Humility

RT @PaulTripp: Humility is not about denigrating who you are, but about joyfully living for Someone and something bigger than you.—
Joel Gearhart (@jgearhart5) November 09, 2010

 

A Living Sacrifice

Here is a great quote from chapter two of The Bookends of the Christian Life. It goes along very well with what we considered this last Sunday morning from the book of Romans.

For many of us, our initial encounter with the gospel when we first trusted Christ occurred many years ago and is now a distant memory. Furthermore, the book of Romans may now be overly familiar to us; it just doesn’t generate the same excitement it surely generated among the Roman believers when it was first read in their churches. The Christian life may now be more of a duty than a joyous response to the gospel. Consequently we may not experience the motivating power of the gospel.

That’s why we need to intentionally bathe our minds and hearts in the gospel every day. Remember, we need the gospel not only as a door into an initial saving relationship with Christ, but also as the first bookend to keep our daily lives from becoming a performance treadmill. As we rely on Christ’s righteousness in this manner, far from leading to a license to sin, it actually motivates us to deal with the sin we see in our lives by presenting our bodies as living sacrifices to God.

Two Thoughts on Justification from Bookends

Not too long ago I got my hands on a good little book titled “The Bookends of the Christian Life (You can find it here or here or in my office). I thought I’d share a few thoughts from the book that have been a challenge and encouragement to me. Here are two quotes from the first chapter that are worth thinking about.

There’s an old play on the word justified: “just-as-if-I’d never sinned.” But here’s another way of saying it: “just-as-if-I’d always obeyed.” Both are true. The first refers to the transfer of our moral debt to Christ so we’re left with a “clean” ledger, just as if we’d never sinned. The second tells us our ledger is now filled with the perfect righteousness of Christ, so it’s just as if we’d always obeyed. That’s why we can come confidently into the very presence of God. ~pg. 26

When talking about Galatians 2:20 (I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.) the authors say this:

For Paul, justification was not only a past event; it was also a daily, present reality. So every day of his life, by faith in Christ, Paul realized he stood righteous in the sight of God–he was counted righteous and accepted by God as righteous–because of the perfectly obedient life and death Christ provided for him. He stood solely on the rock-solid righteousness of Christ alone. ~p. 29

“Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, ‘I am here because of you.  It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.’  Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross.  All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self-righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary.  It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.”

- John R. W. Stott, The Message of Galatians, pg. 179

HT - Of First Importance

The Gospel for Believers

“God did not give us His gospel just so we could embrace it and be converted. Actually, He offers it to us everyday as a gift that keeps on giving to us everything we need for life and godliness.”

“Doing right is not always easy, but it is never more easy then when one is breathing deeply the atmosphere of the gospel.”

“If Christians would do more preaching of the gospel to themselves, non-Christians might have less trouble comprehending its message, for they would see its truth and power exuding from believers in indisputable ways.”

“Preaching the gospel to myself each day nourishes within me  a holy brazenness to believe what God says, enjoy what He offers, and do what He commands.”

Quotes taken from “A Gospel Primer for Christians” by Milton Vincent

God’s Word

“God saves. God delivers…God alone can save. That is the central message of the Bible…The Bible is the story of what He has done. It’s the story of how every man-made effort at salvation fails and only the grace of God can rescue and redeem sinners. Too often we read the Bible…and look for all the things we have to do. And while there are things God commands us to do, we first need to read the Bible looking at all He has done for us. It’s the story of His Champion, His Son, who came to die for us.” ~Josh Harris in Dug Down Deep, pg. 72

Why the Son became a man

“The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.”

- C.S. Lewis

HT: Of First Importance

Preaching the Gospel to Myself

I saw this quote on a friends Facebook recently. I read the book (A Gospel Primer) some time ago and it’s probably time to read it again. You should too.

“Preaching the Gospel to myself every day reminds me of God’s astounding love for me, and also of His infinite worthiness to be loved by me above all else.” from A Gospel Primer

The Promise

“The Lord God said when time was full
He would shine His light in the darkness.
He said a virgin would conceive
And give birth to the Promise.
For a thousand years the dreamers dreamt
And hoped to see His love.
The Promise showed their wildest dreams
had simply not been wild enough.

The Promise was love and the Promise was life;
The Promise meant light to the world.
Living proof that Yahweh saves
For the name of the Promise was Jesus.”

Discovering God’s Will

Learn to pray and praise God in every situation and he’ll let you know if you should move to Mozambique.  Lay down your life for others and he’ll direct your career.  Take care of the depth of your character and Christ will take care of the breadth of your ministry.  Read your Bible, pray, devote yourself to a local church, serve, share the gospel any way you can.  Jesus won’t let you miss his will.

You can find this quote and the rest of the blog post it comes from here. It is well worth the 3 minutes of your time it will take (or 5 minutes if you are a slow reader like me).

UPDATE: There are several more posts that continue the writers very good thoughts concerning knowing God’s will. You can find them here (Part 2), here (Overcoming the Paralysis of Indecision) and here (Only a Fool Wouldn’t Ask).