but in some way, shape, form, or fashion, we are all trying to become clean before God. We all look to 'DO" something in order to make us right, to give us worth, or to give our existence significance. 

And this is is where Jesus speaks to us. By confronting the Pharisees, Jesus is telling us that the thing that really makes us unclean is our heart. The problem isn't the externals as much as it is the internal. Further, this is a problem we ALL have. It isn't just the Pharisees. It is us! And as long as we are looking to "DO" something to fix it, it will never work. We could never possibly clean ourselves up enough to be perfectly pure before the eyes of God. 

Back to the white house example (not the presidents home, but a house that is purely white). What Jesus is saying is that while we are standing outside the house that is sparkling white, we could never scrub hard enough to make ourselves worthy for entrance. It doesn't matter what we try to use (religion included), it won't work. What we need is a heart transplant from the inside out. 

This is where the good news of the gospel comes in. When Jesus came to earth and died, he essentially came and lived the pure, clean life that we should have lived, and he died the death of someone who was impure. He did this is substitution for our uncleanliness. Further, because he was the only one who lived a truly pure life, he offers to us his very life. He sees us sitting outside the white house, scrubbing hard, and says to us, "That will never work. But receive me. I will make you clean from the inside out. I can get you on the VIP guest list into the white house." And with one touch, we are made clean. Further, he stays by our side, continuing to transform our hearts from those of stone, to those who desire to walk with and worship the living God. 

The Essense of the Christian Faith

"The determining factor in our relationship with God is not our past or present, but Christ's past and present.

'How then does it work?' It works like this. God accepts this righteousness of Christ, this perfect righteousness face to face with the Law, which He honored in every respect. He has kept it and given obedience to it [through his perfect life], and he has borne its penalty [through his death]. The Law is fully satisfied. God's way of salvation, says Paul, is that. He gives to us the righteousness of Christ. If we have seen our need and go to God and confess it, God will give us his own Son's righteousness. He imputes Christ's righteousness to us, who believe in Him, and regards us as righteous, and declares and pronounces us to be righteous in Him. That is the way of salvation, the Christian way of salvation...

To make it quite practical let me say that there is a very simple way of testing yourself to know whether you believe that... [After] I have explained the way of justification...to them, then I say: 'Well, then, you are now ready to say that you are a Christian?' And they hesitate. And I know they have not understood. Then I say: 'What is the matter, why are you hesitating?' And they say: 'I do not feel that I am good enough.' At once I know that in a sense I have been wasting my breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves; their idea still is that they have to make themselves good enough to be a Christian, good enough to be accepted with Christ. They have to do it! 'I am not good enough.' It sounds very modest, but it is the lie of the devil, it is a denial of the faith... The essence of the Christian faith is to say that He is good enough and that I am in Him!

As long as you go on thinking about yourself and saying: 'Ah, yes, I would like to, but I am not good enough; I am a sinner, a great sinner,' you are denying God and you will never be happy. You will continue to be cast down and disquieted. You will think you are better at times and then again you will find that you are not as good as you thought you were... How can I put this plainly? It does not matter if you have almost entered into the depths of hell, if you are guilty of murder as well as every other vile sin, it does not matter from the standpoint of being justified before God. You are no more hopeless than the most respectable...person in the world. Do you believe that?"  

D.M. Lloyd-Jones, Spiritual Depression

The Gospel As Contra-Conditional

This week I'm enjoying taking a class with Scotty Smith called, 'Disciplines of Grace'. Yesterday we talked about the gospel being contra-conditional. This is opposed to the gospel being conditional or unconditional.


The gospel as conditional....If you obey me, I will love you

The gospel as unconditional....I love you without any conditions

The gospel as contra-conditional....I love you because I delight in my Son who graciously fulfilled ALL your conditions

As human beings, we primarily operate in a conditional mode. Think about it. Grades, sports, jobs; these are all based on performance. An A receives more praise than an F, being 1st string is more celebrated than being a bench warmer, and climbing the corporate ladder comes with a fatter pay-check. This doesn't go to mention that, even though we wouldn't want to admit it, to some capacity all our relationships are conditional. We like people because of similar interests, because of what they can give us, or because they make us feel good. To some extent, these are all conditions.

On the other end of the spectrum is unconditional. This claims that there are no conditions, and that God's love is accompanied by no character. This unconditional view ignores God's absolute holiness. God is all-glorious and perfectly right. Therefore, he desires to bring his creation into this 'rightness', or shall we say, 'righteousness'. If you think about it, this view really cheapens God's love, because, in it, God no longer rescues us and restores us from everything that is wrong with us and the world, but loves us in a way that says nothing is wrong with us in the first place.

On the contrary to both ends of this spectrum, the gospel is completely other. It is contra-conditional. There are conditions to God's love. He is perfect and holy. We willingly choose to disobey these conditions and live apart from our gracious Creator. Yet, the beauty of the gospel is that God did something amazing. He did something that still has people turning their heads today. God became man to  fulfill the conditions we failed to achieve. The good news is that Jesus came, lived the life I should have lived, and died the death I should have died. He did these COMPLETELY. That is why on the cross he cried out, "IT IS FINISHED". The gospel being contra-conditional is amazing because if Jesus perfectly fulfilled all the conditions, that means, once we are in Christ, once we put our faith in Him, we can't be any more loved. We are fully blessed. All the blessings Jesus achieved, we now have. This is amazing. David Powlison says this well,

"God has blessed me because His Son fulfilled the conditions I could never achieve. Contrary to what I deserve, he loves me. And now I can begin to change, not because I can earn his love, but because I've already received it."

What Abortion?

A great article written by Tullian Tchividjian. I needed this.

HT: Tullian Tchividjian

What Abortion?

Back in June I preached a series of six sermons entitled Pictures of Grace. Of all the sermons series’ I’ve preached, I probably enjoyed this one the most. I took our church through the Gospels and looked at various events in the life and ministry of Jesus where the shocking, counter-intuitive nature of amazing grace is on display. Each week we looked intently at how Jesus wrecked people afresh with his grace, turning everything that makes sense in our conditional world upside-down and setting sinners free.

Well, I went back to the first of those six sermons yesterday as I was doing some research and was struck again at how crazy God’s grace really is.

I began that series by by preaching from Luke 7:36-50. This is the famous account of the sinful woman (most likely a prostitute) barging into a party of religious leaders and washing the feet of Jesus with her tears of repentance. I pointed out that two rescues are happening in this passage: the obvious rescue of the immoral person but also the rescue of the moral person.

Normally when we think of people in need of God’s rescuing grace, we think of the unrighteous and the immoral. But what’s fascinating to me is that throughout the Bible, it’s the immoral person that gets the Gospel before the moral person; it’s the prostitute who gets grace; it’s the Pharisee who doesn’t. What we see in this story is that God’s grace wrecks and then rescues, not only the promiscuous but the pious. The Pharisee in this story can’t understand what Jesus is doing by allowing this woman to touch him because he assumes that God is for the clean and competent. But Jesus here shows him that God is for the unclean and incompetent and that when measured against God’s perfect holiness we’re all unclean and incompetent. Jesus shows him that the gospel isn’t for winners, but losers: it’s for the weak and messed up person, not the strong and mighty person. It’s not for the well-behaved, but the dead.

I was reminded once again that Jesus came not to effect a moral reformation but a mortal resurrection (moral reformations can, and have, taken place throughout history without Jesus. But only Jesus can raise the dead, over and over and over again). As Gerhard Forde put it, “Christianity is not the move from vice to virtue, but rather the move from virtue to grace.”

Wrecking every religious category he had, Jesus tells the Pharisee that he has a lot to learn from the prostitute, not the other way around.

The prostitute on the other hand walks into a party of religious people and falls at the feet of Jesus without any care as to what others are thinking and saying. She’s at the end of herself. More than wanting to avoid an uncomfortable situation, she wanted to be clean-she needed to be forgiven. She was acutely aware of her guilt and shame. She knew she needed help. She understood at a profound level that God’s grace doesn’t demand that you get clean before you come to Jesus. Rather, our only hope for getting clean is to come to Jesus. Only in the Gospel does love precede loveliness. Everywhere else loveliness precedes love.

I closed the sermon by recalling a story that Rod Rosenbladt told me when we were together at the Gospel Coalition conference in Chicago. It’s a story about a middle-aged woman who needed help from her pastor.

She went to her pastor and said, “Pastor, you know that I had an abortion a number of years ago?”  “Yes,” the Pastor replied.  “Well, I need to talk to you about the man I’ve since met.”  “Alright,” replied the Pastor.

“Well, we met a while back, and started dating and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then things got more serious between us and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. A while later we got engaged and I thought, I need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. Then we got married and I thought, I really need to tell him about the abortion. But I just couldn’t. So I needed to talk to someone, Pastor, and you’re it.”

The Pastor replied, “You know, we have a service for this. Let’s go through that together.” So they did – a service of confession and absolution.

When they were finished, she said to him, “Now I think I have the courage to tell my new husband about my abortion.  Thanks, Pastor.”

And the Pastor replied to her, “What abortion?”

What the Pharisee, the prostitute, and everyone in between, need to remember every day is that Christ offers forgiveness full and free from both our self-righteous goodness and our unrighteous badness. This is the hardest thing for us to believe as Christians. We think it’s a mark of spiritual maturity to hang onto our guilt and shame. We’ve sickly concluded that the worse we feel, the better we actually are. The declaration of Psalm 103:12 is the most difficult for us to grasp and embrace: “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” To be convinced in our hearts, said Martin Luther, “that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing.” Or, as Corrie ten Boom once said, “God takes our sins—the past, present, and future—and dumps them in the sea and puts up a sign that says ‘No Fishing allowed.’” This seems too good to be true…it can’t be that simple, that easy, that real!

It is true! No strings attached. No but’s. No conditions. No need for balance. If you are a Christian, you are right now under the completely sufficient imputed righteousness of Christ. Your pardon is full and final. In Christ, you’re forgiven. You’re clean. It is finished.

What abortion?

God All-Sufficient

O Lord of Grace...

Accept His worthiness for my unworthiness,
his sinlessness for my transgressions,
his purity for my uncleanliness,
his sincerity for my guile,
his truth for my deceits,
his meekness for my pride,
his constancy for my backslidings,
his love for my enmity,
his fullness for my emptiness,
his faithfulness for my treachery,
his obedience for my lawlessness,
his glory for my shame,
his devotedness for my waywardness,
his holy life for my unchaste ways,
his righteousness for my dead works,
his death for my life.

-Valley of Vision, A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions

Observation #8: Justification Has Both a Negative and a Positive Side

From Anthony Hoekem's 'Saved By Grace'.

"On the negative side, it means the forgiveness of our sins. On the positive side, it includes our adoption as children of God and our reception of the right to eternal life. "

In other words, justification includes both the cleansing of our sin, and the full rights of adoption. As we've discussed previously, the full rights of adoption as sons of God includes the imputation of Christ's righteousness. 

Observation #6: Justification Involves the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness to Us

This idea of imputation is indeed critical to understanding the biblical doctrine of justification. The word imputation in itself is a legal term. It means to reckon to the account of another. The previous observation dealt with Christ's substitutionary work on our behalf. Imputation is the outworking of this substitutionary work. 

In regards to justification, imputation works in two ways. We talked earlier about Christ dying in substitution of our place. This is one of the ways in which imputation is present in the Gospel. Our sins are imputed upon Christ. In other words, even though Jesus was perfect, He became a curse for us (Galatians 3:15) and our iniquity was laid upon Him (Isaiah 53).  This is the negative aspect of imputation. Christ has taken upon our sins. Our sins deserved God's wrath, but the wrath that we deserve was reckoned to Jesus on the cross. That is why Jesus had to suffer the way he did, because our sins were imputed to Him.

The positive aspect of imputation is the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers. By the righteousness of Christ, I am referring to the merit that Christ possesses based upon His perfect life of obedience and His divine sonship. 

Martin Luther called this concept the 'great exchange'. Christ took upon himself our sins and unrighteousness,  and in exchange we receive Christ's perfect righteousness. Both of these are imputed. 

This idea of righteousness being  'imputed' or 'reckoned' to us is seen all over Scripture. For example,

With Abraham: "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness" Genesis 15:6

With David: " Blessed is the  man to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity" Psalm 32:1-2 (RSV, quoted in Romans 4:8)

With Isaiah: "Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities." Isaiah 53:11

With Paul: "Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness" Romans 4: 4-5

The reason that righteousness must be imputed or reckoned to us, is because it is an 'alien righteousness'. In other words, it is a righteousness that we haven't earned. This is so because in our own power and will, we could never live a perfect life of righteousness that merits a right standing with God. Therefore, it must be a righteousness apart from us, that is freely bestowed upon us. The righteousness is the righteousness possessed by Christ. Chris lived the perfect life that we should have lived. Christ is the perfect son that Adam was supposed to be. God the Father says of Jesus, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17). When we come to faith in Jesus, we receive this merit. God now sees us and treats us as beloved sons. This is not accomplished by works. It is a gift that is imputed to us out of God's benevolent grace. Though we are broken, sinners, God graciously bestows upon us, or imputes to us, a righteousness and a position of sonship that we could have never earned. This is good news. I end with a verse I know I've posted a few times already, but it is a verse that so clearly lays out justification. 

"For our sake he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God."

2 Corinthians 5:21

Observation # 5: Justification is Based on the Substitutionary Work of Christ For Us

At the heart of justification is the substitutionary work of Christ. This involves Christ's exchanging places with us. Given that our sin demands God's just wrath, Christ substitutionary work on our behalf involves Christ standing in our place and bearing the wrath that we rightfully deserve. 

This is taught even in the Old Testament, as the prophet Isaiah foretold of the coming Messiah, 

"But he was wounded for our transgressions;

   he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

    and with his stripes we are healed.

 All we like sheep have gone astray;

   we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

   the iniquity of us all."

Isaiah 53:5-6

This passage is clear that the Savior would take upon himself the iniquity of His people. This is exactly what Jesus did at the Cross. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in his letter to the Galatians, 

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us." 

Galatians 3:13

Because we have failed to follow God's law, we deserve the curse of not following it. What makes the Gospel good news is that Christ has bore the weight of sin that we deserve. He suffered the debt we owed. The just for the unjust, once and for all. We are able to be justified because Jesus substituted himself in our place. 

We will see in the next observation that justification involves not only the substitutionary work of Christ in terms of him taking our sins, but it also involves the positive aspect of Christ imputing to His children His perfect righteousness. 

Observation # 4: Justification is Rooted in Our Union With Christ

We are only able to receive the benefits of Christ through our present union with Him. Because we are united to Him, we are seen as if we achieved His righteousness. The imputation of Christ's righteous to us finds its roots in our union to him. The Bible comes back to this teaching time and time again. Here are just a few verses that talk about our justification being 'in him', which is the equivilent to being united in Christ.

"It is because of him (God) that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God- that is our righteousness, holiness and redemption." 1 Corinthians 1:30

"God made him (Christ) who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might became the righteousness of God." 2 Corinthians 5:21

"...that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ-the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." Philippians 3:8-9

These 3 verses specifically refer to our righteousness before God, that is, our justification, as being rooted in our present union with Christ. It is 'in him' that we have attained a righteousness. We receive this righteousness because we are in him. 

Observation # 3: Justification is Received by Faith Alone

There are two important elements to note in this statement. One, justification is something received, not earned. Second, the means by which it is received is through faith.

If justification is an act of God, whereby he declares us righteous based on the merit of Christ, then justification can only be received by faith. In fact, being a Christian consists of turning from self-justification and turning to justification through faith in Christ. The Apostle Paul states it beautifully in his letter to the church at Galatia,

"yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified." Galatians 2:16

Again, justification has to do with trusting in the work of another. At times this can be a very difficult concept to functionally accept. There are two reasons this is true....

First, as Martin Luther said, our default mode is religion. In other words, our sinful, human tendency is to attempt to justify ourselves through 'doing'. This is religion. If we do x,y,z....then God will justify us. If we perform enough religious rituals, then we are OK with God. If we are nice people then we are righteous. If I get good grades and perform well on the sports field then I'm good. If I try to be moral and be a good parent, then God must accept me. The list is endless, and in some way, shape or form, applies to us all. Our default mode is to try to earn or merit our rightness with God. However, the Gospel of Jesus Christ tells us that we can never do enough ______(fill in the blank) and we can never be good enough, so Jesus lived the perfect life and died for our shortcomings. Therefore, to be accepted by God, to be justified, we must look to Christ in faith, trusting only in Him.

The second reason justification by faith can be a hard reality to accept is that we are constantly falling into sin. Even as Christians, those redeemed from sin, being renewed in the likeness of Christ, we still struggle with sin. It can be hard to believe that we are justified when we keep messing up. It is hard to rest in the work of another and trust that His pardoning favor is sufficient. However, this is exactly what faith is. Fully casting ourselves upon, and trusting in the work of another. Growing as a Christian means to grow in ones faith in Christ's finished work. If our trust is in the fact that we are justified by faith in Christ, then our faith will be as solid as a rock. However, if we are trusting in ourselves, we will have no comfort, peace or rest. Martin Luther used to say that a Christian is able to simultaneously call himself both 'sinner' and 'saint'. Sinner because he still struggles with sin, and still cannot earn salvation. Saint because he is hid in Christ.

Observation # 2: Justification is a Declarative Act

Continuing the 10 observations on the doctrine of justification, we come to our second observation on this concept.

Observations #2: Justification is a declarative or judicial act of God.

It must be understood that justification is a declaration of ones right standing with God. Therefore, justification is not a process by which we become more or less justified. Rather, it occurs as an act. God declares us righteous. One moment we are under His wrath, the next moment, through faith in Jesus, we are forever seen as right. Throughout the entire Bible, the use of the word to justify (both in the hebrew OT and greek NT) has a legal tone to it. It is as we are before a judge, or were under condemnation for our acts. Justification is the announcement that a sinner who was under condemnation is now righteous. He is no longer under condemnation (Rom. 8:1). Justification is a one time, once for all. legal declaration that a guilty sinner is no longer under God's wrath, but is now declared as righteous.

Now, in the later observations we will discuss in more detail the grounds by which we are declared righteous, but for now, I will only say that we are declared as righteous before God not based on our own merit or goodness, but solely on the righteousness of Jesus. As we will see tomorrow, that is why justification must be by faith alone.

The Heidelberg Catechism on Justification

This comes from question 60 of the Heidelberg Catechism. Gold.

Q. How are you right with God?

A. Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. 

Even though my conscience accuses me of having grievously 

sinned against all God's commandments

and of never having kept any of them,

and even though I am still inclined toward all evil,

nevertheless,

without my deserving it at all,

out of sheer grace,

God grants and credits to me

the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ,

as if I had never sinned nor been a sinner,

as if I had been as perfectly obedient

as Christ was obedient for me.

All I need to do

is to accept this gift of God with a believing heart. 

Praise God! This is the best news ever! What a gracious father! Without deserving it at all, God, out of sheer grace, grants and credits to Christians the perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ. Understanding this truth is imperative to understanding the Gospel, and I pray  God continues to enliven my heart to the glorious riches of Christ's saving work. 

There is Only One Good Guy

A great post from my close friend Dan Orr

My little guy Isaac loves playing good guys vs. bad guys.  The game usually ends up with him tackling Lily, his little sister. For whatever reason, he talks about good guys and bad guys all the time.  Here’s a gospel truth that I share with him that you’ll hopefully be encouraged by:

1. We’re all bad guys.
2. There was only one truly good guy that has ever lived.
3. That one good guy has declared that his bad guys are now good, and he’s now on a mission to make them good like himself.

Gospel= Saved by Works?

To some degree, everyone on this earth tries to justify their existence by works. Everyone thinks they are saved, or are justified in their existence, or will go to heaven based on works. Most people trust in their own works or own goodness. At the end of the day, they believe they are good people, who have done enough 'works' to get in. Comparatively speaking, we all think we are better than most. As humans, we inherently trust in our own works to justify ourselves. 


The gospel is both similar and sharply contrasted to this. The gospel says the only way to be saved is by works.....but not your own. And here is the gospel, or good news. 


The Bible testifies against man, that in their own works, or own goodness, no one is righteousness, not one. In our own standing, we are completely and utterly hopeless. Before God, any attempt to stand on our own two feet, or any attempt to justify ourselves by thinking we really aren't that bad, or are better than our neighbor or the 'evil' people in the world, won't stand. But, God being rich in mercy and great in love, saw this problem of Sin. He sent His Son to live the perfect life, and die the death we deserve. Now, though we all are condemned based on our own lives, the good news is that we can be saved based on the works of another. The gospel is that we are saved by works....but not our own. The gospel is that Christ's work is fully sufficient to merit salvation. More so, this is a gift that is given freely by grace. It can't be earned. So why would we spend our lives striving so hard to try and earn God's favor? Why do we try to justify our existence with our own goodness? Jesus is better. Being a Christian is to forsake, or turn from your own work/goodness and to turn to Christ and His work. In the words of my favorite hymn, 'Rock of Ages'

"Nothing in my hand I bring

Simply to your Cross I cling, 

Naked look to thee for dress

Helpless look to thee for grace."

Pleading the Work of Another

All thy lovingkindness is in thy Son,

I bring him to thee in the arms of faith,

I urge his saving name as the one who died for me.

I plead his blood to pay my debts of wrong.

Accept his worthiness for my unworthiness

his sinlessness for my transgressions,

his purity for my uncleanness,

his sincerity for my guile,

his truth for my deceits,

his meekness for my pride,

his constancy for my backslidings,

his love for my enmity,

his fullness for my emptiness,

his faithfulness for my treachery,

his obedience for my lawlessness,

his glory for my shame,

his devotedness for my waywardness,

his holy life for my unchaste ways, 

his righteousness for my dead works,

his death for my life

Valley of Vision

How Far was He willing to Go?

Just finished reading Tim Keller's 'Generous Justice'. Here is some pure 24k gold from the last chapter. And by the way, the k stands for Keller :)

"Many people say, 'I can't believe in God when I see all the injustice in the world.' But here is Jesus, the Son of God, who knows what it's like to be the victim of injustice, to stand up to power, to face a corrupt system and be killed for it. He knows what it is like to be lynched. I'm not sure how you believe in a God remote from injustice and oppression, but Christianity doesn't ask you to believe in that. That is why the Christian write John Stott is able to say, 'I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the Cross. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?'

And what does this mean....

There (on the cross) we see how far God was willing to go to identify with the oppressed of the world. And he was doing it all for us! There Jesus, who deserved acquittal and freedom, got condemnation, so that we who deserve condemnation for our sins can receive acquittal. This was the ultimate instance of God's identification with the poor. He not only became one of the actually poor and marginalized, he stood in the place of all those of us in spiritual poverty and bankruptcy and paid our debt.

Now that is a thing of beauty. To take that into the center of your life and heart will make you one of the just."

He is 100% for YOU

Permanently Withdrawn

"You forgave the iniquity of your people;

you covered all their sin.

You withdrew all your wrath;

you turned away your hot anger.

Restore us again, O God of our salvation,

and put away your indignation toward us!"

Psalm 85: 2-4

As Christmas season approaches, what a great reminder of the work Christ came into the world to accomplish. Christ came so that all those who turn to Him may be forgiven once and for all. In His death, filthy sinners are cleansed by the blood of Christ. More so, Jesus lived the perfect law fulfilling life, and through union with Him, we are covered in His perfect righteousness. At the cross, God withdrew His just wrath from His people. He permanently turned away His hot anger. Most amazingly, the only way to turn this just wrath away from His people, was to place it on His Son. Jesus bore the wrath of God. Through the finished work of Christ, there is no longer any indignation towards us. We have been restored. Praise be to Jesus who took a quantum leap from His throne in heaven in order to dwell among a perverse, lowly, and weak people. Praise be to Christ, for coming to earth and dying the death that we should have died, in order that we could be forgiven once and for all. Praise be to Jesus who lived the law fulfilling life that we should have lived, and covers us in His righteousness. Thank you Jesus for absorbing Your own Father's wrath at the Cross, so that degenerate rebels may be restored!

Christ's finished work is permanent and sufficient. In Christ, we are forgiven once and for all. Through the cross, God's wrath is permanently withdrawn. Mission accomplished.

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"

Romans 8:1

Confession of Our Righteousness

O Lord, we confess our righteousness

Those thoughts, words and deeds that have taken our eyes off of Christ and His finished work

And put them on ourselves.

We have fooled ourselves into seeing our obedience as a substitute for your perfection.

We have failed to see that even our best works are as filthy rags in your sight.

Father, we confess that we have deserted your Gospel.

We have made a mockery of the Cross.

For the sake of your great name,

have mercy on us.

Refresh us with your love,

that we may remain fixed on Jesus alone.

Dependent on Grace Alone

My greatest sin is unbelief. It is unbelief that Jesus Christ actually accomplished everything for me on the cross, and that I can have hope and rest in that alone.

Charles Spurgeon writes in one of my favorite chapters of any book ever called 'Salvation Altogether by Grace' (Grace: God's Unmerited Favor)...

"The purpose of God is not founded on any foreseen merit of ours, but upon His grace alone. It is grace, all grace and nothing but grace from first to last. Man stands shivering outside, a condemned criminal, and God, sitting upon the throne, sends the herald to tell him that He is willing to receive sinners and to pardon them. The sinner replies, 'Well, I am willing to be pardoned if I am permitted to do something in order to earn pardon. If I can stand before the King and claim that I have done something to win His favor, I am quite willing to come.'

However, the herald replies, 'No, if you are pardoned, you must understand that it is entirely and wholly as an act of grace on God's part. He sees absolutely nothing good in you. He knows that there is nothing good in you. He is willing to take you as you are - black, bad, wicked and undeserving. He is willing to give you graciously what He would not sell you for any price (Isaiah 55:1) and what He knows you cannot earn from Him. Will you receive it?'

In the natural state, every man says, 'No, the very idea is abhorrent to me. I will not be saved in that style.' Well then, misguided soul, remember that you will never be saved at all, for God's way is salvation by grace. If you ever are saved, my dear one, you will have to confess that you never deserved or merited one single blessing from the God of grace."

...

The temptation to want to earn our salvation is the cancer within every one of us. It points to self, and completely goes against the purpose of salvation in the first place: the Glory of God. My tendency to neglect God's gift, more bluntly to not accept it for what it is, eats away at me. It tells me I haven't done enough today to be favorable for the King. It demands me to try harder, when really I have nothing to offer. However, Jesus demands nothing of me, but to receive Himself. And it doesn't even depend on the 'excellency in my reception' or how well I trust, but rather in who I am simply trusting in. Jesus. Period. May we all further know the fullness of His grace.