Propitiation? What's That?
DAY BY DAY
We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization, I'm accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
Week 1 / MONDAY
INCREDIBLE INHERITANCE
To me ... this grace was given, top reach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
(EPHESIANS 3:8)
Years ago our pastor told about a southern plantation owner who left a $50,000 inheritance (perhaps equivalent to half a million dollars today) to a former slave who'd served him faithfully all his life. The estate's lawyer duly notified the old man and told him the money was deposited at a local bank.
Weeks went by, and the former slave never called for any of his inheritance. Finally, the banker called him in and told him again he had $50,000 available to draw on at any time. "Sir," the old man replied, "do you think I can have fifty cents to buy a sack of cornmeal?"
That story illustrates the plight of many Christians today. Paul wrote of preaching "the unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ephesians 3:8) -referring not to financial wealth but to the glorious truths of the gospel. It's as if each of us has $50,000 available in the gospel, yet most of us are hoping we can squeeze out fifty cents' worth. We don't understand the riches of the gospel any more than the former slave understood his inheritance.
Suppose also that the slave was not only poverty-stricken but also deep in debt for back rent. With his inheritance, he could not only pay off the debt but also buy his house. His inheritance far surpasses his debt. This is the truth of the gospel. We owe an enormous spiritual debt to God; there's no way we can repay it. The gospel tells us Jesus Christ paid our debt, but it also tells us far more: We're no longer enemies and objects of God's wrath. We're now His sons and daughters, heirs with Christ to all His unsearchable riches. This is the good news of the gospel.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 1 / TUESDAY
HOLINESS AND GRACE
Strive for... the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
(HEBREWS 12:14)
The Holy Spirit's work in transforming us more and more into the likeness of Christ is called sanctification. Our involvement and cooperation with Him in His work is what I call the pursuit of holiness. That expression is taken from Hebrews 12:14: "Strive for [literally: pursue] ... the holiness without which no one will see the Lord."
This pursuit requires sustained, vigorous effort. It allows for no indolence, no lethargy, no halfhearted commitment, and no laissez- faire attitude toward even the smallest sins. In short, it demands the highest priority in a Christian's life because to be holy is to be like Christ - God's goal for every Christian.
The word pursue in this context means to strive to gain or accomplish. In Philippians 3:12-14, this word is translated "press on." In the New Testament it is most commonly translated "persecute," carrying the word's common meaning-to track down in order to harm or destroy.
At the same time, however, the pursuit of holiness must be anchored in the grace of God; otherwise it is doomed to failure. That statement probably strikes many people as strange. A lot of Christians seem to think the grace of God and the vigorous pursuit of holiness are antithetical - in direct and unequivocal opposition.
To some, the pursuit of holiness sounds like legalism and man-made rules. To others, an emphasis on grace seems to open the door to irresponsible behavior based on the notion that God's unconditional love means we're free to sin as we please.
Grace and the personal discipline required to pursue holiness, however, go hand in hand. An understanding of how grace and personal, vigorous effort work together is essential for a lifelong pursuit of holiness.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 1 / WEDNESDAY
BANKRUPT
No one does good, not even one.
(ROMANS 3:12)
Bankrupt! The word has a dreadful ring to it. Even in our lax and permissive society, being bankrupt still conveys some degree of disgrace and shame.
In the moral realm, the word bankrupt has an even more disparaging connotation. To say a person is morally bankrupt is to say he or she is completely devoid of any decent moral qualities. It's like comparing that person to Adolf Hitler.
You may never have thought of it this way, but you are bankrupt. You and I and every person in the world are spiritually bankrupt. Except for Jesus Christ, every person who has ever lived has been spiritually bankrupt. In Romans 3:10-12, Paul declared our spiritual bankruptcy in its most absolute state. We were spiritually destitute, owing God a debt we couldn't pay. Then we learned salvation is a gift from God, entirely by grace through faith (Romans 6:23; Ephesians 2:8-9). We renounced confidence in any supposed righteousness of our own and turned in faith to Jesus Christ alone for our salvation. In that act, we essentially declared spiritual bankruptcy.
But what kind of bankruptcy did we declare? In the business world, financially troubled companies can declare bankruptcy according to "chapter 7" - if it has no future as a viable business - or "chapter 11," for companies that, given time, can work through their financial problems.
So what kind of bankruptcy did we declare - permanent or temporary? I think most of us actually declared temporary bankruptcy. Having trusted in Christ alone for our salvation, we have subtly and unconsciously reverted to a works relationship with God in our Christian lives. We recognize that even our best efforts cannot get us to heaven, but we do think they earn God's blessings in our daily lives.
Transforming Grace
Week 1 / THURSDAY
DUST TO GLORY
You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked.... But God ... made us alive together with Christ.
(EPHESIANS 2:1,4-5)
The word gospel essentially means "good news," specifically about our relationship with God. We all like good news, especially if it addresses bad news we've just received. If you've just been told you have cancer, it's good news when the doctor tells you it's a type that readily responds to treatment.
The gospel is like that. It's good news that directly addresses our ultimate bad news. The Bible tells us we were in deep trouble with God; we were unrighteous and ungodly, and God's wrath is revealed "against all the godlessness and wickedness of men"; in fact, we were "by nature objects of [God's] wrath" (Romans 1:18, Niv; Ephesians 2:3, NIV). Coming into the world as a baby, before you'd ever done anything bad, you were an object of God's wrath. That's the bad news.
Then the Bible tells us that God has provided a solution far surpassing our problem. The Good News always outweighs the bad - as in Ephesians 2:1-9. After telling us we were objects of God's wrath, Paul added:
"But ... God, who is rich in mercy ... raised us up with Christ, and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (Niv). That is surely a dust-to-glory story. What greater contrast could there be than an object of God's wrath seated with His Son in glory?
This good news doesn't begin when we die. It's for now. We don't have to feel guilt-ridden and insecure before God. We don't have to wonder if He likes us. We can begin each day with the deeply encouraging realization, I'm accepted by God, not on the basis of my personal performance, but on the basis of the infinitely perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 1 / FRIDAY
WARMTH AND DESIRE
Asa deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, 0 God.
(PSALM 42:1)
In the life of the godly person, this desire for God produces an aura of warmth. Godliness is never austere and cold. Such an idea comes from a false sense of legalistic morality erroneously called godliness. The person who spends time with God radiates His glory in a manner that is always warm and inviting, never cold and forbidding.
This longing for God also produces a desire to glorify God and to please Him. In the same breath, Paul expressed the desire to know Christ as well as to be like Him (Philippians 3:10). This is God's ultimate objective for us and is the object of the Spirit's work in us. In Isaiah 26:9, the prophet proclaimed his desire for the Lord: "My soul yearns for you in the night; my spirit within me earnestly seeks you." Immediately before this expression of desire for the Lord, he expresses a desire for His glory: "Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts" (verse 8, Niv). Renown has to do with one's reputation, fame, and eminence - or in God's case, with His glory. The prophet could not separate in his heart his desire for God's glory and his desire for God Himself. These two yearnings go hand in hand.
This is devotion to God - the fear of God, which is an attitude of reverence and awe, veneration, and honor toward Him, coupled with an apprehension deep within our souls of the love of God for us, demonstrated preeminently in Christ's atoning death. These two attitudes complement and reinforce each other, producing within our souls an intense desire for this One who is so awesome in His glory and majesty, yet so condescending in His love and mercy.
The Practice of Godliness
Week 1 / WEEKEND
ON A BAD DAY
How much more will the blood of Christ ... purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.
(HEBREWS 9:14)
What should we do when we've had a "bad" day spiritually, when it seems we've done everything wrong and are feeling very guilty? We must go back to the cross and see Jesus there bearing our sins in His own body (1 Peter 2:24). We must by faith appropriate for ourselves the blood of Christ that will cleanse our guilty consciences (Hebrews 9:14).
In a bad-day scenario, we might pray something like this: "Father, I've sinned against You. I've been negligent in the spiritual disciplines that I know are necessary and helpful for my spiritual growth. I've been irritable and impatient toward those around me. I've allowed resentful and unkind thoughts to lodge in my mind. I repent of these sins and claim Your forgiveness.
"You have said You justify the wicked (Romans 4:5). Father, in view of my sins today, I acknowledge that in myself I am wicked. In fact, my problem is not merely the sins I've committed, some of which I may not even be aware of, but the fact that my heart is sinful. These sins I'm now so painfully conscious of are merely expressions of my sinful heart.
"But despite my sinfulness, You have said, `There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus' (Romans 8:1). Given my acute awareness of my sin, that's an incredible statement. How can I be without condemnation when I've so flagrantly and willfully sinned against You today?
"0 Father, I know it's because Jesus bore those sins in His body on the cross. He suffered the punishment I deserve, so I might experience the blessings He deserved. So I come to You, dear Father, in Jesus' name."
The Discipline of Grace
Week 2 / MONDAY
ONAGOODDAY
Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(MATTHEW 5:48)
Consider what you would probably call a "good" day spiritually-when your spiritual disciplines are all in place and you're reasonably satisfied with your Christian performance. Have you thereby earned God's blessing that day? Will God be pleased to bless you because you've been good? You're probably thinking, Well, when you put it like that, the answer's no. But doesn't God only work through clean vessels? Yet how good do you have to be to be "clean"? How good is good enough?
When a Pharisee asked Jesus which of the Law's commandments was the greatest, He replied, "`Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: `Love your neighbor as yourself"' (Matthew 22:37-39, NIV).
Using that as a standard, how good has your good day been? Have you perfectly kept those two commandments? If not, does God grade on a curve? Is 90 percent a passing grade with God? We know the answers to those questions, don't we? We know that Jesus said, "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). And we remember that James wrote, "For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it" (James 2:10, NIV).
Regardless of our performance, we're always dependent on God's grace, His undeserved favor to those who deserve His wrath. Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and our need of His grace, but there's never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance and be worthy enough to deserve His blessing.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 2 / TUESDAY
BEST KEPT SECRET
Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (GALATIANS 3:3)
One of the best kept secrets among Christians today is this: Jesus paid it all. I mean all. He not only purchased your forgiveness of sins and your ticket to heaven, He purchased every blessing and every answer to prayer you will ever receive. Every one of them - no exceptions.
Why is this such a well-kept secret? The core issue is that we don't believe we're still spiritually "bankrupt." Having come into God's kingdom by grace alone solely on the merit of Another, we're now trying to pay our own way by our performance. We declared only temporary bankruptcy; we're now trying to live by good works rather than by grace.
After we become Christians, we begin to put away our more obvious sins. We also start attending church, put money in the offering plate, and maybe join a small group Bible study. We see some positive change in our lifestyle, and we begin to feel pretty good about ourselves. We're now ready to emerge from bankruptcy and pay our own way in the Christian life.
Then the day comes when we fall on our face spiritually. We lapse back into an old sin or fail to do what we should have done. And we assume we've forfeited all blessings from God for some undetermined period of time. Our expectation of God's blessing depends on how well we feel we're living the Christian life. We think we can and must "pay our own way" with God.
Try this test: Think of a time recently when you really fell on your face spiritually. Then imagine that immediately afterward you encountered a terrific opportunity to share Christ with a non-Christian friend. Could you have done it with complete confidence in God's help?
Transforming Grace
Week 2 / WEDNESDAY
IMPOSSIBLE DEBT
And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made.
(MATTHEW 18:25)
We can't begin to appreciate the good news of the gospel until we see our deep need. Most people, even believers, have never given much thought to how desperate our condition is outside of Christ. Few ever think about the dreadful implications of being under the wrath of God. And none of us even begins to realize how truly sinful we are.
Jesus once told a story (Matthew 18:21-35) about a king's servant who owed his master ten thousand talents. (Just one talent was equal to about twenty years' wages for a working man.) Why would Jesus use such an unrealistically large amount when He knew that in real life it would have been impossible for any servant to accumulate such a debt?
Jesus was fond of using hyperbole to make His point. That immense sum represents a spiritual debt every one of us owes to God. It's the debt of our sins. For each of us, it's a staggering amount.
This is what the gospel is all about. Jesus paid our debt to the full. And He did far more. He also purchased for us an eternal inheritance of infinite worth. That's why Paul wrote of the "unsearchable riches of Christ" (Ephesians 3:8). And God wants us to enjoy those unsearchable riches in the here and now, even in the midst of difficult and discouraging circumstances.
Without some heartfelt conviction of our sin, we can have no serious feeling of personal interest in the gospel. What's more, this conviction should actually grow throughout our Christian lives. In fact, one sign of spiritual growth is an increased awareness of our sinfulness.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 2 / THURSDAY
GOD-CENTERED HOLINESS
You shall be holy, for I am holy.
(1 PETER 1:16)
If holiness is so basic to the Christian life, why do we not experience it more in daily living? Why do so many Christians feel constantly defeated in their struggle with sin? Why does the church of Jesus Christ so often seem to be more conformed to the world around it than to God?
Our first problem is that our attitude toward sin is more self-centered than God-centered. We're more concerned about our own "victory" over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart. We cannot tolerate failure in our struggle with sin chiefly because we are successoriented, not because we know it's offensive to God.
W. S. Plumer said, "We never see sin aright until we see it as against God.... All sin is against God in this sense: that it is His law that is broken, His authority that is despised, His government that is set at naught.... Pharaoh and Balaam, Saul and Judas each said, `I have sinned'; but the returning prodigal said, `I have sinned against heaven and before thee'; and David said, `Against Thee, Thee only have I sinned."" God wants us to walk in obedience - not victory. Obedience is oriented toward God; victory is oriented toward self. This may seem to be merely splitting hairs over semantics, but there's a subtle, self-centered attitude at the root of many of our difficulties with sin. Until we deal with this attitude, we won't consistently walk in holiness.
Victory is a by-product of obedience. As we concentrate on living an obedient, holy life, we'll certainly experience the joy of victory over sin. Will you begin to look at sin as an offense against a holy God, instead of as a personal defeat only?
The Pursuit of Holiness
Week 2 / FRIDAY
FALLING INTO THE TRAP
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do. (JOHN 14:13)
I struggle with legalistic tendencies even though I know better. Several years ago I was scheduled to speak at a large church on the West Coast. Arriving about fifteen minutes before the Sunday morning service, I learned that one of the pastoral staff had died suddenly the day before. The staff and congregation were in a state of shock and grief.
Sizing up the situation, I realized the "challenge to discipleship" message I'd prepared was inappropriate. The congregation that day needed comfort and encouragement, not challenge. Knowing I needed a new message, I silently began to pray, asking God to bring to my mind something suitable for the occasion. Then I began to add up my merits and demerits for the day: Had I had a quiet time that morning? Had I entertained any lustful thoughts or told any half-truths? I'd fallen into the performance trap.
I quickly recognized what I was doing. "Lord," I said, "I don't know the answer to those questions, but it doesn't matter. I come to You today in the name of Jesus and, by His merit alone, ask for Your help." A verse of Scripture came to my mind and with it a brief outline for an appropriate message. I went to the pulpit and literally prepared the message as I spoke. God did answer prayer.
Why did God answer? Was it because I had a quiet time that morning or fulfilled other spiritual disciplines or hadn't entertained any sinful thoughts that day? No, God answered my prayer for only one reason: Jesus Christ had already purchased that answer to prayer two thousand years ago on a Roman cross. God answered on the basis of His grace alone, not because of my merits or demerits.
Transforming Grace
Week 2 / WEEKEND
WHY THE CROSS?
Jesus ... endured the cross, despising the shame.
(HEBREWS 12:2)
At the time of Christ's death, the cross was an instrument of incredible horror and shame. It was a most wretched and degrading punishment, inflicted only on slaves and the lowliest of people. If free men were at any time subjected to crucifixion for great crimes such as treason or insurrection, the sentence could not be executed until they were put in the category of slaves by degradation and their freedom taken away by flogging.2
How could it be that the eternal Son of God - by whom all things were created and for whom all things were created (Colossians 1:15-16) - would end up in His human nature dying one of the most cruel and humiliating deaths ever devised by man?
We know that Jesus' death on the cross did not take Him by surprise. He continually predicted it to His disciples. (See Luke 18:31-33 for one example.) And with His impending crucifixion before Him, Jesus Himself said, "What shall I say? `Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour" (John 12:27, NIV). Jesus said He came to die.
But why? Why did Jesus come to die? The apostles Paul and Peter gave us the answer in clear, concise terms. Paul wrote, "Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures," and Peter wrote, "For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God" (1 Corinthians 15:3; 1 Peter 3:18, NIV).
Christ died for our sins. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, took upon Himself a human nature and died a horrible death on our behalf. That is the reason for the cross. He suffered what we should have suffered. He died in our place to pay the penalty for our sins.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 3 / MONDAY
DOES HE CARE?
Try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord.
(EPHESIANS 5:10)
The good news of the gospel is that God's grace is available on our worst days. That's true because Christ fully satisfied the claims of God's justice and fully paid the penalty of a broken law when He died on the cross in our place. Because of that, Paul could write, "He forgave us all our sins" (Colossians 2:13, NIV).
Does this mean God no longer cares whether we obey or disobey? Not at all. The Scripture speaks of our grieving the Holy Spirit through our sins (Ephesians 4:30). And Paul prayed that we "may please [God] in every way" (Colossians 1:10, NIV). Clearly, He cares about our conduct and will discipline us when we refuse to repent of conscious sin. But God is no longer our Judge. Through Christ He is now our heavenly Father who disciplines us only out of love and only for our good.
If God's blessings were dependent on our performance, they would be meager indeed. Even our best works are shot through with sin - with varying degrees of impure motives and lots of imperfect performance. We're always, to some degree, looking out for ourselves, guarding our flanks, protecting our egos. It's because we don't realize the utter depravity of the principle of sin remaining in us and staining everything we do that we entertain any notion of earning God's blessings through our obedience. And because we don't fully grasp that Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins, we despair of God's blessing when we've failed to live up to even our own desires to please God.
Your worst days are never so bad that you're beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you're beyond the need of God's grace.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 3 / TUESDAY
WHAT Is GRACE?
Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
ROMANS 5:20)
What, then, is the grace by which we're saved and under which we live? Grace is God's free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgment. It's the love of God shown to the unlovely. It is God reaching downward to people who are in rebellion against Him.
Grace stands in direct opposition to any supposed worthiness on our part. To say it another way: Grace and works are mutually exclusive. As Paul said in Romans 11:6, "If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace." Our relationship with God is based on either works or grace. There's never a works-plus-grace relationship with Him.
Furthermore, grace doesn't first rescue us from the penalty of our sins, furnish us with some new spiritual abilities, then leave us on our own to grow in spiritual maturity. Rather, as Paul said, "He who began a good work in you [by His grace] will [also by His grace] carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6, NIV).
Paul asks us today, as he asked the Galatian believers, "After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to obtain your goal by human effort?" (Galatians 3:3, Niv). Although the issue of circumcision was the specific problem Paul was addressing, notice that he didn't say, "Are you trying to attain your goal by circumcision?" He generalized his question and dealt not with the specific issue of circumcision, but with the broader problem of trying to please God by human effort, any effort - even good Christian activities and disciplines performed in a spirit of legalism.
Transforming Grace
Week 3 / WEDNESDAY
THE BOOKENDS
Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 PETER 3:18)
As we consider various means by which Christians grow, think of each one of them as a book you're putting on the shelf of your life. In order to keep those books in place, you need two bookends.
The first bookend we need is the righteousness of Christ. The most important question any person can ask is: How can I, a sinful person, be accepted by an infinitely holy and righteous God? Paul told us that it's by trusting in the righteousness of Christ. Paul counted all his impressive religious credentials as rubbish in order that he might "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, NIV). Paul found his acceptance with God not in his own imperfect obedience, as impressive as it was, but by trusting in the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ, which God credits to all who trust in Him as Savior. This is what faith is -trusting in Jesus Christ alone as one's Savior.
The second bookend we must set in place is the power of Christ. Just as our acceptance with God must come through the righteousness of Christ, so our power to live the Christian life must come from Christ as well. As Jesus indicated in John 15:5, we have no ability within ourselves to grow. All of the ability must come from Him.
The common element in these two bookends is the word dependence. We're dependent upon the righteousness of Christ for our acceptance with God, and upon the power of Christ for our ability to pursue spiritual growth.
Growing Your Faith
Week 3 / THURSDAY
ADAM'S SIN IS OURS
In Adam all die.
(1 CORINTHIANS 15:22)
The consequences of Adam and Eve's sin went far beyond their own banishment from the Garden of Eden and the presence of God. God had appointed Adam as the federal head or legal representative of the entire human race. Consequently his fall brought guilt and depravity on all his descendants. That is, all people (except Jesus) after Adam and Eve are born with a sinful nature. David spoke of this fact when he said in Psalm 51:5, "Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me." David's sinfulness while still in his mother's womb was not in acts of sin committed. He was referring to his sinful nature acquired at conception.
The apostle Paul explained it like this: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12). Note that Paul's sentence appears to be broken off before he finished his thought. What did Paul mean in saying that "all sinned"? We could easily assume that he was speaking of the individual sins of each of us, but that is not what he had in mind. Rather he was speaking of the fact that Adam was the legal representative of all his descendants. In that sense, what he did, we did. Therefore the consequences of his sin, in terms of both guilt and original sin, fell on all of us.
In Romans 5:18-19, Paul wrote that "the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men" and that "through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners" (Niv). It's clear in Paul's theology that Adam was appointed by God to act on behalf of all his posterity. That's why you and I, like David, were born with original sin, and why we were by nature objects of God's wrath.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 3 / FRIDAY
A LIFETIME MESSAGE
The word of the cross ... is the power of God.
(1 CORINTHIANS 1:18)
If it's true our relationship with God is based on His grace instead of our performance, why are we so prone to fall into good-day-bad-day thinking? It's because we've relegated the gospel to the unbeliever.
Regardless of when you trusted Christ, the cross divides your life into two periods: "unbeliever" and "believer." What one word describes the Bible message you most needed to hear as an unbeliever? It's the gospel, the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16). And what one word describes the message we most need to hear as believers? I get many different answers to that question, but most can be summed up with the word discipleship - demands and duties such as the spiritual disciplines, holiness, and service.
I don't question our emphasis on discipleship. Jesus did say, "Go therefore and make disciples" (Matthew 28:19). If anything, we need more challenge and instruction on this. But there's something more basic than discipleship, something that provides the necessary atmosphere in which discipleship can be practiced - the gospel.
We need to continue to hear the gospel every day of our Christian lives. Only a continuous reminder of God's grace through Christ will keep us from falling into good-day-bad-day thinking, where we view our daily relationship with God as based on how good we've been.
Only the joy of hearing the gospel, being reminded that our sins are forgiven in Christ, will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery. Only the gratitude and love to God that come from knowing He no longer counts our sins against us (Romans 4:8) will provide the proper motive for responding to the claims of discipleship.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 3 / WEEKEND
GRACE AND MERIT
Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
(JOHN 1:17)
Paul sometimes used the grace of God and the merit of Christ almost interchangeably. For example: "If you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.... You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace" (Galatians 5:2,4, Niv). Notice the parallel statements Paul used: Christ will be of no value to you. You have been alienated from Christ. You have fallen away from grace.
In Ephesians 2:4-7, Paul wrote, "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus" (Niv).
Again note the close connection between Christ and grace. We're made alive with Christ. It's by grace we've been saved. And God wants to express to us the incomparable riches of His grace in Christ.
Though the grace of God and the merit of Christ are not the same, they always go together in our relationship with God. We cannot experience one without the other. In terms of order, God's grace comes first. Because of His grace, the Father sent His only Son to die in our place. To say it another way, Christ's death was the result of God's grace; grace is not the result of Christ's death.
Transforming Grace
Week 4 / MONDAY
NEVER DIRECTLY
We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus.
(HEBREWS 10:19)
Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they've earned God's blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are sure they've forfeited God's blessing through disobedience or lack of discipline. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace - God's unmerited favor to those who deserve only His wrath.
Most of us probably entertain either of these attitudes on different days. On a good day (as we perceive it), we tend toward self-righteous Pharisaism. On a not-so-good day, we allow ourselves to wallow in a sense of failure and guilt. Either way we've moved away from the gospel of God's grace, trying to relate to God directly on the basis of our performance rather than through Christ.
God never intended that we relate to Him directly. Our own performance is never good enough to be acceptable. The only way we can relate to Him is through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ. Only the blood of Jesus will cleanse us from a guilty conscience and give us confidence to enter into God's presence (Hebrews 10:19-21).
The gospel, applied every day to our hearts, frees us to be brutally honest with ourselves and with God. The assurance of His total forgiveness through Christ's blood means we don't have to play defensive games anymore. We don't have to rationalize and excuse our sins. We can say we told a lie instead of saying we exaggerated a bit. We can admit an unforgiving spirit instead of continuing to blame others for our emotional distress. We can call sin exactly what it is, however ugly and shameful it may be, because we know Jesus bore that sin in His body on the cross. We have no reason to hide from our sins anymore.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 4 / TUESDAY
CONDUCT AND CHARACTER
The mature. . . have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (HEBREWS 5:14)
The relationship between conduct and character is an intimate one. In the form of repeated actions over time, conduct produces character. That's the teaching of 2 Peter 2:14 and Romans 6:19. But it's also true that character determines actions. What we do, we become; what we are, we do.
Conduct is always feeding character, but character is also always feeding conduct. Paul's experience while shipwrecked on the island of Malta furnishes a good example of this relationship. The islanders built the refugees a fire because of the rain and cold. Luke related in Acts 28 that Paul gathered a pile of brushwood, and, as he put it on the fire, a snake came out of the brushwood and fastened itself on Paul's hand. Under the adverse circumstances of shipwreck, why would Paul have gone about gathering fuel for a fire built and tended by someone else? Why not just stand by the fire and warm himself? Because it was his character to serve (Acts 20:33-35; 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9). He'd learned well the lesson Jesus taught when He washed His disciples' feet. Because it was Paul's character to serve, he gathered the brushwood instinctively.
Because conduct determines character, and character determines conduct, it's vitally important - extremely necessary- that we practice godliness every day. That's why Peter said, "Make every effort to supplement your faith with ... godliness" (2 Peter 1:5-6). There can be no letup in our pursuit of godly character. Every day that we're not practicing godliness we're being conformed to the world of ungodliness around us. Granted, our practice of godliness is imperfect and falls far short of the biblical standard. Nevertheless, let us press on to know Christ and to be like Him.
The Fruitful Life
Week 4 / WEDNESDAY
TWO STANDARDS
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.
(MATTHEW 22:40)
Have you thought about what it means to "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Matthew 22:37, NIV)?
Here are a few obvious aspects: You seek fellowship with Him and long to gaze upon His beauty (Psalm 27:4). You rejoice in meditating on His Word and rise early to pray (Psalm 119:97; Mark 1:35). You always delight to do His will (Psalm 40:8). A regard for His glory governs and motivates everything you do (1 Corinthians 10:31) - eating and drinking, working and playing, buying and selling, reading and speaking, even driving. You're never discouraged or frustrated by adverse circumstances because you're confident God is working all things together for your good (Romans 8:28). You're always content because you know He'll never leave you or forsake you (Hebrews 13:5).
Or look at what Jesus called the "second" commandment: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Matthew 22:39, NIV). Among other things, this would mean that you never show selfishness, irritability, peevishness, or indifference in your dealings with others. You take a genuine interest in their welfare and seek to promote their interests, honor, and well-being. You never regard them with prideful superiority or talk about their failings. You never resent any wrongs they do to you, but instead are always ready to forgive. You always treat them as you would have them treat you.'
Do you begin to grasp some of the implications of what it means to obey these two commandments? Most of us don't even think about them in the course of a day, let alone aspire to obey them. Instead we content ourselves with avoiding major outward sins and performing accepted Christian duties.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 4 / THURSDAY
AT THE KINGS TABLE
You shall eat at my table always.
(2 SAMUEL 9:7)
There's a beautiful story in the life of King David illustrating God's grace to us through Christ. Mephibosheth was the son of David's bosom friend, Jonathan, son of Saul. He'd been crippled in both feet at age five. After David was established as king over all Israel, he desired to show kindness to anyone remaining of Saul's family, "for Jonathan's sake." So Mephibosheth - crippled and destitute, unable to care for himself and living in someone else's house - was brought into David's house and "ate at David's table like one of the king's sons" (2 Samuel 9:11, NIV).
Why was Mephibosheth treated this way? It was for Jonathan's sake. We might say Jonathan's loyal friendship with David "earned" Mephibosheth's seat at David's table. Mephibosheth, in his crippled and destitute condition, unable to improve his lot and wholly dependent on the benevolence of others, is an illustration of you and me, crippled by sin and unable to help ourselves. David, in his graciousness, illustrates God the Father, and Jonathan illustrates Christ.
Just as Mephibosheth was elevated to a place at the king's table for Jonathan's sake, so you and I are elevated to the status of God's children for Christ's sake. And just as being seated at the king's table involved not only daily food but other privileges as well, so God's salvation for Christ's sake carries with it all the provisions we need, not only for eternity but for this life as well.
This account both begins and ends with the statement that Mephibosheth was crippled in both feet (verses 3,13). Mephibosheth never got over his crippled condition. He never got to the place where he could leave the king's table and make it on his own. And neither do we.
Transforming Grace
Week 4 / FRIDAY
OUR HIGHEST MOMENT
Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.
(GALATIANS 6:14)
Mutua Mahiaini, leader of The Navigators ministry in Kenya, addressed eloquently the issue of performance versus God's grace:
"In talking with many believers, I get the impression that most of us consider the on-going repentance of the saved as a not-so-glorious experience. A sort of sad necessity.
"Sin grieves God. We must not down-play the seriousness of it in the life of a believer. But we must come to terms with the fact that God's Grace is greater than all our sins. Repentance is one of the Christian's highest privileges. A repentant Christian focuses on God's mercy and God's grace. Any moment in our lives when we bask in God's mercy and grace is our highest moment. Higher than when we feel smug in our decent performance and cannot think of anything we need to confess.
"Whenever we fail - and fail we will - the Spirit of God will work on us and bring us to the foot of the cross where Jesus carried our failures. That is potentially a glorious moment. For we could at that moment accept God's abundant Mercy and Grace and go forth with nothing to boast of except Christ Himself, or else we struggle with our shame, focusing on that as well as our track record.... One who draws on God's Mercy and Grace is quick to repent, but also slow to sin." 4
Are you and I willing to live like Mutua and the apostle Paul? Are we willing to rely on God's grace and mercy alone instead of our performance, to boast in nothing except the cross? If so, we can bask every day in the grace of God. And in the joy and confidence of that grace we can vigorously pursue holiness.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 4 / WEEKEND
No PLACE TO HIDE
I was brought forth in iniquity. (PSALM 51:5)
Our fallen sinful nature affects and pollutes everything we do. Our very best deeds are stained with sin. Even our acts of obedience fall so far short of perfection, defiled as they are by remaining sin, that they are but as "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6, NIV) when compared with the righteousness God's Law requires.
If we limit our attention to single sins to the neglect of our sinful nature, we'll never discover how deeply infected with sin we really are. When David prayed his memorable prayer of Psalm 51, after he'd committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered, he traced his heinous actions back to their original cause - his sinful nature acquired in his mother's womb.
You might be thinking, Why devote so much attention to sin? It just makes me feel guilty. My reason is to cause us all to realize we have no place to hide. Only against the dark backdrop of our sinfulness can we see the glory of the cross shining forth in all its brilliance and splendor.
We often resort to euphemisms to mitigate the severity of our sins. I sat with some friends across the table from a Christian leader who said, "I've had an affair." Of course we all knew what he meant, but I later wished I'd had the presence of mind to respond, `Bob, look me in the eye and say, `I've committed adultery"' We need to call sin what the Bible calls it and not soften it with expressions borrowed from our culture.
Furthermore, even a deep, penetrating sense of our sinfulness does not do justice to the reality of our predicament. Our situation was so desperate that only the death of God's own Son on a cruel and shameful cross was sufficient to resolve the problem.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 5 / MONDAY
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE GOAL
1 press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
(PHILIPPIANS 3:14)
All of us face the pressure of more to do than we have time for. So we have to set priorities. We have to determine what's most important in our lives. We have to ask, "Do I really want to grow spiritually?"
Get your goal clearly in mind and keep focused on that. Paul used the analogy of the competitive races of his day to challenge the Corinthians to pay the price of growth: "Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air" (1 Corinthians 9:24-26).
In our case, we have an advantage over those Grecian runners. In a given race, only one received the prize, and it was only a wreath that would soon fade. But we're not in competition with anyone. We can all get the prize, and it will last forever.
What is your spiritual goal? Do you really want to get the prize? Do you want to grow to be the man or woman God wants you to be? Do you want to pay the price of the spiritual disciplines you need to practice in order to grow? Or will you be content to sort of muddle through your Christian life and, at the end, have to sum it all up as no more meaningful than a trip to the corner store for a loaf of bread?
The choice is yours. What will it be?
Growing Your Faith
Week 5 / TUESDAY
A BIBLICAL VIEW OF GRACE
We appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
(2 CORINTHIANS 6:1)
I once heard a definition of grace as God's making up the difference between the requirements of His righteous Law and what we lack in meeting those requirements. No one is good enough to earn salvation by himself, this definition said, so God's grace simply makes up what we lack. Some receive more grace than others, but all receive whatever they need to obtain salvation. No one ever need be lost because whatever grace he needs is his for the taking.
This definition of grace sounds very generous of God, doesn't it, making up whatever we lack? The problem with this definition, though, is that it isn't true. It represents a grave misunderstanding of the grace of God and a very inadequate view of our plight as sinners before a holy God. We need to be sure we have a biblical view of grace, for grace is at the very heart of the gospel. It is certainly not necessary for someone to understand all the theology of grace to be saved, but if a person has a false notion of grace, it probably means he or she does not really understand the gospel.
For living by grace, we need to be sure we first understand saving grace. It would be a fatal injustice if I allowed you to believe that all the wonderful provisions of God's grace are yours apart from salvation through Jesus Christ.
Grace is always the same, whether God exercises it in saving us or in dealing with us as believers. In whatever way the Bible defines saving grace, that same definition applies in the arena of living the Christian life day by day.
Transforming Grace
Week 5 / WEDNESDAY
SAINT OR SINNER?
To all the saints in Christ Jesus .. .
(PHILIPPIANS 1:1)
As Christians, should we view ourselves as saints or sinners? My answer is both. Paul often referred to believers as saints (Ephesians 1:1; Philippians 1:1), and we really are - not only in our standing before God but in our essential persons as well. We really are new creations in Christ. A fundamental change has occurred in the depths of our being. The Holy Spirit has come to dwell within us, and we've been freed from sin's dominion. But despite this we still sin every day, many times a day. And in that sense we're sinners.
We should always view ourselves both in terms of what we are in Christ (saints) and what we are in ourselves (sinners). To help us understand this twofold view of ourselves, consider Jesus as an analogy. In His own person He was sinless, but as our representative He assumed our guilt. However, He never had any of the personal feelings associated with guilt. He was fully conscious of His own sinlessness even when bearing our sins and the curse of our sins in our place.
Just as Christ could maintain a separate sense of His personal sinlessness and His official bearing of our sin, so we must distinguish between the righteousness we have in Him and the sinfulness we see in ourselves. We should always rejoice in the righteousness we have in Christ and never cease to feel deeply our own sinfulness and consequent unworthiness.
If we refuse to identify ourselves as sinners as well as saints, we risk the danger of deceiving ourselves about our sin and becoming selfrighteous. Our hearts are deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9), and we all have moral "blind spots." We have a difficult enough time seeing our sin without someone insisting that we no longer consider ourselves as "sinners."
The Discipline of Grace
Week 5 / THURSDAY
GOING OUR OWN WAY
You were straying like sheep.
(1 PETER 2:25)
One of the most damning indictments of mankind is found in Isaiah 53:6: "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way" (Niv). Going our own way is the very essence, the very core, of sin. Your way may be to give money to charity; another person's way may be to rob a bank. But neither is done with reference to God; both of you have gone your own way. And in a world governed by a sovereign Creator, that is rebellion.
When a particular territory rebels against a nation's central government, the citizens of that territory may be generally decent individuals. But all their goodness is irrelevant to the central government, to whom there's only one issue: the state of rebellion. Sometimes governments are so corrupt, we may applaud a rebellious territory. But God's government is perfect and just. His moral law is "holy, righteous and good" (Romans 7:12, NIV). No one has a valid reason to rebel against His government. We rebel for only one reason: We were born rebellious, with a perverse inclination to go our own way, to set up our own internal government rather than submit to God.
It's not that some become sinful because of an unfortunate childhood environment while others are blessed with a highly moral upbringing. Rather we're all born sinners with a corrupt nature, a natural inclination to go our own way. As David wrote, "I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm 51:5). David acknowledges he was sinful while still in his mother's womb, even during the period of pregnancy when as yet he had performed no actions, either good or bad.
Transforming Grace
Week 5 / FRIDAY
THE CROSS AND GODS HOLINESS
His wrath is poured out like fire.
(NAHUM 1:6)
Many people think that God can just forgive our sins because He's loving. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cross speaks to us not only about our sin but about God's holiness.
We usually think of God's holiness as His infinite moral purity, but there's more to it than that. The basic meaning of the word holy is "separate," and when used of God it means, among other things, that He's eternally separate from any degree of sin. He does not sin Himself, and He cannot abide or condone sin in His moral creatures.
He's not like the proverbial indulgent grandfather who winks at or ignores a grandchild's mischievous disobedience. Instead, God's holiness responds to sin with immutable and eternal hatred. To put it plainly, God hates sin. The psalmist said, "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers," and "God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day" (Psalm 5:5; 7:11, NIV). God always hates sin and inevitably expresses His wrath against it.
The cross expresses God's holiness in His determination to punish sin, even at the cost of His Son. And it expresses His love in sending His Son to bear the punishment we so justly deserved.
We cannot begin to understand the true significance of the cross unless we understand something of the holiness of God and the depth of our sin. And a continuing sense of the imperfection of our obedience, arising from the constant presence and remaining power of indwelling sin, drives us more and more as believers to an absolute dependence on the grace of God given to us through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 5 / WEEKEND
PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the LORD your God.
(LEVITICUS 20:7)
Another reason that we do not experience more holiness in daily living is that we have misunderstood "living by faith" (Galatians 2:20) to mean no effort at holiness is required on our part. In fact, sometimes we've even suggested that any effort on our part is "of the flesh."
The words of J. C. Ryle, bishop of Liverpool from 1880 to 1900, are instructive to us on this point: "Is it wise to proclaim in so bald, naked, and unqualified a way as many do, that the holiness of converted people is by faith only, and not at all by personal exertion? Is it according to the proportion of God's Word? I doubt it. That faith in Christ is the root of all holiness ... no well-instructed Christian will ever think of denying. But surely the Scriptures teach us that in following holiness the true Christian needs personal exertion and work as well as faith."5
We must face the fact that we have a personal responsibility for our walk of holiness. One Sunday our pastor in his sermon said words to this effect: "You can put away that habit that has mastered you if you truly desire to do so." Because he was referring to a particular habit which was no problem to me, I quickly agreed with him in my mind. But then the Holy Spirit said to me, "And you can put away the sinful habits that plague you if you will accept your personal responsibility for them." Acknowledging that I did have this responsibility turned out to be a milestone for me in my own pursuit of holiness.
Will you begin to take personal responsibility for your sin, realizing that as you do, you must depend on the grace of God?
The Pursuit of Holiness
Week 6 / MONDAY
INIQUITY OF HOLY THINGS
God, I thank you that I am not like other men... or even like this tax collector.
(LUKE 18:11)
With whom do we identify, the Pharisee or the tax collector? The prodigal son or the older brother? Obviously no one wants to identify with the Pharisee or the older brother. But are we willing to identify with the tax collector and the prodigal son, as sinners deeply in need of the grace and mercy of God? Are we willing to say, "God, be merciful to me the sinner" or "I am no longer worthy to be called Your son"? Are we willing to acknowledge that even our righteous acts are no more than filthy rags in the sight of God (Isaiah 64:6)?
John Owen, known as the prince of Puritan theologians, wrote these words way back in 1657: "Believers obey Christ as the one by whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect and unable to abide in God's presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God."
Owen speaks of Christ bearing the iniquity of our holy things - the sinfulness of even our good works. As another Puritan preacher was reputed to have said, "Even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb." Our best works can never earn us one bit of favor with God. Let us then turn our attention from our own performance - whether it seems good or bad - and look to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is God's provision for our sin, not only on the day we trusted Christ for salvation but every day of our Christian lives.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 6 / TUESDAY
MAKING UP OUR DEFICIENCIES?
God, be merciful to me, a sinner! LUKE 18:13)
Sin is more than actions; it's an attitude that ignores God's Law. It's more than a rebellious attitude; sin is a state of corruption in our inmost being, of vileness, even of filthiness in God's sight. For this reason the Bible never speaks of God's grace as simply making up our deficiencies - as if salvation consists in so much good works plus so much of God's grace. Rather the Bible speaks of a God "who justifies the ungodly" (Romans 4:5), who is found by those who do not seek Him, who reveals Himself to those who do not ask for Him (Romans 10:20).
In Jesus' parable in Luke 18:9-14 the tax collector did not ask God to simply make up his deficiencies. Rather, he beat his breast - a sign of his deep anguish- and said, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" (verse 13). He declared total spiritual bankruptcy, and on that basis, he experienced the grace of God. Jesus said the man went home justified - declared righteous by God.
Like the tax collector, we don't just need God's grace to make up for our deficiencies; we need His grace to provide a remedy for our guilt, a cleansing for our pollution. We need His grace to provide a satisfaction of His justice, to cancel a debt we cannot pay.
It may seem that I'm belaboring the point of our guilt and vileness before God. But we can never rightly understand God's grace until we understand our plight as those who need His grace.
As Dr. C. Samuel Storms said, "The first and possibly most fundamental characteristic of divine grace is that it presupposes sin and guilt. Grace has meaning only when men are seen as fallen, unworthy of salvation, and liable to eternal wrath."7
Transforming Grace
Week 6 / WEDNESDAY
QUALITY OBEDIENCE
He committed no sin.
(1 PETER 2:22)
There are times when our inward desires do not match our outward conduct. We act very proper on the outside, but sin in our hearts. This was never the case with Jesus. Through one of the messianic psalms He could say, "I delight to do your will, 0 my God; your law is within my heart" (Psalm 40:8). He not only perfectly obeyed the Law of God; He always desired to do so and, in fact, delighted in doing it. Once He even said, "My food ... is to do the will of him who sent me" (John 4:34, NIV).
If we think about it, we realize that obedience that isn't delighted in is not perfect obedience. Yet that was the quality of obedience Jesus rendered throughout His life.
In one of His many confrontations with His chief antagonists, the Jewish religious leaders, Jesus could unself- consciously and without any pretentiousness say, "I always do what pleases [the Father]" (John 8:29, NIV). Such a claim must include not only Jesus' outward actions and speech, but also His inward thoughts (Psalm 139:1-4). Even more important, it must include His motives, for God not only knows our thoughts but understands our motives as well (1 Chronicles 28:9; 1 Corinthians 4:5).
A little later in the same confrontation Jesus asked, "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" (John 8:46). Jesus dared His critics to name a single sin He had committed, knowing full well how eager they would have been to do so if it were possible.
It's no wonder that at the beginning of His ministry and again toward the end of it, a voice came from heaven saying, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17; 17:5).
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 6 / THURSDAY
PREACH THE GOSPEL TO YOURSELF
I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel.
(1 CORINTHIANS 15:1)
To preach the gospel to yourself means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the Law of God. In both its precepts and penalty, He fulfilled the Law of God in its most exacting requirements. And He did this in our place as our representative and our substitute. He is your propitiation, so that God's holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.
To preach the gospel to yourself means that you take at face value the precious words of Romans 4:7-8: "Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin." You believe on the testimony of God: "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). You believe that "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). You believe He forgave you all your sins (Colossians 2:13), that He reconciled you "to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him" (Colossians 1:22).
To preach the gospel to yourself means you appropriate by faith the words of Isaiah 53:6: "The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all." It means you dwell upon the promise that God has removed your transgressions from you as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12), that He has blotted out your transgressions and remembers your sin no more (Isaiah 43:25).
The Discipline of Grace
Week 6 / FRIDAY
THE HEARTBEAT OF THE GODLY
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
(PSALM 42:2)
In Psalm 27:4, David expressed an intense desire for God: "One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple." David yearned intensely for God Himself that he might enjoy His presence and His beauty. Because God is a spirit, His beauty obviously refers not to a physical appearance but to His attributes. David enjoyed dwelling upon the majesty and greatness, the holiness and goodness of God. But David did more than contemplate the beauty of God's attributes; he sought God Himself, for elsewhere he says, "Earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you" (Psalm 63:1, NIV).
The apostle Paul also experienced this longing for God: "I want to know Christ" (Philippians 3:10, Niv).1he Amplified Bible forcefully catches the intensity of Paul's desire in this passage: "[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly]."
This is the heartbeat of the godly person. As he contemplates God in the awesomeness of His infinite majesty, power, and holiness, and then as he dwells upon the riches of His mercy and grace poured out at Calvary, his heart is captivated by this One who could love him so. He is satisfied with God alone, but he is never satisfied with his present experience of God. He always yearns for more.
The Fruitful Life
Week 6 / WEEKEND
NO CROSS, No GOSPEL
Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.
ROMANS 5:2)
When you set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you'll begin realizing what an awful sinner you are. If you aren't firmly rooted in the gospel and haven't learned to preach it to yourself every day, you'll soon become discouraged and will slack off. In the pursuit of holiness, nothing's more important than learning to preach the gospel to yourself every day.
In doing so, we must be careful not to preach a gospel without a cross. All the wonderful promises of forgiveness in Scripture are based upon Christ's atoning death. Through it He satisfied God's justice and averted from us God's wrath. We must be careful not to rely on the so-called unconditional love of God without realizing His love can flow to us only as a result of Christ's atoning death.
This is the gospel by which we were saved, and the gospel by which we must live every day of our Christian lives.
In Romans 3:24, Paul said we are justified by grace, referring to what we might call our point-in-time salvation, the day we trusted in Christ. In Romans 5:2, however, Paul spoke of this grace in which we now stand. Here he refers to our day-to-day standing before God as being on the same basis as our justification - the basis of grace. But this grace - unmerited favor to those who deserve wrath - comes to us through the Lord Jesus Christ.
God is the "God of all grace" (1 Peter 5:10) and is disposed to deal with us by grace, but not at the expense of His justice. But with justice satisfied, God can now deal with us in grace, both in our salvation and in our day-to-day relationship with Him.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 7 / MONDAY
WHO NEEDS GRACE MOST?
You are all partakers with me of grace.
(PHILIPPIANS 1:7)
All of us need grace, the saint as well as the sinner. The most conscientious, dutiful, hardworking Christian needs God's grace as much as the most dissolute, hard-living sinner. All of us need the same grace. The sinner doesn't need more grace than the saint, nor does the immature and undisciplined believer need more than the godly, zealous missionary. We all need the same amount because the "currency" of our good works is debased and worthless before God.
Grace considers all people as totally undeserving and unable to do anything to earn the blessing of God. C. Samuel Storms has aptly written, "Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to bestow it in the presence of human merit.... Grace ceases to be grace if God is compelled to withdraw it in the presence of human demerit.... [Grace] is treating a person ... solely according to the infinite goodness and sovereign purpose of God."8
This description of God's grace cuts both ways: It can neither be earned by your merit nor forfeited by your demerit. If you feel you deserve an answer to prayer or a particular blessing from God because of your hard work or sacrifice, you're living by works, not by grace. But it's just as true that if you despair of experiencing God's blessing because of your demerits, you're also casting aside the grace of God.
I seldom think of merit on my part, but I'm often painfully aware of my demerits. Therefore, I need to be reminded frequently that my demerits do not compel God to withdraw His grace from me, but rather He treats me with no regard whatsoever to what I deserve. I'd much rather stake my hope of His blessing on His infinite goodness than on my good works.
Transforming Grace
Week 7 / TUESDAY
EVERYTHING FOR US
He laid down his life for us.
(1 JOHN 3:16)
The Law of God set forth in Scripture is a transcript of God's own moral nature. It's the law that was fully imprinted on Adam's heart as part of his being created in God's image. It's the same law that the apostle Paul said is still written on people's hearts regardless of how obscured it may now be (Romans 2:12-16). It's a universal law applicable to all people of all times.
The apostle Paul was referring to this universal moral will of God when he wrote that Christ was "born under the law" (Galatians 4:4). Jesus was born under the Law because He came to perfectly obey it in our place. He came to do what we, because of our sinful nature, could not do.
There is, however, another significant dimension to Jesus' obedience. As our representative, He not only was obligated to obey the precepts of the Law, but also to suffer its penalty for our violation of it. This obligation He freely assumed in obedience to the Father's will.
So Jesus not only obeyed the Father's universal moral will, which we call the Law of God; He also obeyed the Father's specific will for Him, namely to suffer the penalty for our sin. The writer of Hebrews referred to this specific will of God for Jesus when he wrote, "And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10, NIV).
In recent years Christians have tended to focus on the death of Christ almost to the neglect of His sinless life. Jesus' life of perfect obedience has been seen mostly as a necessary precondition to His death. However, Jesus not only died for us; He also lived for us. All that Christ did in both His life and death, He did in our place as our substitute.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 7 / WEDNESDAY
SAY No
The grace of God has appeared... training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions.
(TITUS 2:11-12)
Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness. Ungodliness in its broadest form basically comprises disregarding God, ignoring Him, or not taking Him into account in one's life. It's a lack of fear and reverence for Him. The wickedness portrayed by Paul in Romans 1:18-32 all starts with the idea that "although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him" (verse 21, Niv). A person may be highly moral and even benevolent and still be ungodly.
When we trust in Christ as our Savior, we bring a habit of ungodliness into our Christian lives. We were accustomed to living without regard for God. As unbelievers, we cared neither for His glory nor His will. Basically, we ignored Him. But now that we have been delivered from the dominion of sin and brought under the reign of grace, grace teaches us to renounce this attitude (as well as actions) of ungodliness. Obviously this training does not occur all at once. In fact, God will be rooting out ungodliness from our lives as long as we live on this earth.
Grace also teaches us to say no to worldly passions, the inordinate desire for and preoccupation with the things of this life, such as possessions, prestige, pleasure, or power. "For this world in its present form is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:31, NIV).
Saying no to ungodliness and worldly passions basically means a decisive break with those attitudes and practices. In one sense, this decisive break is a divine act that occurred when we died to the dominion of sin in our lives. In another sense, we're to work out this breach with sin by putting to death the misdeeds of the body (Romans 8:13).
The Discipline of Grace
Week 7 / THURSDAY
PUT OFF, PUT ON
Put off your your old self... and ... put on the new self.
(EPHESIANS 4:22,24)
Sometimes we get the impression that the Christian life consists mainly of negative prohibitions. These are definitely an important part of our spiritual discipline, as attested by the fact that eight of the Ten Commandments are prohibitions (Exodus 20:1-19). We need the prohibitions set forth not just in the Ten Commandments but in all the lifeapplication sections of the New Testament. Indwelling sin needs the constant restraint of being denied its gratification.
The Christian life, however, should also be directed toward positive expressions of Christian character. All of Paul's ethical teaching is characterized by this twofold approach of putting off the old self and putting on the new self (as in Ephesians 4:21-24).
I like to think of this twofold approach as represented by the two blades of a pair of scissors. A single scissors blade is useless as far as doing the job for which it was designed. The two blades must work in conjunction with each other to be effective. And we must work both at putting off the characteristics of our old selves and putting on the characteristics of the new selves. One without the other is not effective.
Some believers seem to focus on putting off sinful practices but give little attention to what they are to put on. Too often their lives become hard and brittle and probably self-righteous, because they tend to equate godliness with a defined list of "don'ts." Other believers tend to focus on putting on certain positive traits such as love, compassion, and kindness, but they can become careless in morality and ethics. We need the dual focus of "putting off" and "putting on" - each should receive equal attention from us.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 7 / FRIDAY
SAY YES
The grace of God has appeared ... training us .. . to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives.
(TITUS 2:11-12)
In Titus 2:11-12 , Paul expressed both the negative and positive aspects of what grace accomplishes in the Christian life: "For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to [negatively] renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to [positively] live selfcontrolled, upright, and godly lives in the present age."
Those three words-self-controlled, upright, and godly -are considered by most Bible commentators to refer to actions with regard to one's self, one's neighbor, and God.
Self-control expresses the self-restraint we need to practice toward the good and legitimate things of life, as well as the outright denial of things clearly sinful.
Upright or righteous conduct refers to just and right actions toward other people, doing to them what we would have them do to us (Matthew 7:12).
Godliness is having a regard for God's glory and God's will in every aspect of our lives, doing everything out of reverence and love for Him. Matthew Henry has a helpful description of godliness in his commentary on Titus 2:12: "Personal and relative duties must be done in obedience
to his commands, with due aim at pleasing and honouring him, from principles of holy love and fear of him. But there is an express and direct duty also that we owe to God, namely, belief and acknowledgment of his being and perfections, paying him internal and external worship and homage, - loving, fearing, and trusting in him, - depending on him, and devoting ourselves to him, - observing all those religious duties and ordinances that he has appointed, - praying to him, praising him, and meditating on his word and works."9
The Discipline of Grace
Week 7 / WEEKEND
AMAZING FOR ALL
The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen.
(REVELATION 22:21)
John Newton, the debauched and dissolute slave trader, after his conversion, wrote the wonderful old hymn "Amazing Grace." He never tired of contemplating with awed amazement the wonder of a grace that would reach even to him. But the person who grew up in a godly Christian family, who trusted Christ at an early age, and who never indulged in any so-called "gross" sins should be just as amazed at the grace of God as was John Newton.
Here's a spiritual principle regarding the grace of God: To the extent that you're clinging to any vestiges of self-righteousness or putting any confidence in your own spiritual attainments, to that degree you are not living by the grace of God in your life. This principle applies both in salvation and in living the Christian life. Grace and good works (that is, works done to earn favor with God) are mutually exclusive. We cannot stand, as it were, with one foot on grace and the other on our own works of merit. If you're trusting to any degree in your own morality or religious attainments, or if you believe God will somehow recognize any of your good works as merit toward your salvation, you need to seriously consider if you're truly a Christian. We must be absolutely clear about the truth of the gospel of salvation.
More than two hundred years ago, Abraham Booth (1734-1806), a Baptist pastor in England, wrote, "Let the reader ... carefully remember, that grace is either absolutely free, or it is not at all: and, that he who professes to look for salvation by grace, either believes in his heart to be saved entirely by it, or he acts inconsistently in affairs of the greatest importance.""
Transforming Grace
Week 8 / MONDAY
A SUFFERING LIFE
He learned obedience through what he suffered.
(HEBREWS 5:8)
The suffering of Christ was not limited to the hours He hung on the cross. It actually began at His incarnation when He laid aside His divine glory and assumed a human nature subject to the same physical weaknesses and infirmities we are exposed to.
He was born into a poor family in a nation under the heel of a foreign empire. His first crib was an animal's feed trough. During His three years of public ministry, His brothers did not believe in Him and on at least one occasion mocked Him (John 7:1-5). He was misunderstood, criticized, and harassed by the Jewish religious leaders. In the words of Isaiah, "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3, NIV).
In Galatians 6:7, Paul stated a universal moral principle: A man reaps what he sows. Sin has consequences, both spiritual and temporal. Jesus, in a sense, reaped what we have sown." His entire life was one of suffering obedience and obedient suffering. Of course, His suffering reached its climax on the cross, but even there we see His perfect obedience when he prayed the night before: "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39, NIV).
Jesus actively obeyed even in His death, when He "offered himself without blemish to God" (Hebrews 9:14), functioning as both high priest and sacrifice. Further, even before His death He said, "I lay down my life for the sheep.... No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord" (John 10:15,18). In that sense Jesus obeyed as actively on the cross as He had throughout His life.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 8 / TUESDAY
PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN LIVING
Let your light shine before others.
(MATTHEW 5:16)
In a series of moral exhortations in Titus 2:1-3:2 we find three instances where Paul emphasized the importance of our Christian testimony before unbelievers. In verse 5, he said, "that the word of God may not be reviled." In verse 8: "so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us." And in verse 10: "so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior."
Paul was obviously concerned about the witness by life of the believers. In Romans he said to the Jews, "God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you" (2:24, NIV), and he must have had a similar concern about the Cretan Christians to whom Titus ministered.
What would Paul say about us today? As the unbelieving world becomes increasingly hostile to true Christianity, it will be even more eager to find inconsistencies in our lives so it can ridicule God and His Word.
More than four hundred years ago, the great reformer John Calvin voiced a similar concern: "Everything bad [the ungodly] can seize hold of in our life is twisted maliciously against Christ and His teaching. The result is that by our fault God's sacred name is exposed to insult. The more closely we see ourselves being watched by our enemies, the more intent we should be to avoid their slanders, so that their ill-will strengthens us in the desire to do well." 12
As believers we should seek to be exemplary in every aspect of our lives, doing our best for the sake of Christ and His gospel. Our work, play, driving, and shopping should all be done with a view that unbelievers will be attracted to the gospel that they see at work in our lives.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 8 / WEDNESDAY
HUMILITY BEFORE GOD
He humbled himself.
(PHILIPPIANS 2:8)
Humility toward God is akin to the fear of God: It begins with a high view of God's person. As we see God in His majesty, awesomeness, and holiness, we are humbled before Him. In every occasion in the Scriptures in which man was privileged to view God in His glory, he was brought low or humbled in His presence. Moses bowed to the ground and worshipped; Isaiah cried, "Woe is me!"; Ezekiel fell face down; John fell at His feet as though dead. Even the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders in heaven of Revelation fell down before the throne of the glorified Lamb.
Humility in every area of life, in every relationship with other people, begins with a right concept of God as the One who is infinite and eternal in His majesty and holiness. We are to humble ourselves under God's mighty hand, approaching every relationship and every circumstance in reference to Him. When relationships with people are good and circumstances are favorable, we are to humbly receive these blessings from His gracious hand. When people are mistreating us and circumstances are difficult, we are to humbly accept them as from an infinitely wise and loving heavenly Father.
This humility before God is basic to all our relationships in life. We cannot begin to experience humility in any other relationship until we experience a deep and profound humility in our attitude toward God. When we are conscious of our (sinful) creature relationship to an infinitely majestic and holy God, we will not wish to selfishly compare ourselves with others. And to the extent that our awareness of our lowly place before God is an abiding one, we will avoid the temptations of pride and competition.
The Fruitful Life
Week 8 / THURSDAY
GRACE TO OTHERS
Should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?
(MATTHEW 18:33)
We're brought into God's kingdom by grace; we're sanctified by grace; we receive both temporal and spiritual blessings by grace; we're motivated to obedience by grace; we're called to serve and enabled to serve by grace; we receive strength to endure trials by grace; and we're glorified by grace. The entire Christian life is lived under the reign of God's grace.
This grace is not only to be received by us; it is, in a sense, to be extended to others. I say "in a sense" because our relationship to other people is different from God's relationship to us. He is the infinitely superior judge and moral Governor of the universe. We are all sinners and are on an equal plane with one another. So we cannot exercise grace as God does, but we can relate to one another as those who have received grace and who wish to operate on the principles of grace.
In fact, we won't experience the peace with God and the joy of God if we aren't willing to extend grace to others. This is the point of Jesus' parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18:23-34.
The person who is living by grace sees the vast contrast between his own sins against God and the offenses of others against him. He forgives others because he himself has been so graciously forgiven. He realizes that by receiving God's forgiveness through Christ he has forfeited the right to be offended when others hurt him. He practices the admonition of Paul: "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32).
Transforming Grace
Week 8 / FRIDAY
OUR PERFECT LIFE
By the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.
ROMANS 5:19)
How can Jesus take our place both in obeying God's Law and in suffering the consequences of our disobeying it? How can the innocent suffer for the guilty?
Because God appointed Adam as the federal head or legal representative of the entire human race (except for Jesus, of course), we all suffered the consequences of Adam's disobedience. In the same manner, Jesus was appointed as the legal representative of all who would ever trust in Him.
This legal representation is the basis on which Christ's life and death become effective for us. There would be absolutely no benefit to us if Jesus lived and died merely as a private person. His work brings us benefit only because He lived and died as our representative.
Paul used again and again the expressions in Christ, in Him, and in the Lord, referring to our union with Christ. In a spiritual but nevertheless real way we're united to Him, both legally and vitally. This "legal union" is the basis on which we can say Christ lived and died as our representative and substitute.
Paul has this in view when he wrote that we were crucified with Christ, died with Him, were buried with Him, were made spiritually alive with Him, and will ultimately be united with Him in His resurrection (see Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:4-5,10; Ephesians 2:5). All that Christ did in His life and death is effective for us because we're legally united to Him.
Therefore we can accurately say that when Jesus lived a perfect life, we lived a perfect life. When He died on the cross to suffer the penalty of sin, we died on the cross. All that Jesus did, we did, because of our legal union with Him.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 8 / WEEKEND
GRACE TEACHES US
For the grace of God has appeared ... training us.
(TITUS 2:11-12)
When I first became a Christian, I regarded the Bible largely as a rule book. The Bible would tell me what to do or not do, and I would simply obey. It was as easy as that - so I thought.
The practical precepts of the Bible were to me no more than statements of the Law of God. They commanded but gave no ability to obey. Furthermore, they condemned me for my failure to obey them as I knew I ought. It seemed the more I tried, the more I failed. I knew nothing of God's grace in enabling me to live the Christian life. I thought it was all by sheer grit and willpower. And just as importantly, I understood little of His forgiving grace through the blood of Christ. I felt both guilty and helpless - guilty because of recurring sin patterns in my life and helpless to do anything about them.
My experience was not unusual. I would say it is fairly typical, even among many who have been Christians for years. That's why we need to understand that it is grace - not law - that disciplines us. Of course, it is actually God in His grace, or by His grace, who disciplines us. Or to put it more plainly, God's parental training of His children is based on the principles of grace and administered in the realm of grace.
What are the principles of grace? Basically there are two. The first is the forgiveness of all our sins and the unconditional acceptance of our persons through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. The second is the deliverance from the dominion of sin and the enabling power of the Holy Spirit in us through our union with Christ.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 9 / MONDAY
GENEROSITY BEYOND COMPARE
How will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
(ROMANS 8:32)
The fact that God deals with His children on the basis of grace without regard to merit or demerit is a staggering concept. It's opposed to almost everything we've been taught about life. We've been generally conditioned to think that if we work hard and "pay our dues," we'll be rewarded in proportion to our work: "You do so much, you deserve so much."
But God's grace doesn't operate on a reward-for-works basis. It's much better than that. God is generous beyond all measure or comparison. The Scripture says, "God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son"; and Paul spoke of this as God's "inexpressible gift" (John 3:16; 2 Corinthians 9:15). God's inexpressible generosity, however, does not stop at saving us; it provides for all our needs and blessings throughout our entire lives. As Paul said in Romans 8:32, "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" Paul used the argument of the greater to the lesser to teach us God's generosity. No blessing we'll ever receive can possibly compare with the gift of God's Son dying for us. God demonstrated His gracious generosity to the ultimate at the cross. And Paul based the assurance that we can expect God to meet all our other needs throughout life on the fact that God has already met our greatest need.
Note that Paul said God will "graciously" or freely give us all things. Just as salvation is given freely to all who trust in Christ, so all blessings are given freely to us, also through faith in Christ.
Transforming Grace
Week 9 / TUESDAY
TAKING SIN SERIOUSLY
The wages of sin is death.
(ROMANS 6:23)
Yet another reason we don't experience more holiness in our daily lives is that we don't take some sin seriously. We've mentally categorized sins into that which is unacceptable and that which may be tolerated a bit.
In commenting on some of the more minute Old Testament dietary laws God gave to the children of Israel, Andrew Bonar said, "It is not the importance of the thing, but the majesty of the Lawgiver, that is to be the standard of obedience.... Some, indeed, might reckon such minute and arbitrary rules as these as trifling. But the principle involved in obedience or disobedience was none other than the same principle which was tried in Eden at the foot of the forbidden tree. It is really this: Is the Lord to be obeyed in all things whatsoever He commands? Is He a holy Lawgiver? Are His creatures bound to give implicit assent to His will?"13
But the Scripture says it is "the little foxes that ruin the vineyards" (Song of Solomon 2:15, NIV). It is compromise on the little issues that leads to greater downfalls. And who is to say that a little ignoring of civil law is not a serious sin in the sight of God?
Are we willing to call sin "sin" not because it is big or little, but because God's law forbids it? We cannot categorize sin if we are to live a life of holiness. God will not let us get away with that kind of attitude.
Take time to settle this issue in your heart right now. Will you decide to obey God in all areas of life, however insignificant the issue may be?
The Pursuit of Holiness
Week 9 / WEDNESDAY
EMBRACED
We have come to share in Christ.
(HEBREWS 3:14)
Christ's work is not effective for everyone because not everyone is in union with Him. We're united to Christ by faith - that is, by trusting in Him as our Savior. And the moment we trust in Christ, we become partakers of and beneficiaries of all that He did in both His life and death.
We're united to Christ both legally and vitally. We can distinguish these two aspects in this way: Our legal union with Christ entitles us to all that Christ did for us as He acted in our place, as our substitute. Our vital union with Christ is the means by which He works in us by His Holy Spirit. The legal union refers to His objective work outside of us that is credited to us through faith. The vital union refers to His subjective work in us, which is also realized through faith as we rely on His Spirit to work in and through us.
Though our union with Christ has both these aspects, it is one union. We cannot have legal union without also having vital union. If through faith we lay hold of what Christ did for us, we'll also begin to experience His working in us.
Have you ever thought about the wonderful truth that Christ lived His perfect life in your place and on your behalf? Has it yet gripped you that when God looks at you today He sees you clothed in the perfect, sinless obedience of His Son? And that when He says, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased" (Matthew 3:17; 17:5), He includes you in that warm embrace? The extent to which we truly understand this is the extent to which we will begin to enjoy those unsearchable riches that are found in Christ.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 9 / THURSDAY
GIVING YOU WINGS
You yourselves have been taught by God.
(1 THESSALONIANS 4:9)
God administers His discipline in the realm of grace. What does that mean? It means that all His teaching, training, and discipline are administered in love and for our spiritual welfare. It means God is never angry with us, though He's often grieved at our sins. It means He doesn't condemn us or count our sins against us. All that He does in us and to us is done on the basis of unmerited favor. To use the words of William Hendricksen, "God's grace is his active favor bestowing the greatest gift upon those who have deserved the greatest punishment."4
Where the Law condemns, grace forgives through the Lord Jesus Christ. Where the Law commands but gives no power, grace commands but does give power through the Holy Spirit who lives and works within us.
Here's a helpful little verse from centuries ago that summarizes this truth: "`Run, John, run,' the law commands, but gives neither feet nor hands. Better news the gospel brings; it bids me fly and gives me wings."15 It's easy to memorize, and if you do so, it will help you capture the essence of what it means to be disciplined by grace.
How do you perceive God's parental training? Is it by law or by grace? How are you seeking to respond? Do you accept the forgiveness of His grace, or labor under the burden of guilt? Are you relying on your union with Christ and the indwelling Spirit for the power to respond to God's training, or is the Bible only a rule book that you struggle to obey by your own willpower?
The grace that brought you salvation is the same grace that teaches you. But you must respond on the basis of grace, not law.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 9 / FRIDAY
THE GENEROUS LANDOWNER
Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?
(MATTHEW 20:15)
God's reward is out of all proportion to our service and sacrifice. In the kingdom of heaven, God's reward system is based not on merit but on grace, and grace always gives far more than we have "earned." As R. C. H. Lenski wrote, "The generosity and the magnanimity of God are so great that he accepts nothing from us without rewarding it beyond all computation.... The vast disproportion existing between our work and God's reward of it already displays his boundless grace, to say nothing of the gift of salvation which is made before we have even begun to do any work.""
In the parable Jesus told in Matthew 20:1-16, a landowner was progressively more generous with each group of workers he hired throughout the day. Each worker, regardless of how long he'd worked, received a day's wages. He received not what he'd earned on an hourly basis, but what he needed to sustain his family for a day. The landowner chose to pay them according to their need, not according to their work. He paid according to grace, not debt.
The parable focuses particularly on those workers hired at the eleventh hour. They were treated extremely generously, each one receiving twelve times what he'd earned on a strict hourly basis. They'd been standing all day waiting for someone to hire them so they could earn money to support their families. They needed employment more than the landowner needed their services. He hired them, not because of his need, but their need. He represents God in His gracious awareness of our needs and His continuous work to meet them.
God calls us to serve Him, not because He needs us, but because we need Him.
Transforming Grace
Week 9 / WEEKEND
JUSTICE HONORED
It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.
(HEBREWS 9:27)
All of us will eventually face judgment before a holy and just God. As we think of that inevitable day, do we want to see justice done, or mercy? Except for the most arrogantly self-righteous among us, we would all hope for mercy. Here, however, is our dilemma: God's justice is certain, and it is inflexible.
Paul says in 2 Thessalonians 1:6-8, "God is just: He will pay back.... He will punish those who do not know God" (Niv). And in Romans 12:19: "`It is mine to avenge; I will repay,' says the Lord" (NIV). Though often delayed, God's justice is nonetheless certain.
Justice may be defined as rendering to everyone according to one's due. Justice means getting exactly what we deserve - nothing more, nothing less. In our human experience a tension often exists between justice and mercy. Sometimes one prevails at the expense of the other. But with God, justice always prevails. His justice must be satisfied; otherwise His moral government would be undermined.
God does not exalt His mercy at the expense of His justice. And in order to maintain His justice, all sin without exception must be punished. Contrary to popular opinion, with God there's no such thing as mere forgiveness. There is only justice.
The death of Jesus was a complete and full satisfaction of divine justice for all who trust in Him. At the cross there's no tension between justice and mercy; instead, they meet in full harmony. While mercy has full expression, justice has been honored and magnified. It has exacted its penalty and been completely satisfied. Therefore, as believers we can rejoice in the abundant mercy of God through Christ, while also fully honoring the inviolate nature of His holy justice.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 10 / MONDAY
MORE LOVE
It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more.
(PHILIPPIANS 1:9)
How can we fulfill our responsibility to love "more and more" (1 Thessalonians 4:9-10)? Recognizing that love is an inner disposition of the soul produced only by the Holy Spirit, what can we do to fulfill our responsibility? First, the Spirit of God uses His Word to transform us. If we want to grow in love, we must saturate our minds with Scriptures that describe love and show its importance. First Corinthians 13:1-3, for example, tells us of the emptiness of all knowledge, abilities, and zeal apart from love. First Corinthians 13:4-7 describes love in terms of specific attitudes and actions. Romans 13:8-10 describes love in terms of fulfilling the Law of God in our lives.
The second thing we must do is pray for the Holy Spirit to apply His Word to our hearts and to our daily lives. Paul did not just exhort the Thessalonians to grow in love; he looked to the Lord to work in their hearts: "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you" (1 Thessalonians 3:12, Niv). As we see instances in our lives of failing to love, we should confess them to God, asking Him to help us grow in those specific areas.
Finally, we must obey. We must do those things that love dictates. We must do no harm to our neighbor (Romans 13:10); we must meet our neighbor's needs and forgive our neighbor's wrongs against us; we must put his interests before our own; and we must reach out and embrace our brother in Christ. But we must do all this in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, who works in us to will and act according to His good purpose.
The Fruitful Life
Week 10 / TUESDAY
CRUISE CONTROL OR RACE CAR?
For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.
(1 JOHN 5:3)
If we're to love God with all our heart and soul and mind, and if obedience is a major part of such love, it follows that we're to obey Him with all our heart, soul, and mind. We're to put everything we have into obedience to Him.
Most of us believers practice what I call a "cruise-control" approach to obedience. We press the pedal of obedience until we've brought our behavior up to a certain level or speed, which is most often determined by the behavior standard of other Christians around us. We don't want to lag behind them, nor are we eager to forge ahead. We want to just comfortably blend in. Once we have arrived at this comfortable level of obedience, we push the cruise-control button in our hearts, ease back, and relax. We don't have to watch the speed limit signs in God's Word, and we certainly don't have to experience the fatigue that comes with striving to obey Him with all our heart, soul, and mind.
By contrast consider race-car drivers. They wouldn't think of using cruise control. They're not interested in blending in with those around them. They want to win the race. So they're totally focused on their driving. They try to push their car to the outer limits of its mechanical ability and endurance, and press themselves to the limits of their skill. They're driving with all their heart, soul, and mind.
This is what it means to love and obey God with all our heart, soul, and mind. It means striving for holiness, in the words of Hebrews 12:14. It means making every effort to add to our faith the various facets of Christian character, in the words of 2 Peter 1:5-7.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 10 / WEDNESDAY
GOD DELIGHTS TO Do GOOD
I will rejoice in doing them good.
(JEREMIAH 32:41)
When I married my first wife - who is now with the Lord - we asked that the following Scripture be read at our wedding. Note the many expressions of God's goodness: "They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me. I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul" (Jeremiah 32:38-41, N1v). This sounds appropriate, doesn't it, for two young people committed to serving God full time?
But this assurance was originally given to a group of people described by God as those who "have done nothing but evil in my sight from their youth" (verse 30, Niv). They were in captivity in Babylon because of their sins over many generations.
Just a few chapters earlier, God had said to them: "This is what the LORD says: `When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my gracious promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, `plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future"' (Jeremiah 29:10-11, NIV). If anyone qualified for demerits, surely the Israelites in captivity did. Yet God promised to prosper them, to rejoice in doing them good.
Transforming Grace
Week 10 / THURSDAY
JUSTICE SATISFIED
When justice is done, it is a joy to the righteous.
(PROVERBS 21:15)
What are we to expect when we stand before God's bar of judgment? Most people think God will somehow relax His inflexible justice and pardon all of us by mere sovereign prerogative. But God, by the perfection of His nature, cannot do that. He cannot exalt one of His glorious attributes (such as mercy) at the expense of another. Justice must be satisfied.
Through His death on the cross Jesus fully satisfied the justice of God on our behalf. Therefore everyone who has trusted in Christ as Savior can say, "God's justice toward me is satisfied." As believers we must steadily keep this in mind. Never again should we fear the retributive justice of God.
Yet many believers live under a sense of fear of God's justice. We know we sin continually, and sometimes that painful awareness almost overwhelms us. At such times we're still prone to view God as our judge meting out absolute justice. We fail to grasp by faith the fact that Christ Jesus has fully satisfied God's justice for us.
One morning in my private devotions I was reflecting on my sin, which seemed particularly painful to me that day. In my discouragement I blurted out, "God, You would be perfectly just in sending me to hell." Immediately on the heel of those words, though, came this thought: No, You wouldn't because Jesus satisfied Your justice for me.
This is the stand we must take as believers. We must not allow the accusations of Satan or the condemning indictments of our consciences to bring us under a sense of God's unrequited justice. Instead, we should by faith lay hold of the wonderful truth that God's justice has been satisfied for us by our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 10 / FRIDAY
THE ACCEPTABLE MOTIVE
We love God and obey his commandments.
(1 JOHN 5:2)
Although obedience is the primary way we express love to God, it's not the same as love. Love is essentially a motive. "Love is a verb, not a feeling," the saying goes. Indeed, Jesus said we're to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44).
In another sense, however, love is not a verb but the motive that prompts and guides other verbs - certain actions. I love my enemies first by forgiving them for their harmful actions toward me, then by seeking their welfare in appropriate ways. Love needs other verbs to give it hands and feet. This can be seen in 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul used love as a noun, the subject of a whole list of action statements: Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, and so on.
The converse truth is that love gives validity to my actions and makes them acceptable to God. I can seek my enemies' welfare so they won't harm me again. That's manipulation, not love. It's looking out for my welfare under the guise of looking out for theirs.
Love for God is the only acceptable motive for obeying Him. This love may express itself in reverence for Him and a desire to please Him, but those expressions must spring from love. Without love, my apparent obedience may be essentially self-serving. I may fear God's punishment or His withholding of blessing, or I may conform to a certain standard of conduct because I want to fit in with the Christian culture around me. I might even obey simply because I have a compliant temperament.
All these motives may result in outward obedience, but not obedience from the heart. Only conduct arising from love is worthy of the name obedience.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 10 / WEEKEND
WHEN GOD IS IRRELEVANT
Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
(1 CORINTHIANS 10:31)
When I talk about specific areas of our subtle, "acceptable" sins, one comment I often hear is that pride is their root cause. While I agree pride plays a major role, I believe there's another sin even more basic, more widespread, and more apt to be the root cause of other sins. It's the sin of ungodliness, of which we're all guilty to some degree.
We don't think of ourselves as ungodly. After all, we're Christians, not atheists or wicked people. How can I say that we believers are all, to some extent, ungodly?
Ungodliness may be defined as living one's everyday life with little or no thought of God, God's will, God's glory, or our dependence on God. You can readily see that someone can lead a respectable life and still be ungodly in the sense that God is essentially irrelevant in his or her life.
The sad fact is that many of us believers tend to live our daily lives with little or no thought of God. We may read our Bibles and pray at the beginning of each day, but then go out into the day's activities and basically live as though God doesn't exist. We seldom think of our dependence on God or our responsibility to Him. We might go for hours with no thought of God at all. I believe that all our other acceptable sins can ultimately be traced to this root sin of ungodliness. Ungodliness ultimately gives life to our more visible sins.
Pray that God will make you more conscious of the fact that you live every moment of every day under His all-seeing eye, knowing that He sees your every deed, hears your every word, and knows your every thought.
Respectable Sins
Week 11 / MONDAY
LOST YEARS RESTORED
How great is his goodness!
(ZECHARIAH 9:17)
Joel prophesied God's judgment upon Judah through a plague of locusts that would devour all the trees and plants, resulting in widespread famine. Then, in the midst of a prophecy of restoration, God made the following promise: "I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you" (Joel 2:25).
Consider the amazing generosity of God. He did not limit His promise merely to restoring the land to its former productivity. He said He'll repay them for the years the locusts have eaten, years they themselves forfeited to the judgment of God. God could well have said, "I'll restore your land to its former productivity, but too bad about those years you lost! They are gone forever. That's the price you pay for your sin." He would have been generous just to have restored them - but He went beyond that. He would cause their harvests to be so abundant they would recoup the losses from the years of famine. He said He'll repay them, though He obviously owed them nothing.
From time to time I have opportunity to minister individually to people who in some way have really "blown it" in life. Usually these people lament their "lost" years, the years when they served sin instead of God, or years that were wasted as Christians. I try to encourage them about the grace of God. I cannot promise them God will restore those lost years as He did the Israelites, but I can assure them that it is God's nature to be gracious. I encourage them to pray to this end and to realize, as they pray, that they are coming to a God who does not withhold His grace because of demerits.
Transforming Grace
Week 11 / TUESDAY
THE CUP JESUS EMPTIED
My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.
MATTHEW 26:42)
In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." A little later, at His arrest, He said to Peter, "Put your sword away! Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?" (Matthew 26:39, Niv; John 18:11, N1v). The cup was very much on Jesus' mind that night.
What was in the cup? We generally associate it with His crucifixion. We assume that when He prayed that the cup might be taken away, He was asking to be spared from that horrible and demeaning death on the cross. There's truth in that assumption, and certainly the cup was connected with the crucifixion. But still - what was in it?
In both Old and New Testaments the cup of God is a reference to His judgment. For example, in Psalm 75:8 we read, "In the hand of the LORD is a cup full of foaming wine mixed with spices; he pours it out, and all the wicked of the earth drink it down to its very dregs" (NIV).
Jeremiah 25:15 is even more specific: "Take from my hand this cup of the wine of my wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it." And Revelation 14:10, looking out into the future, speaks of the ungodly who "will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger."
So we see that the cup is a metaphorical expression referring to the judgment of God as expressed in the pouring out of His wrath on sinful nations and people.
What was in the cup Jesus drank at His crucifixion? It was the wrath of God.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 11 / WEDNESDAY
GROWING IN LOVE
The LORD is on my side.
(PSALM 118:6)
How can we develop our love for God so that our obedience is prompted by love instead of some lesser motive? The Scripture gives us our first clue, or beginning point, when it says, "We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Our love to God can only be a response to His love for us. If I don't believe God loves me, I cannot love Him. To love God, I must believe that He is for me, not against me (Romans 8:31) and that He accepts me as a son or a daughter, not a slave (Galatians 4:7).
What would keep us from believing God loves us? The answer is a sense of guilt and condemnation because of our sin. The same tender conscience that enables us to become aware of sins that lie deep beneath the level of external actions can also load us down with guilt. When we're under that burden and sense of condemnation, it is difficult to love God or believe that He loves us.
We cannot love God if we think we're under His judgment and condemnation. James Fraser said, "But whilst the conscience retains the charge of guilt, condemnation, and wrath, there cannot be purity, or sincerity of heart toward God, or sincerity of the love of God. Human nature is so formed, that it cannot love any object that is adverse and terrible to it."17
This means we must continually take those sins that our consciences accuse us of to the cross and plead the cleansing blood of Jesus. Only the blood of Christ cleanses our consciences so that we may no longer feel guilty (Hebrews 9:14; 10:2).
The Discipline of Grace
Week 11 / THURSDAY
ONE BLESSING AFTER ANOTHER
May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
(1 PETER 1:2)
John wrote that Jesus was "full of grace and truth" and that "from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace" (John 1:14,16). The idea portrayed is analogous to the ocean waves crashing upon the beach. One wave has hardly disappeared before another arrives. They just keep coming from an inexhaustible supply. So it is with the grace of God through Christ. He's full of grace and truth, and from His inexhaustible fullness we receive one blessing after another.
William Hendriksen commented on this passage as follows: "The meaning of verse 16 is that believers are constantly receiving grace in the place of grace. One manifestation of the unmerited favor of God in Christ is hardly gone when another arrives; hence grace upon grace.... The concept grace upon grace, an incessant supply of grace, harmonizes better with the idea from his fulness than does the simple term grace. The limitless supply or reservoir indicated by the words his fulness would seem to suggest a limitless outflow: grace upon grace."18
The God who was gracious to Adam and Eve both before and after the Fall, who rejoiced in doing good to the Jewish nation in captivity, who was the "God of all grace" to Peter (1 Peter 5:10) is the same gracious and generous God today. Grace is part of the very nature of God, and He cannot change. He is indeed the generous landowner of the parable in Matthew 20:1-16, continually going to the marketplace of life to find those in need of a day's wages so He can bring them into His vineyard and then reward them out of all proportion to their labors.
Transforming Grace
Week 11 / FRIDAY
JOYS STEPPING STONES
You received the word ... with the joy of the Holy Spirit.
(1 THESSALONIANS 1:6)
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, the effect of His ministry in our hearts. Paul wrote, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit" (Romans 15:13, NIV). It's by the power of the Holy Spirit that we experience the joy of salvation and are enabled to rejoice even in the midst of trials.
The Spirit uses His Word to create joy in our hearts. Romans 15:4 speaks of the endurance and encouragement that come from the Scriptures; the next verse says that God gives endurance and encouragement. God is the Source; the Scriptures are the means. The same truth applies to joy. Verse 13 speaks of God filling us with joy and peace as we trust Him. How would we expect God to do this? The reasonable answer is by means of the Scriptures.
When I've experienced the Lord's discipline, Hebrews 12:6 has been a means of restoring joy: "The Lord disciplines the one he loves." When I was once experiencing a severe trial, Psalm 50:15 became a source of comfort: "Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you will honor me" (Niv). On another occasion when I thought my future looked bleak, I was enabled to rejoice in the Lord through the assurance of Jeremiah 29:11, "`I know the plans I have for you,' declares the LORD, `plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future"' (Niv).
The Spirit will use these words to promote our joy if they're in our hearts through regular exposure to and meditation upon them.
The Fruitful Life
Week 11 / WEEKEND
GOD'S NECESSARY WRATH
The wrath of God is coming.
(COLOSSIANS 3:6)
The wrath of God is a subject ignored by most believers. Perhaps we shy away from it because of the violent emotions and behavior we frequently associate with the word wrath when used of sinful human beings. We're reluctant, rightly so, to attribute that same attitude and activity to God.
I suspect, however, that the more basic reason we avoid or ignore the subject is that we simply don't think of our sinfulness as warranting that degree of judgment. Frankly, most people don't think they're that bad. A divine reprimand or an occasional slap on the wrist may be needed -but an outpouring of divine wrath? That's much too severe. Perhaps another reason we avoid the subject is that we don't want to think of our nice, decent, but unbelieving neighbors and relatives as subject to God's wrath.
The Bible, however, doesn't give us that option. Again and again it asserts that the wrath of God is expressed in both temporal and eternal judgment. Noted biblical scholar Leon Morris pointed out that in the Old Testament alone, more than twenty words are used for the wrath of God, while the number of references to His wrath exceeds 580.19
Although God's wrath does not contain the sinful emotions associated with human wrath, it does contain a fierce intensity arising from His settled opposition to sin and His determination to punish it to the utmost. God, by the very perfection of His moral nature, cannot but be angry at sin - not only because of its destructiveness to humans, but, more important, because of its assault on His divine majesty. This is not the mere petulance of an offended deity because His commands are not obeyed. It's rather the necessary response of God to uphold His moral authority in His universe.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 12 / MONDAY
FORGIVEN MUCH, LOVING MUCH
Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.
(ISAIAH 1:18)
Jesus said, "He who is forgiven little, loves little" (Luke 7:47). In the context of that statement He essentially said the converse is also true: Those who are forgiven much, love much. The extent to which we realize and acknowledge our own sinfulness, and the extent to which we realize the total forgiveness and cleansing from those sins, will determine the measure of our love to God.
Charles Hodge said, "The great difficulty with many Christians is that they cannot persuade themselves that Christ (or God) loves them; and the reason they cannot feel confident of the love of God, is, that they know they do not deserve his love, on the contrary, that they are in the highest degree unlovely. How can the infinitely pure God love those who are defiled with sin, who are proud, selfish, discontented, ungrateful, disobedient? This, indeed, is hard to believe."20
But when our sense of guilt is taken away because our consciences are cleansed by the blood of Christ, we're freed up to love Him with all our hearts and souls and minds. We're motivated in a positive sense to love Him in this wholehearted way. Our love will be spontaneous in an outpouring of gratitude to Him and fervent desire to obey Him.
So if we want to grow in our love for God and in the acceptable obedience that flows out of that love, we must keep coming back to the cross and the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. That is why it is so important that we keep the gospel before us every day. Because we sin every day, and our consciences condemn us every day, we need the gospel every day.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 12 / TUESDAY
EXPERIENCING GODS GRACE
I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.
(JOHN 10:10)
Why do we not experience more of the endless supply of God's grace? Why do we so often seem to live in spiritual poverty instead of experiencing life to the full as Jesus promised (John 10:10)? There are several reasons that may or may not apply to a particular believer. One that might apply to most of us is our frequent misperception of God as the divine equivalent of Ebenezer Scrooge, demanding the last ounce of work out of His people and then paying them poorly. That may sound like an overstatement of our perception of God, but I believe it's a fairly accurate representation of how many Christians think.
Consider the following words from one of John Newton's hymns: "Thou art coming to a King, large petitions with thee bring; for His grace and pow'r are such none can ever ask too much."" How many Christians really believe those words? How many really believe His grace and power are such that we can never ask too much? Rather, we tend in the direction of believing God is reluctant to answer prayer and His grace and power aren't sufficient to fulfill our needs, let alone our requests.
We should not forget that Satan's very first temptation of mankind was based on questioning the goodness and generosity of God (Genesis 3:1-5). And his vicious attack on the patriarch job was designed to cause Job to question God's goodness so that he would then curse God (Job 1:6-11). Satan has not changed his strategy today. This perception of God as the reluctant giver comes right from Satan and must be resisted by us if we are to experience the fullness of God's grace.
Transforming Grace
Week 12 / WEDNESDAY
WRATH REVEALED
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men.
ROMANS 1:18, NIV)
Some people like to think that although the wrath of God is a reality in the Old Testament era, it disappears in the teaching of Jesus, where God's love and mercy become the only expressions of His attitude toward His creatures. Jesus clearly refuted that notion: "Whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him" (John 3:36, NIV).22 And He frequently referred to hell as the ultimate, eternal expression of God's wrath. (See, for example, Matthew 5:22; 18:9; Mark 9:47; Luke 12:5.)
In the inspired letters of Paul, we read of God's wrath being "stored up" for the day of judgment (Romans 2:5) and that God's wrath is coming because of sin (Colossians 3:6). And the whole tenor of Revelation warns us of the wrath to come.
Having then established the grim reality of God's wrath, how are we to understand it? God's wrath arises from His intense, settled hatred of all sin and is the tangible expression of His inflexible determination to punish it. We might say God's wrath is His justice in action, rendering to everyone his just due, which, because of our sin, is always judgment.
Why is God so angry because of our sin? Because our sin, regardless of how small or insignificant it may seem to us, is essentially an assault on His infinite majesty and sovereign authority. As nineteenth-century theologian George Smeaton wrote, God is angry at sin "because it is a violation of His authority, and a wrong to His inviolable majesty.""
Here we begin to realize the seriousness of sin. All sin is rebellion against God's authority, a despising of His Law, and a defiance of His commands.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 12 / THURSDAY
OUR HOLY GOD
Who is like you, majestic in holiness?
(EXODUS 15:11)
God has called every Christian to a holy life. There are no exceptions to this call. This call to a holy life is based on the fact that God Himself is holy. Holiness is nothing less than conformity to the character of God.24
Holiness in Scripture describes both the majesty of God and the purity and moral perfection of His nature. Holiness is one of His attri- butes25 - an essential part of the nature of God. His holiness is as necessary as His existence - as necessary, for example, as His wisdom or omniscience. Just as He cannot but know what is right, so He cannot but do what is right.
The absolute holiness of God should be of great comfort and assurance to us. If God is perfectly holy, we can be confident that His actions toward us are always perfect and just. We're often tempted to question God's actions and complain that He is unfair in His treatment of us. This is the Devil's lie, the same thing he essentially told Eve: "God is being unfair to you" (Genesis 3:4-5). But it is impossible in the very nature of God that He should ever be unfair. Because He is holy, all His actions are holy.
We must accept by faith the fact that God is holy, even when trying circumstances make it appear otherwise. To complain against God is in effect to deny His holiness and to say He is not fair. As Stephen Charnock said, "It is less injury to Him to deny His being, than to deny the purity of it; the one makes Him no God, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a detestable God ... he that saith God is not holy speaks much worse than he that saith there is no God at all."26
The Pursuit of Holiness
Week 12 / FRIDAY
FAITH AND LOVE
In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.
(GALATIANS 5:6)
There's an inextricable link between faith and love. It's impossible to please God without faith (Hebrews 11:6) and also impossible to please Him without love. This love arises in our hearts only as we, by faith, lay hold of the great truths of the gospel. To do this, our faith must be constantly nourished by feeding on the gospel. It's not the only message we need; we must also hear the requirements of discipleship. But the gospel is most important because it alone provides both the proper motive and the only enduring motivation to respond to our Lord's call to discipleship.
John Owen, the prince of Puritan theologians, wrote three masterful treatises on sin. He also wrote a book titled Communion with God in which he made this statement: "The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him, is not to believe that he loves you."27 Owen wasn't soft on sin. In fact, his work on indwelling sin is almost scary as he exposes the nature, power, and deceitfulness of the sin that still resides in us. But Owen was more concerned that we keep before us the gospel: the love of God revealed in His Son Jesus Christ.
To the degree that we live with an abiding sense of His love for us in Christ, to that degree will we love God with all our heart and soul and mind. So let us not put the gospel "on the shelf" of our lives. Let us review it daily, and in the joy that it brings, pursue these disciplines.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 12 / WEEKEND
ACKNOWLEDGING UNWORTHINESS
I am not worthy to have you come under my roof.
(LUKE 7:6)
I was talking one day with a man whose mother, a faithful servant of God for more than forty years, was dying of painful cancer. He said, "After all she's done for God, this is the thanks she gets." Such a statement sounds irreverent, but the man didn't intend it to be that way. He simply thought God owed his mother a better life. He only verbalized what many people feel.
There are other occasions when we remind God of the sacrifices we've made to serve Him and expect an answer to prayer in return. With such an attitude we may grumble about blessings not received instead of being grateful for those we have received.
We need to adopt the attitude of the Roman centurion described in Luke 7. This man sent some Jewish elders to Jesus asking Him to come and heal his sick servant. The elders pleaded with Jesus: "He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue" (verses 4-5).
The centurion surely was a remarkable man. But his attitude about himself is even more remarkable than his deeds. Instead of thinking of what he should receive because of what he deserved, he freely confessed he didn't deserve anything. He sent word to Jesus: "Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Therefore I did not presume to come to you" (verses 6-7). Because of this attitude, the centurion not only experienced the joy of having his request granted but also the added joy of knowing he had received what he didn't deserve.
Transforming Grace
Week 13 / MONDAY
WRATH AND LOVE
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.
(1 PETER 2:24)
While Jesus hung on the cross, darkness came over the land from noon until three o'clock. During those awful three hours, Jesus drank the cup of God's wrath in our place - the cup that we should have drunk. He drained it to its dregs.
We do not know all that transpired during those terrible hours. Scripture draws a veil over them for the most part. We do know that the physical suffering Jesus endured was only a feeble picture of the suffering of His soul. And part of that suffering was the very real forsakenness by His Father. Toward the end of that time He cried out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). The night before, He had been strengthened by divine assistance (Luke 22:43), but now He was left alone. God turned His back on His own dearly loved Son.
We can perhaps better understand what transpired that day by considering Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 5:21: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (NIV). Christ was "made sin" for us by a judicial act of God; He charged the guilt of our sin to Jesus.
However, we must always keep in mind the distinction between Christ's sinlessness in His personal being and His sin-bearing in His official liability to God's wrath. He was the sinless sin-bearer. Though officially guilty as our representative, He was personally the object of the Father's everlasting love and delight.
Should this not make us bow in adoration at such matchless love, that the Father would subject the object of His supreme delight to His unmitigated wrath for our sake?
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 13 / TUESDAY
DEPENDENT DISCIPLINE
Train yourself for godliness.
(i TIMOTHY 4:7)
Just as it's impossible for an airplane to fly with only one wing, so is it impossible for us to successfully pursue holiness with only dependence on God or discipline. We absolutely must have both.
Discipline, as I am now using it, refers to activities designed to train a person in a particular skill. In urging Timothy to train or discipline himself to be godly (1 Timothy 4:7), Paul borrowed a term originally referring to the training of young athletes. It later came to include both mental and moral training. Paul used it to refer to spiritual training. And Paul told Timothy, "Train yourself."
But we must not try to carry out our responsibilities in our own strength and willpower. We must depend on the Holy Spirit to enable us. At the same time we must not assume we have no responsibility simply because we're dependent. God enables us to work, but He doesn't do the work for us.
"Unless the LORD builds the house," we read in Psalm 127:1, "those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain." Here the psalmist recognizes God's intimate involvement in the building and watching; he doesn't say, "Unless the LORD helps the builders and the watchman," but, "Unless the LORD builds ... Unless the LORD watches... "
Yet it's just as obvious that the psalmist envisions the builders laboring and the watchman standing guard. The builders cannot put away their tools and go fishing and expect God to build the house. Neither can the watchman retire to his bed and expect God to sound the alarm if an enemy approaches. The builders must work, the watchman must stand guard; but they all must carry out their responsibilities in total dependence on God.
The Discipline of Grace
Week 13 / WEDNESDAY
WHY WE WORRY
Do not be anxious about your life.
(MATTHEW 6:25)
Why do we worry? Because we don't believe. We're not really convinced the same Jesus who can keep a sparrow in the air knows where our lost luggage is, or how we'll pay that car repair bill. Or if we believe He can deliver us through our difficulties, we doubt if He will. We let Satan sow seeds of doubt in our minds about God's love and care for us.
The great antidote to anxiety is to come to God in prayer about everything. "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 4:6-7). Nothing's too big for Him to handle or too small to escape His attention. Paul said we're to come to God "with thanksgiving." We should thank Him for His past faithfulness in delivering us from troubles. We should thank Him for the fact that He's in control of every circumstance of our lives and that nothing can touch us that He doesn't allow. We should thank Him that in His infinite wisdom He's able to work in this circumstance for our good. We can thank Him that He won't allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13).
The promised result is not deliverance, but the peace of God. One of the reasons we don't find this peace is that all too often we won't settle for anything other than deliverance from the trouble. But God, through Paul, promises us peace, a peace that is unexplainable. It will guard our hearts and minds against the anxiety to which you and I are so prone.
The Fruitful Life
Week 13 / THURSDAY
IN No ONES DEBT
Who has firstgiven tome, that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine.
(Ios 41:11)
We can never obligate God by our obedience or sacrificial service. Even if we're perfectly obedient in all our Christian duties, we would still be forced to say, "We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty" (Luke 17:10).
Suppose you perfectly obey all the traffic laws of your state. You always stay within the speed limit, always come to a complete stop at stop signs, always drive in the proper lane, always use your turn signals. Do you receive any reward? Not at all; that's the way you're supposed to drive. By perfect obedience of the traffic laws, you don't obligate the state to reward you in any manner. All you can say is "I have done my duty."
As the Sovereign Ruler of the universe, God has the right to require perfect obedience and faithful service from all of us without in the least obligating Himself. We owe Him that obedience and service. If we were to perfectly obey every command God has given and faithfully perform every duty- which, of course, we never do - we still could only say, "I have merely done my duty."
Through the inspired pen of the apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit again asserts God's freedom from obligation to anyone: "Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" (Romans 11:35). This assertion wasn't made in a vacuum. Paul had been dealing with the difficult question of the Jews' future in the face of God's apparent spurning of them in favor of the Gentiles. Regardless of how we understand that future, the principle stated by the Holy Spirit through Paul is crystal clear: God doesn't owe anyone anything.
Transforming Grace
Week 13 / FRIDAY
PROPITIATION? WHAT'S THAT?
He is the propitiation for our sins.
(1 JOHN 2:2)
The Bible uses a strange word to describe what Christ did for us when He drank the cup of God's wrath in our place: propitiation.
What does propitiation mean? I believe that the word exhausted forcefully captures the essence of Jesus' work of propitiation. Jesus exhausted the wrath of God. He bore the full, unmitigated brunt of it. God's wrath against sin was unleashed in all its fury on His beloved Son. He held nothing back.
Isaiah foretold this: "We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:4-5). The italicized words describe the pouring out of God's wrath on His Son. During those awful hours when Jesus hung on the cross, the cup of God's wrath was turned upside down. Christ exhausted God's wrath. For all who trust in Him, there is nothing more in the cup. It is empty.
At the end of those terrible hours Jesus cried out, "It is finished" (John 19:30; see also Mark 15:37).28 This was not a cry of relief, but one of triumph. He had accomplished what He came to do, to save His people from the wrath of God. And He did this by consuming it in His own person.
That's why Paul could write of our being "saved from God's wrath through him" and say that "God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:9, Niv;
1 Thessalonians 5:9, NIV). All who trust in Jesus need never fear the possibility of experiencing the wrath of God.29 It was exhausted on His Son as He stood in our place, bearing the guilt of our sin.
The Gospel for Real Life
Week 13 / WEEKEND