Chapter Five: A Daily Embracing of the Gospel
CHAPTER FIVE
A Daily Embracing of the Gospel
We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.
GALATIANS 2:15-16
As we see in the text above, the apostle Paul was very emphatic that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. He was so emphatic that he was obviously redundant, effectively saying the same thing three times in one long sentence. Why was Paul so troubled? Because the Galatian believers were in danger of adding circumcision and law keeping to faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation.
So Paul continued to hammer away at this false teaching. In fact, just four paragraphs later he wrote, “All who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, ‘Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them’” (Galatians 3:10). Effectively, Paul was saying, “So you want to be saved by keeping the law, do you? Let me tell you what that would look like. It means absolute perfect obedience to all the law of God.” Note the word all. That means all without exception. To use an academic analogy, that means getting a 99 on your final exam equals failing the course. Nothing less than 100 percent correct is a passing grade.
And what is the law of God? It is all the moral will of God throughout Scripture in both the Old and New Testaments. But Jesus summed it all up for us when He said,
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40)
The reality is that no one (except Christ) has ever come close to obeying either of those commandments. No one has ever loved God with all his being. No one has ever fully loved his neighbor as himself. So where would that leave the Galatians, who were in danger of adding law keeping to faith in Christ? Persistence in it would leave them under the curse of God. Instead of law keeping being even partially a means of salvation, it would actually leave them under a curse.
That is why Paul was so emphatic that justification is entirely by faith in Christ alone. Dependence on one’s law keeping and faith in Christ are mutually exclusive. In fact, faith involves a total renunciation of dependence on one’s good works and instead total reliance on Jesus Christ and His righteousness.
HOW ABOUT US?
Now, it is likely that most readers of this book will understand and agree with in principle (if not in every detail) what I have written thus far. And indeed you may be thinking, What’s the big deal? This is elementary; this is “Gospel 101,” but what’s the relevance to me? I am relying on Christ alone for my salvation. I am not in danger of adding law keeping or good works to my faith in Christ as were the Galatians.
The relevance of Paul’s warning to the Galatians is this: We all, having trusted in Christ alone for our salvation, have a tendency to revert to a performance-based relationship with God. We know we are saved by faith in Christ alone, but we assume we earn God’s acceptance and blessings in our daily lives by our performance.
Some thirty years ago, Professor Richard Lovelace of Gordon-Conwell Seminary wrote,
Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God’s holiness and of the extent and guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification, drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.
What is the solution? We must learn to live as Paul lived. In Galatians 2:20, he wrote, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” In the context of verses 15-21, Paul was talking about justification and is speaking in the present tense: “the life I now live.” Elsewhere, in Romans 5:1, he spoke of justification as a point-in-time past experience: “Since we have been [past tense] justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” If justification, then, is a past experience, why does Paul in Galatians 2:20 write of it in the present tense? The answer is that for Paul, justification was not only a past experience but also a present reality. Every day Paul looked outside of himself and his performance to the perfect righteousness of Christ for his acceptance with God the Father.
If we want to enjoy the benefits of the gospel in our daily lives, we must learn to live like Paul. We must learn to look outside of ourselves and our performance, whether good or bad, and see ourselves standing before God justified — cleansed from our sins through the shed blood of Christ and clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ.
Sadly, this great truth of the gospel seems to be so little understood and even less applied by the vast majority of believers. Again, Professor Lovelace wrote,
Few [Christians] know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly [external] righteousness of Christ, as the only ground of acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification [or transformation] as faith is active in love and gratitude.
This emphasis on the need of daily embracing the gospel and living in the present reality of our justification is not new and novel. We have already seen Professor Lovelace’s comments written in 1979. But let’s go back further than that. B. B. Warfield was a noted theologian who taught at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sometime during that period, he wrote the following:
There is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all. This is not true of us only “when we believe,” it is just as true after we have believed. It will continue to be true as long as we live. Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in Christian behavior may be. It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. There is never anything that we are or have or do that can take His place or that takes a place along with Him. We are always unworthy, and all that we have or do of good is always of pure grace. Though blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ, we are still in ourselves just “miserable sinners.” “Miserable sinners” saved by grace, to be sure. But “miserable sinners” still deserving in ourselves nothing but everlasting wrath.
We are sinners, and we know ourselves to be sinners lost and helpless in ourselves; but we are saved sinners, and it is our salvation which gives the tone to our life — a tone of joy which swells in exact proportion to the sense we have of our ill-desert. For it is he to whom much is forgiven who loves much and, who loving, rejoices much.
Thus, through every moment of his life, the believer is absolutely dependent on the grace of Christ, and when life is over, he still has nothing to plead but Christ’s blood and righteousness.
Much earlier, the Scotsman Robert Haldane (1774–1842), in his classic commentary on the book of Romans, wrote,
To that righteousness is the eye of the believer ever to be directed; on that righteousness must he rest; on that righteousness must he live; on that righteousness must he die; in that righteousness must he appear before the judgment seat; in that righteousness must he stand for ever in the presence of a righteous God.
So the moment you trusted in Christ alone, you were declared righteous by God because He credited to you the perfect righteousness of Christ. You will never be more or less righteous, regardless of your performance. In fact, today you are as righteous in your standing with God as you will be in heaven. This seems astonishing, but it is true.
The question may well be asked, “Does my righteous standing with God because of Christ’s righteousness translate into the expectation of daily blessings from Him because of Christ’s righteousness?” The answer is an emphatic yes. God does not justify us on one basis and bless us daily on another. All of God’s favor to us, whether in the spiritual or temporal realms, comes to us through Christ.
Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:3, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” Note the phrase “in Christ.” Remember, this is Paul’s shorthand expression for our representative union with Christ. So all spiritual blessings come to us through Christ.
Again, in Philippians 4:19, Paul wrote, “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” In the context of Philippians 4:10-19, the “every need” of verse 19 refers to the Philippian believers’ temporal needs. In effect, Paul was saying to them, “Just as you have been instruments of God to supply my temporal needs, so God will also supply your temporal needs.” But again notice the phrase “in Christ Jesus.” It is always “in Christ” — that is, because of Him and through Him — that all of our blessings, both spiritual and temporal, come to us.
We never, of ourselves, earn God’s blessings through our good works because even our very best deeds are imperfect in accomplishment and defiled by our remaining sinful corruption. Those good works on which we tend to rely for our expectation of God’s blessings actually deserve the curse of God rather than His blessing. But thanks be to God, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by taking our curse upon Himself (see Galatians 3:13) and has instead, through His perfect righteousness, opened the floodgates of God’s infinite love and favor toward us, all this “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6).
My all-time favorite quote outside the Bible, one to which I return almost daily, is the first few words of the hymn “My Hope Is Built”: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” For me, that hope is not only for eternal life but for God’s favor and blessing on my life today.
EVERY DAY’S WORK
How then do we learn to live daily in the present reality of our justification and the hope of God’s blessings on our lives coming to us through Christ? The answer is we must work at it daily. As I stated previously, we have a natural drift toward a performance-based relationship with God. We are like a person in a rowboat trying to row upstream against the current. The instant the rower stops pulling on his or her oars, the boat will start drifting backward with the current. We can never, as the old saying goes, “rest on our oars” in our daily dependence on Christ. Practically speaking, how do we keep plugging along? We go to the Scriptures containing the promises of God regarding the forgiveness of our sins and the imputation (crediting) to us of Christ’s perfect righteousness.
The following are Scriptures regarding God’s promise of forgiveness of our sins:
As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. (Isaiah 1:18)
I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins. (Isaiah 43:25)
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned — every one — to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
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. (Romans 4:7-8)
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)
Here are some Scriptures regarding reliance on Christ’s perfect righteousness:
As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)
Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. (Romans 10:3-4)
Because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption. (1 Corinthians 1:30)
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. (Philippians 3:9)
I encourage you to prayerfully (that is, asking the Holy Spirit to guide you) consider each of these Scriptures and select two or three from each category that seem to speak most forcefully to you. Memorize them and begin to use them every day to strengthen your faith in God’s Great Exchange. Then every time you find yourself lapsing into a performance-based relationship with God, go back to those verses and ask God to make them experientially real to you.
Already in this chapter, we have looked at the wise words of Richard Lovelace in the late twentieth century, B. B. Warfield in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, and Robert Haldane in the early nineteenth century. Now I want to go all the way back to the seventeenth century and consider the words of the great Puritan theologian John Owen on the daily appropriation of the gospel. In the following quotations, I am extracting for the sake of brevity from about three pages in his outstanding work Communion with the Triune God.
The saints make an actual exchange with the Lord Jesus as to their sins and His righteousness. Of this there are various parts.
They continually keep alive upon their hearts a sense of the guilt and evil of sin; even when they are under some comfortable persuasions of their personal acceptance with God. Sense of pardon takes away the horror and fear, but not a due sense of the guilt of sin. It is the daily exercise of the saints of God, to consider the great provocation that is in sin — their sins. This the saints do: they gather up their sins, lay them in the balance of the law, see and consider their weight and desert.…
They hearken to the voice of Christ calling them to him with their burden. “Come unto me, all you that are weary and heavy laden” [Matthew 11:28] — “Come with your burdens; come, you poor soul, with your guilt of sin.” Why? What to do? “Why, this is mine,” says Christ; “this agreement I made with my Father, that I should come, and take your sins, and bear them away; they were my lot. Give me your burden, give me all your sins. You know not what to do with them; I know how to dispose of them well enough, so that God shall be glorified, and your soul delivered.”…
They lay down their sins at the cross of Christ, upon his shoulders. This is faith’s great and bold venture upon the grace, faithfulness, and truth of God, to stand by the cross and say, “Ah! He is bruised for my sins, and wounded for my transgressions, and the chastisement of my peace is upon him. He is thus made sin for me. Here I give up my sins to him that is able to bear them, to undergo them. He requires it of my hands, that I should be content that he should undertake for them; and that I heartily consent unto.” This is every day’s work; I know not how any peace can be maintained with God without it.
Having thus by faith given up their sins to Christ, and seen God laying them all on him, they draw nigh and take from him that righteousness which he has wrought out for them, so fulfilling the whole of that of the apostle, “He was made sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). They consider Him tendering himself and his righteousness, to be their righteousness before God; they take it and accept of it, and complete this blessed bartering and exchange of faith.
This exceedingly endears the souls of the saints to him and constrains them to put a due valuation upon him, his love, his righteousness, and grace. When they find, and have the daily use of it, then they do it. Who would not love him? “I have been with the Lord Jesus,” may the poor soul say: “I have left my sins, my burdens with him; and he has given me his righteousness, wherewith I am going with boldness to God.
This is a much longer quotation than I would normally include in a book, but I want you to see what John Owen wrote about 350 years ago. A daily embracing of the gospel is not a new idea. In fact, it goes much further back than seventeenth-century John Owen; it goes all the way back to the apostle Paul!
Also, I want to call your attention to John Owen’s words: “It is the daily exercise of the saints to consider the great provocation that is in sin” and “This is every day’s work: I know not how any peace can be maintained with the God without it.” A daily embracing of the gospel is indeed every day’s work. That is why we need to preach the gospel to ourselves every day.
OUR RESPONSE
In Romans 5:20, Paul wrote, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” Paul anticipated a possible wrong conclusion could be drawn from his seemingly unguarded statement and sought to deal with it in Romans 6:1-14. In the same way, a wrong conclusion might be drawn from my strong emphasis on the truth that in Christ our sins are forgiven, we are counted righteous in Him, and all of God’s favor and blessings to us come through Him apart from any works on our part.
At the same time, I am aware that some pastors, missionaries, Bible teachers, and staff members of various Christian ministries will be concerned that the emphasis of this chapter will cut the nerve of the intentional pursuit of transformation that we want to see in the lives of those we teach and shepherd. I understand this concern. I trust that in the next chapter, we all can see from the Scriptures that a daily dependence on Christ is the only true and lasting motivation for pursuing spiritual transformation.
FOR GROUP DISCUSSION
1. What is the meaning of the expression “performance-based relationship with God”? What are some subtle ways this type of relationship shows up in your life?
2. In practical terms, what does it look like when we “stand in the present reality” of our justification? What impact will it have on our relationship with God and other people?
3. In practical terms, what does it mean to “preach the gospel to yourself every day”? How does a person do it?