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What We Believe – Justification

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s prompt: Please define justification.

Justification is that work of God in our lives that makes us righteous, able to stand before God as holy, when we are most assuredly not by our own human work and reckoning. Justification is what we receive and in which we walk in life after we have been regenerated. It is not just a simple hand-wave of God saying “all right, you’re fine.” It is a Trinitarian work that begins with the Father’s calling of His people, the Son’s sacrifice of Himself for the sins of His people and taking the wrath due to them on Himself, and the Spirit bringing new life to those people which enables them to place their faith in that work of the Son on their behalf. 

Justification can be described simply, such as when Paul and Silas told the Roman jailer in Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Yet the closer we look at it the deeper the truth of it runs. It is also a concept that has held heavy controversy and disagreement throughout the age of the church. One challenge I have noted as I’ve written this is discussing justification specifically without moving into its lifelong effect, sanctification. The truth is simple, however: the former begets the latter, always. One who is in Christ will bear the fruit of Christ. 

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What We Believe – Repentance and Faith

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s prompt: Please explain your understanding of repentance and faith.

Two posts ago I wrote on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and in the previous one I moved onto regeneration, the effect of that baptism.  Now the fruit of regeneration comes into view: faith and repentance. While they are two separate concepts with different definitions, they are hand in hand in the work these words describe in the lives of Christians. No one will have saving faith in Christ that is not accompanied by a lifetime of repentance from sin. Likewise, no one can walk away from their sin in any method that does not involve a faith in Christ born of the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. 

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What We Believe – Regeneration

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s prompt: Please define regeneration.

The Old Testament is full of vivid imagery from God, on the subjects of His will for His people, warnings of the consequences of sin and rebellion, and the coming work of His Messiah. Some of it is delivered in words, but there are many examples of God giving visions to His prophets to show what was to come. 

One of the most striking examples is in Ezekiel 37, where God brings the prophet to a valley full of dry bones. Not simply dead bodies, but the desiccated remains of countless humans. God tells Ezekiel to “Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them: Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! This is what the Lord God says to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you will live. I will put tendons on you, make flesh grow on you, and cover you with skin. I will put breath in you so that you come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.” Ezekiel obeys and it happens exactly as God had said it would. God then repeats His command to prophesy, this time to “the breath,” to come and fill the bodies with life. Again, Ezekiel does so, and again, it happens exactly as God said it would. Dead bones become a massive host of living humans.

When we think about what regeneration is, this is the kind of image we need to keep in mind. Another image of this is given in the preceding chapter in Ezekiel, in verses 26 and 27: “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will place my Spirit within you and cause you to follow my statutes and carefully observe my ordinances.” Paul echoes this idea in Ephesians 2 when he writes, 

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses.

In many ways, to speak of regeneration is to simply reiterate what I wrote about in my last post on the baptism of the Spirit: this is the work of God in His people to bring spiritual life to those who were previously dead in spirit. He takes the unwilling, the rebellious, the God-hater, and makes them not simply able to choose to obey God, but to actually do so. 

This is the same idea that Jesus speaks of in John 3 when he tells Nicodemus that “unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus expresses incredulity at this, struggling to understand this picture, but Jesus asks him how he can not understand it, being a man who is in his position in part because of his deep knowledge of the Scriptures. He would have intimately known both references I mentioned above, yet he didn’t connect it to what Jesus was talking about. Jesus even points to it in his imagery in verse 8 when he says “The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”

To talk about the baptism of the Holy Spirit and regeneration is to talk about the planting of a seed and the fruit that the plant that rises from it later bears. He who the Spirit baptizes lives again, and believes, and obeys. This is not, as some say, a “prevenient grace”, grace that puts everyone into sort of a neutral space where they can “choose their own destiny.” He who sees the Spirit work in his heart will find spiritual life, and he who lives in the Spirit will walk in that life. The Spirit’s work of regeneration becomes the sign and seal of the promised eternal life we hope for in Christ. This is what Paul means in Romans chapter 8:

For what the law could not do since it was weakened by the flesh, God did. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh as a sin offering, in order that the law’s requirement would be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on the things of the Spirit. Now the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the Spirit is life and peace. The mindset of the flesh is hostile to God because it does not submit to God’s law. Indeed, it is unable to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him. Now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead will also bring your mortal bodies to life through his Spirit who lives in you.

Regeneration points ahead to resurrection, both in the images used to convey the idea, and in its effect in the lives of believers. By the faith empowered in our lives through the work of the Holy Spirit, we are able to make war on the sinful desires of our old dead humanity while striving ahead towards our new, true humanity, our hope in Christ. 

Spiritual death followed Adam’s sin, but spiritual life follows Jesus’ obedience. It is not our work that brings regeneration about – and how could it? Could those dry bones raise themselves? As Nicodemus asked, could a man enter his mother’s womb a second time? Salvation is a trinitarian work of God. Just as the Father has chosen His people, and just as Jesus has been the perfect sacrifice for us and is our brother in the resurrection to come, so the Holy Spirit is the one who works in our hearts to bring newness of life and spiritual eyes which look ahead to Christ in hope and faith.

There is a larger picture to consider here but also a very personal one. As I edit this to post for the blog, there is a lot of turmoil going on in the world. I won’t belabor this post with pontificating on recent events, and those will likely wait for the next podcast episode for further discourse. But I will say this: If you are dismayed by the turn the world is taking, if you are angry or afraid or embittered: pray. Call out to your Lord and cast your cares on Him. As His church, let’s pray for our neighbors that He will transform the hearts of our neighbors – and do your part to that end by displaying Christ’s love to them.

Beware those who desire to turn you into an army for human ends, or into a voting bloc. Human power is fleeting and vanishes as quickly as it arrives. Trust that God does listen to the prayers of His people, and that He is powerful enough to save, to bring vitality where there is only death, and then: look at your neighbor. Literally, who lives around you? How are they hurting – or how are they rejoicing? Love them in that, serve them in their needs, and be patient as we all endure tribulation. Reject the urge to live a fearful life, and display the patient love of Jesus by trusting that He will be the one to bring mercy and justice to bear at the proper time – but above all, let’s pray that the Holy Spirit will bring life into the hearts of many, and by doing so, bring the only true means of transformation to a hurting and broken world.

How have you see the Holy Spirit work in your heart and in the lives of others to transform? How do you want to see Him further moving in your communities? And above all, how can we pray for you? Leave a comment below or email us.

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What We Believe – The Holy Spirit

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This will be one of the longer entries because I’ve chosen in this instance to combine two topics – who the Holy Spirit is, and what the baptism of the Holy Spirit is. I pray that this is edifying to all who read it.

The Holy Spirit is the third Person of the Trinity, and is seen in Scripture as the one who ministers most directly to the hearts of God’s people, bringing conviction and comfort to hearts, and glorifying the work of Jesus in His work in the church. The Old Testament speaks of Him on several occasions, such as the opening of Genesis 1 where He is described as “hovering over the surface of the waters.”  In Psalm 51 where David grieves his sins with Bathsheba and the murder of her husband Uriah, he cries out to God asking Him “Do not banish me from Your presence or take Your Holy Spirit from me.” In Isaiah 63, the Israelites are described as having “grieved [God’s] Holy Spirit” with their rebellion, leading to punishment. 

The New Testament sees the Holy Spirit described by Jesus as the Counselor in John 14, and as the Spirit of truth in chapter 15. Acts 16 calls Him the Spirit of Jesus, while Revelation uses the title of “seven spirits” or “the sevenfold Spirit” – not that there are seven separate Holy Spirits, but seven is a number associated with completeness in God. Just as Hebrews 1 describes Jesus as being “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature,” the Holy Spirit also bears the fullness of God’s being. He is often misrepresented as being merely an expression of God’s will, or an impersonal force representing God working in the world. But Jesus’ description of Him as being “another Counselor,” using a word that in Greek means “one like the first” as Boice points out, makes it clear that the third Person of the Trinity is not lesser in any sense.

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What We Believe – Our Great Hope

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s topic: the death and resurrection of Christ, and the hope that we as believers have in this truth.

The death of Jesus on the cross rightfully is the focus of so much Christian thought and worship, because in His death we have a complete atonement for our sins. But we have just as much of a hope in His resurrection, because by it we see the true defeat of the curse of death, that consequence of sin that most plagues mankind. When Adam died, all he could do was exactly what God said would happen – decay into the dust he was made from. But when Jesus died, the second Adam, He knew that it would have no hold over Him. He had told his disciples as much many times, and the Scriptures promised as much. Psalm 16:10, for example, looks ahead and says “For you will not abandon me to Sheol; you will not allow your faithful one to see decay.” 

Sheol – the grave – was the place all men went at the end of life. Death was the co-curse with sin, for to sin – to live life according to the wisdom of the flesh, in opposition to the wisdom of God – has no possible end but death. God warned Adam and yet Adam sinned and so, took this evil onto himself and all his descendants. Even beyond humanity, in all the world death reigned where life once did. Decay and entropy threatened the end of creation’s blessed existence. Man’s self-deceived foolishness is so self-destructive, in fact, that God had to destroy almost all of humanity with a flood. When the descendants of the survivors began to thrive and seek again their own power, God had to confuse their languages and scatter them across the globe.

Yet Christ conquered all of it. Man embraced sinful living and yet lived in understandable fear of its consequence in death. Christ rejected sin, living without its marks all His days, and yet walked wholeheartedly into the embrace of death – and a most horrifying and humiliating death at that. And in doing so, by letting death take Him as the perfect sin offering for all God’s people, He overcame it. He became a seed that, falling into the ground and dying, grew up into a vast tree of eternal scope and life-giving fruit that will never fail. 

Jesus Christ, the Lamb that was slain, was given glory in His resurrection, and we hope in His glory and life. We don’t simply look at His death as a tragic killing of a good man by an evil regime, because His story does not end there. He took His life back up and more than simply returning from the dead for a short period then dying again, as Lazarus did, He lives still. He ascended to the Father, to await the day that He will return to finally well and truly destroy sin and death in all creation, to bring His work to its full consummation in the redemption of all creation. 

His disciples stood where they saw him ascend for some time, until angels told them that He would return the same way He went. They held that hope and it led them to prayer in unity, and that same hope enriched all their preaching. No longer was there simply life that ended in the grave, but the resurrection of Christ was and is the hope of all. Apart from it, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, life is foolishness and hope is in vain. But with it, we can endure everything that life brings, every dart of the enemy, every pain and loss and moment of suffering, because they all cease and are undone in the life of Christ.

So what?

While re-reading C.S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra recently, I was struck by the horrifying description of death and damnation by a character that has suffered under demonic possession for most of the novel. While much of it is rooted in Lewis’s particular views of the nature of hell and the enemy, the idea that dying in sin is to sink farther away from God and away from all His hope is one that sat in my mind for a long time. 

I was also reminded that this is why the hope of Christ’s resurrection and ascension are so crucial and powerful. No longer do we who trust in Christ fear that sinking away, that loss of connection with God. Instead, we look to when that connection grows stronger, and our intimacy goes from at arm’s length to true, face to face knowledge. We know this is true, and we long for the day we finally have this most rich possession as our own.

This is bedrock Christian theology, truly the cornerstone of Christ’s work is found in His death and resurrection. Yet it can feel like a rote recitation, like something that loses its potency the more we repeat it to ourselves, if we don’t actually meditate on it. “Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus lives.” These two sentences ought to be a soothing truth to our deepest beings, not only because of their simple truth but also because within their few words the whole of life in Christ is enfolded.

Perfect love

Jesus came as the messiah, the chosen one who would end the rule of evil and usher in God’s kingdom. When He came, so many expected him to drive out Israel’s enemies with overwhelming power – and who could doubt that He was perfectly capable of doing so? A man who was capable of feeding thousands with a handful of bread and fish could sustain endless legions. Someone who can tell a storm to cease could command the ground to open up and devour His enemies in a moment. Surely Jesus could have crushed Rome and every other human empire with a single word? 

And that’s the image John gives in Revelation 19 – the victorious Christ riding to earth on a white horse, his weapon a sword that comes from His mouth. His robe is stained with blood. Yet Jesus came before His people riding on a donkey’s colt. His clothing certainly was stained with blood – His own. 

And all of this, an image of a life in the kingdom. Our lives are not our own, but they are held in His hands – and so we can lay them down for the sake of others. We can love that neighbor who’s in need and know that such service is deeply loved and blessed by the Father. We can be patient in those times when life’s turmoil weighs on our hearts, because we know He has been there, and He walks with us in them.

I want to close with two hopes:

We hope in the death of Christ because in His death, we are forgiven for all sin. A picture of this was carried out over and over in the Israelite sacrificial system as sin was atoned for through the shedding of blood. Everything was made holy through the sprinkling of blood, and there could not be any entering into God’s presence without it. There was an endless reminder of humanity’s sinfulness in those sacrifices – yet Jesus has taken the place of all of it, and through His death He has made the way by which every people group may come to know the One who made them.

We hope in the resurrection of Christ because He has overcome death, and we look forward to the day that we too will be like Him. I love the way Paul talks about being “in Christ” in Ephesians 1, and what it truly means for us to receive the benefits of that – “holy and blameless,” “adopted as sons,” recipients of “an inheritance” and “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” So when suffering enters our lives, we know that the words of the author of Ecclesiastes, that our lives are but a vapor, is true – but we also know that in Christ’s resurrection, we have a greater life ahead of us that will never end. 

When I think of the weight of my sin, my struggles, the things that drag me down day by day, and I compare them to this tremendous promise, I can’t help but ponder the truth of Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 4:17 – it truly is an “incomparable weight of glory.” 

How does the doctrine of the resurrection affect your thoughts and living? Do you struggle to see it as real and meaningful? Share your thoughts below or email us – prayer requests are welcome!

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What We Believe – Salvation Belongs to the Lord

This is an ongoing series of blog posts based on papers originally written for my church’s elder class. This week’s prompt: “Please describe the nature of our assurance of salvation. Can we lose our salvation?”

“Salvation belongs to the Lord.” 

This statement, or variations of it, is all throughout Scripture. It’s like a diamond that you can hold up and see many facets as you turn it. Salvation belongs to the Lord because to be saved means to belong to God. Salvation belongs to the Lord because it is by His work – the Father’s choosing, the Son’s death and resurrection, and the Spirit’s renewal – that we are saved. And salvation belongs to the Lord because it is entirely His work. There’s a famous quote that’s attributed to various Christians in history, including Philip Melancthon and Jonathan Edwards: “The only thing we contribute to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary.” This is a simplification of the life of a believer, but it does capture in its essence the truest nature of the life of God’s people from beginning to end: God has saved us. God is saving us. And God is going to save us. His hand holds us fast.

I originally wrote this for our class almost exactly one year ago, and in that time, it wound up with a personal context I couldn’t have possibly anticipated, one which still lingers on my heart as a wound. My friend Jarod, who I had known for years, took his own life, an act that brought a deep and abiding grief to me and many others in my community. Wrestling with this grief while also thinking through this question required a great deal of conversation with those close to me, as well as a lot of prayer. 

Now that I’ve come to this paper, one that was written in such a raw moment, reposting it with just a bit of tweaking seems inappropriate. I also want to take time to consider everything I write here in a pastoral light. While the sadness over Jarod still lingers, I have taken a lot of time to consider what it is that needs to be said. What does it mean for God to be the author of salvation in the face of sin, tragedy, terror and loss? What does it look like for someone to reach his breaking point – can he break the hold of grace? Or perhaps, do we shrug and go “well, I guess he was never saved to begin with?” Neither seem sufficient either to minister the Word rightly, nor to answer humanity’s deep need for God’s bottomless grace.

This brings me to the phrase “perseverance of the saints,” the last point of the famous “five points of Calvinism.” When we say that the saints will persevere, we say that those who are Christ’s will ultimately stand before the Lord in triumph, that no blow the enemy might strike or sin that might lead to backsliding will undo what Christ has done. And this is so because God is the one who saves. It is the very name of our savior – Jesus, Yeshua, “God saves.”

So we have this doctrine, and we have significant Scripture pointing to it. Paul says to the Philippian church in chapter 1 of his epistle, “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Or Jesus’ own words in John chapter 6, verse 37: “Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.” And again in verse 44, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day.” 

But when I got the heart-breaking news about my brother, I was forced face to face in reckoning with many questions. The first and most frustrating one remains “Why?” But along with it comes questions and doubts that linger around the work he had accomplished in his life in serving others in Christ. To see one of our own brothers, one who has served in ministry so faithfully over the years, who has been seen by our and other churches as a faithful servant take his own life is a strong blow dealt to our experience of the faithful love and work of Jesus. The very real pain that is poured out in such a time cannot be ignored, nor can we simply turn away from the enemy’s assault on the faith of brothers and sisters. 

It is one thing to say simply that God saves us. But here we had an example of someone who has demonstrated with so much of his life that he placed his faith in Jesus, but suddenly he displayed a deep and abiding despair, or at least that is what it seemed. In this life we shall never know the true depths of his heart in those final moments. So we have to turn to God’s promises. Jesus said no one will snatch His people out of His hand. But can we jump out?

Christian tradition is certainly divided on this. But if salvation is founded on the work of God, and continued by the work of God, it must certainly be completed by the work of God. Over and over my mind has returned to 2 Timothy 2:13, where Paul seems to be quoting from a hymn or creed of his day: “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself.” Believers will struggle and feel weak, but His strength far exceeds any we could ever need. Believers will have crises of faith, but He never will. Believers can find the way clouded, we can fear to take the next step that’s set before us. We can sin. We can fail in myriad ways. But in those times, it is more important than ever to take the character of God into account. 

Does God cast aside His people? No, He does not. Does He found their place as “His own” on their deeds and strength and faith? No. While the means of salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, the rock upon which it all rests is Christ – His love, His work, His life. I think in a tragic way it was fitting that I should have to address this topic in such a time of heartache and sorrow. I believe that in that dark moment, my brother struggled with believing that Jesus was enough—and yet, I trust that God’s grace covered him even in that doubt, as it does for all of us when we face our darkest moments. 

In His Hands

When I wrestle with what this means for his faith, for his eternity, I have to come face to face with the Bible’s prescription over and over that salvation is God’s, from beginning to end. On one hand it feels almost terrifying. I can do nothing to save myself, not even one tiny bit? Even the parts that are worked out through my actions are rooted in the Holy Spirit’s work? The room for doubt grows by the minute. But really, this is something that should be a call to rest, to peace. I can do nothing to save myself, not even one tiny bit. Even the parts that are worked out through my actions are rooted in the Holy Spirit’s work. The words of Paul in Romans 8:31-39 are a balm to my soul: 

What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything? Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us. Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:

Because of you
we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And so, I pray that the Lord will prepare my heart to endure to the end, even though I am still a broken and sinful human who longs for wholeness in Christ. My brother Jarod acted in a way that made many wonder – did he really believe that Jesus was enough? I believe that for a moment, a critical, horrifying moment, he believed that He wasn’t – and now, He is with Jesus, and learning that he was wrong. May the Lord’s grace strengthen us to endure trials and temptations until the day comes that we all stand before Him.

How have you faced the dark moments of the night? How can we and other believers support you in such moments? Leave a comment below or email us – prayer requests, comments, reflections are all welcome.

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What We Believe – The Grace of God

This is an ongoing series of posts based on short papers written for our church’s elder class and edited (and in some cases, expanded) for this format. Today’s writing prompt: “What is your view of God’s grace?”

God’s grace is a subject that is on my mind daily, every hour as I struggle against sin or feel the weight of failure. The beauty of His grace in my life is has been transformative in the way I’ve grown, and yet it provides so much relief from the weight of the fact that on my own, I am utterly incapable of doing what is pleasing to God. God showers the whole world with His grace even as it revolves daily in rebellion – rain falls on saved and unsaved alike, happiness and joy persist even for the most virulent atheist. His common grace is a sign of who God is – the loving Creator and Father of all of us. Yet the grace that we seek is the grace that is available in Christ. This is the special grace that saves all who receive it, all who stand in Christ in faith. I think about this often, as I pray and work after my desire to grow into the image of Christ.

What is grace?

Grace could be described as the application of God’s love. His love is shown in all creation through grace as I mentioned, by His provision of our needs. God provides for our need for food, in abundance and variety. He “sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” He gives both work and rest to humanity.

And more than that, He provides an abundance of beauty in our world, of a form that humans continue to seek to recreate through our own artistic methods. I’m reminded of what I like to call the “Holmes apologetic,” from a Sherlock Holmes story where the detective stops mid-thought to remark on the beauty of flowers, and how a flower’s “smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives these extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.” When we look at nature and consider it, from the incredibly minute detail of particles so small no eye could see them, to vast stellar nurseries discovered deep in our galaxy and beyond, the artistry of God demonstrates His love for his creation.

In theological terms, we see two concepts of grace: what is called “common grace,” which is God’s provision for our existence and for creation itself, and “special (or saving) grace,” which is His provision of salvation in Christ. Common grace is what I described above, in God’s provision for all His creation. Special grace is not given to all, but to His people – to all who believe in the name of Jesus and look to Him for life and hope. For those who do not, God’s common grace will ultimately become a condemnation – they received God’s goodness while refusing to worship Him as God.

As Paul says in Romans 1, the truth of God seen in creation is not new information to humanity. We know this, but we also “suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” In our sin and our refusal to honor our Creator, we deny God’s handiwork as being special or of showing His glory. We allow cynical, nihilistic beliefs to draw us into attitudes of self-absorption, rather than humility. But humility is the key that unlocks the gate to the way of Christ, a humility brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of those who hear the gospel and by God’s grace respond. In Romans 3:23 Paul writes that “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But Paul answers this problem with the only possible solution: the grace that is given to us through the sacrifice of Jesus. We are all tainted by sin, and there is no way we can “un-sin” by our own means – as Isaiah writes, even our attempts to do good are tainted by our evil desires before God. But the special grace of Christ truly and perfectly covers our sin, and He delights to administer that to us each day, as our great high priest before the Father. 

God’s grace transforms our hearts

Paul continues in that chapter to demonstrate that humility is the necessary consequence of this realization – boasting in ourselves “is excluded” he writes, “by a law of faith.” Our way is not a free ticket to do what we please because God doesn’t care any longer. His grace creates in us a realization that we have received what we do not and could never deserve.  And as that truth works inward like a seed that is sprouting out of the ground, it changes us bit by bit, breaking away hard-hearted and selfish attitudes and bringing idols to light so they may be thrown down. God’s saving grace shows us that truly resting in God for all our needs, from the most basic to the most profound, is precisely the life God intends for us to live in Him, now and in eternity. As Charles Spurgeon said, “The more grace we have, the less we shall think of ourselves, for grace, like light, reveals our impurity.”

I remember how this happened in my own life, and the moment I experienced that deep conviction of my own sin even as I also felt a tremendous sense of joy of knowing that Jesus was, in fact, enough. It was during a sermon many years ago that the Holy Spirit used as a transformative moment beyond description, and I think about that day often, even as I think about the days and years to come walking the path of Christ.

This applied love of grace is not simply an expression of pity, though pity could be said to share in it. When God saw the sorry state of Adam and Eve in the garden, even though He surely was not surprised by any turn of events, might pity not have had its place in His promise that the woman’s offspring would destroy the enemy and his work? When Jesus stood among weeping mourners at the tomb of Lazarus and joined in their tears, pity surely must have been one of the feelings he bore as he demonstrated the great hope of life that was His gift to humanity, when he called Lazarus forth from the tomb. But this great love expresses the perfect love in unity shared by Father, Son, and Spirit. Again returning to Romans, Paul writes in chapter 5 that “God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

Knowing that, we can bring our heavy burdens to Him. We can truly obey the call of Psalm 55:22, to “cast all our burdens on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken.” We often do feel shaken, it is true, but God knows our needs and provides for them, in His love, by His grace. The more we realize this grace, the more we lower our own self-estimations, and raise our worshipful attitudes in expressing that love we have received to God, and to one another.

Living in His grace

The implications for our day to day lives are nothing short of tremendous. Yet they are also the implications that we often find ourselves blinded to the most by our day to day lives, our personal sin struggles and sufferings, and even our successes. When we build our lives around His grace, we find a rest that supports and extends far beyond all our earthly hopes, because life in Christ itself likewise is far beyond our brief years in this world. 

I want to end with three ideas of ways we can grow in the grace of God in our daily lives:

  • Pursue the things that bring His grace to mind. This can be done in many ways, from taking time to reflect on the beauty of God’s grace in nature and the goodness of His provision for your life in things like a good meal, to meditating on the testimony of Scripture and the teachings of those who have pursued this deeply. 
  • Find ways to express the ways you’ve seen God’s grace move in your life. You don’t have to have a big formal journaling effort, though keeping a personal record of the ways you experience God’s grace is a good idea. When dark times come, being able to remember that God’s presence has not lessened is wise.
  • Don’t try to walk alone. Have people who are close to you, who you trust and who knows you. When hardship comes and clouds fill the horizon of life, have someone who can encourage and pray with you. This should be a person who can listen to confessions of the sins, fears and failures of your life and remind you of your true worth in Christ. My podcast cohost Jake is a person like this for me, someone who I turn to often when I’m needing to talk about life struggles or confess sins.

None of this is dynamic and new, but then that’s not the point. The goal is to build a reminder into our lives of the constant grace of God, and the Holy Spirit has given us so many ways to do so through the Word, through prayer, and through the people around us. Pursue the grace of Christ daily, and the day will come where both suffering and success in this world will be a dim memory compared with the joy of truly being in the presence of Jesus. My prayer for everyone who reads this is that you will strive each day towards that moment for yourself.

How has the grace of God impacted your life? How do you want to see God move further in your life and transform your heart? Leave a comment below or email us, prayer requests are welcome!

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What We Believe – The Work of Christ

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What did Christ accomplish on the cross?”

We have talked about who Christ is – He is the Son of God, He is a man born at a certain place in a certain time, He is the fulfillment of prophecy and a prophet Himself. But it is that last part that we must look to now, not just who He is, but what He has done, and continues to do. We cannot examine the work of Jesus without looking closely at the central focus of His whole life: the cross, His death there, and His resurrection. This was no mere display of power, nor is it simply a tragedy we mourn as unjust. This was the point at which God inaugurated His kingdom, and began the work that will conclude when Jesus returns: namely, the restoration of creation to true holiness, and true and total intimacy between God and His people.

Firstly, Jesus atoned for the sins of His people. There has been much debate over the concept of penal substitutionary atonement and its centrality to what Christ accomplished on the cross, but the testimony of Scripture is clear. All those who draw near to Christ receive the benefits of His atonement, just as all those who drew near on the Day of Atonement each year received those benefits for their sins. The difference is that Christ’s atonement is a better one, for it does not need to be renewed year after year, but as the author of Hebrews says, it is completed and perfect. 

Continue reading “What We Believe – The Work of Christ”
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What we believe – Who is Jesus?

In this ongoing series I am publishing slightly edited versions of short papers I wrote for my church’s elder pipeline class. The prompt for this paper was, “What is your view of Jesus Christ?”

The question “what is your view of Jesus” could receive so broad an answer that literally, many books exist just to tackle it. I want to address this by answering three specific questions that serve as the foundation upon which Christology is built.

Continue reading “What we believe – Who is Jesus?”
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