Introspection: Don’t Go Down There Without the Gospel

In the Bible we are instructed to examine ourselves to see whether we are truly believers (2 Corinthians 13:5) and we are also called to confess our sins to the Lord (1 John 1:9).  To obey both of these commands requires that we look within ourselves.  We have to know what the sin is before can confess it and we have to see evidence of faith to help us see if our faith is real.  Self-examination is an important practice for Christians as we seek to love and serve our King, but please allow me to give you a warning as you look inside yourself.

Self-examination can very easily move from a humble desire to walk in the light before God to a concentrated effort to find confidence and esteem in yourself apart from God.  If you’re not careful, you can find yourself engaging in something that seems to others as very contrite – the practice of someone who is taking holiness seriously – but is actually fueled by a self-righteous attempt to find evidence of your own worth so you can feel good about yourself.  If you find what you’re looking for (as rationalized and duplicitous as it may be), then you’ll be proud and self-reliant, but if you don’t find what you’re looking for, then you’ll be devastated and insecure.

Some counsel: don’t go spelunking inside your heart without first anchoring yourself to the gospel.  The gospel will remind you that you desperately needed to be rescued…that will keep you from pride when you see your “credentials”.  And the gospel will remind you that you stand before God in the righteousness of Christ…that will keep you from devastation when you see the wretchedness of your sin.

Encouragement for Christ’s Laborers

So sorry for my lack of posting recently.  We just moved out of our house and are preparing to travel to California for church planting training this summer, so things have been a bit insane.

Having said that, on the subject of church planting, a good friend of mine took me out to lunch and gave me some fortifying encouragement on Tuesday.  He read to me Colossians 1:3-6 which begins with Paul telling the Colossian believers that he and Timothy always thank God for them in their prayers ever since they heard of their faith in Christ Jesus and the love they have for God’s people.  This faith and love, Paul says, is a result of the gospel coming to them.  What comes next is what Paul says about the effects of the gospel:

“…in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing – as it also does among you” (v.6)

In response to these words (and in reference to the future church plant), my friend said, “We can’t see the fruit yet, but we know what the gospel does.”

Whether you are going to a new place to minister the gospel or you will be continuing to minister the gospel where you are, this should be profoundly encouraging – we know what the gospel does…it bears fruit.  The gospel rescues sinners, transforms lives, and grows people in holiness.  So, when you are tempted to turn to worldliness or a diluted gospel in order for your ministry to be more successful, remember what it is that bears fruit and yields effect – the gospel as passed down from the apostles.

When Christ’s Death Means Everything to Us

This morning I am continuing to be blessed by an illustration that Tim Keller uses in his book, Galatians for You.  The illustration is used to depict the reality of Paul’s words in Galatians 2:21, which read, I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.

Keller comments, Christ will do everything for you, or nothing.  You cannot combine merit and grace.  If justification is by the law in any way, Christ’s death is meaningless in history and meaningless to you personally.

His illustration helps:

Imagine that your house were burning down but your whole family had escaped, and I said to you, “Let me show you how much I love you!” and ran into the house and died.  “What a tragic and pointless waste of a life”, you would probably think.  But now imagine that your house was on fire and one of your children was still in there, and I said to you: “Let me show you how much I love you!”, ran into the flames, and saved your child but perished myself.  You would think: “Look at how much that man loved us.”

Keller wraps it up by stating, If we could save ourselves, Christ’s death is pointless, and means nothing.  If we realize we cannot save ourselves, Christ’s death will mean everything to us.

How God Can Know the Darkness of Your Heart and Still Love You

Last Friday, Keri and I went to see our favorite songwriter, Andrew Peterson, in concert.  The evening was a mixed bag of emotions as Peterson has a talent for telling great stories with his songs, but one such song (and his explanation of it) has risen above the rest to stick with me over the last few days.  The song is called Rest Easy, and Peterson calls it his “legalism recovery song”.  He told the audience that this song sprung out of him dealing with a long-entrenched feeling that God was consistently disappointed with him.  But his recognition of the gospel wins out in this song, because he believes the truth that God knows him and the truth that God loves him are not mutually exclusive.

It’s not hard for us think to that only one of those realities can be true: either God loves us but does not know us (because then he would be ignorant of all of our sin and rebellion) or God knows us but does not love us (because surely he could not love me when he knows the depth of my sin and rebellion).  But the gospel makes both of these things true at the same time.  How?  Well, it wasn’t that God just learned to accept what was directly offensive to him because he knew we would never change. That would be impossible because of his holiness and justice.  Instead, he made his Son the object of his justice for our sake – “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13).  God knew about our sin, but punished Christ for it instead of us so that he could love us as he loves Christ.

You know much of the darkness that lurks in your heart, and if certain people in your life ever saw you from the inside, it is likely that they would withdraw from you at best or attack you at worst.  But this is not the case with God.  Actually, God knows the darkness of your heart more than you do, but it has not led him to draw back in fear or, in anger, consume you with fire from heaven.  If you have trusted in Christ for rescue, then Jesus experienced the fullness of God’s anger for your sin, so that you will forever experience the fullness of his love in Christ.

The Gospel is Not a Second Chance

This week I started studying Galatians in the mornings and I’ve been using Timothy Keller’s book Galatians for You as a tool to help shed some light on the text.  In the book, Keller says something about Galatians 1:4 that gave my heart fodder for praise.  Let me quote the text, then Keller:

“…the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver (or rescue) us from the present evil age…”

Commenting on what it means that Christ gave himself to “deliver” us, Keller says,

“[Jesus] did not merely buy us a ‘second chance’, giving us another opportunity to get life right and stay right with God.  He did all we needed to do, but cannot do.”

Do I have to say how profound this is?  What would have become of us if the gospel was simply a second chance to “get life right”?  We would fail miserably again, running from God in rebellion as we claim our own independence and worth!  The truth is that we lack the capacity for obedience altogether.  Even if God gave us a million second chances, we would never reach God’s standard.  It is true that time along with trial and error is what Thomas Edison needed to invent the electric light bulb, but time for us, left to ourselves, will only result in more sin.

This is why we needed Jesus to rescue us.  We are spiritually unable to get life right so we could save ourselves, so Jesus had to get life right for us so he could save us.  It is common for Christians to say that we serve “a God of second chances”.  To that we should ask, “Second chances to do what?”  Is it second chances to get life right or second chances to prove ourselves?  If so, we need to be reminded of the gospel which says, “We would use second chances the same way we used the first chance, therefore, we need Jesus to rescue us – the one who does not need second chances; the one who got life right the first time… for us.”

Another Reason to Never Stop Evangelizing

Earlier this week, Justin Taylor quoted from an interview with D.A. Carson on the topic of helping coming generations to keep their focus on the gospel.  Carson gave six suggestions for this, but one gripped me when I read it:

Never stop evangelizing: it is much easier to get sloppy about the gospel if you are not proclaiming it and seeing men and women come to Christ.

Why is this true?  Why are we in danger of losing the gospel if we stop evangelizing?  I think it’s because when we evangelize we understand that there are significantly fewer assumptions we can make concerning what people know and don’t know about the Bible, God’s holiness, sin, Jesus, and grace (especially when you consider our increasingly post-Christian society).  This helps to keep us from leaving things out and urges us to be precise in our gospel-telling.

When we simply stay within our Christian bubbles, it’s easy to assume your brothers and sisters in Christ know what you mean when you use words like “justification” and “redemption” because they’ve already come to know Christ and they’ve been sitting under biblical preaching and teaching.  Not so with evangelizing the lost.  Actually, in evangelism it is better to assume they know very little or nothing at all about these things.

In understanding that unbelievers may not have any other Christians telling them what we’re telling them about sin and forgiveness, there is a greater sense of care we bring to a gospel conversation.  Evangelism keeps us from straying into ambiguity and vague generalities when thinking and speaking of the gospel.  We need evangelism to keep us fixed on the truth.

Because of Jesus, God Loves Me More than I Love Myself

I have often written  about our need to “preach the gospel to ourselves” on a regular basis.  This need springs from the reality that we struggle with a variety of temptations everyday ranging from despair and depression where we need hope to pride and  arrogance where we need humility.

One of the ways I find myself preaching the gospel to myself is by way of reminding myself how much greater the love of God is than whatever sinful desire my heart is manifesting.  It helps me during these times of temptation to qualify God’s love by telling myself that God loves me more than anyone in the world – more than my dad and mom, more than my closest friends, and even more than my wife.  If God loved me and sent his Son to be the propitiation for my sins (that is, Christ experienced the full anger of God for our sins) (1 John 4:10), then there is no one whose love for me exceeds his.

And here’s the kicker, that includes the love I have for myself!  The sad, horrible truth is that I love me more than anyone else on this planet.  As a sinner, I spend an over-abundance of time and energy living for me, and yet, because God has given Jesus as my substitute on the cross, I am united with him before God and God now loves me as he loves Jesus.  Which means he loves me perfectly and fully… in a way that is stronger and deeper than I could ever love myself.

The strongest love in existence is not a mother’s love for her child, it is not a husband’s love for his wife, and it is not a sinner’s love for self – it’s the love of a holy God for rebels who have trusted in his Son for salvation.  When it comes to reminding yourself of the gospel in the fight against sin…that’ll preach!

How Can We See the Depth of Jesus’ Love for Us?

In a culture where we use the word “love” to describe our affection for things as trivial as candy and then turn ar0und to use it in an intimate expression toward a spouse, we need some helping qualifying the statement “Jesus love me”.  

What are we talking about when we refer to Jesus’ love for those who trust him?  How do we measure the depth of that love?  In his Holy Week devotional, Love to the Uttermost, John Piper gives four ways the depth of Christ’s love is revealed:

1. We will see the depth of Christ’s love for us by the greatness of what it costs him.
2. We will see the depth of Christ’s love for us by how little we deserve it.
3. We will see the depth of Christ’s love for us by the greatness of the benefits we receive in being loved by him.
4. We will see the depth of Christ’s love for us by the freedom with which he loves us (that is, there are no constraints on his love).

A Gospel-Centered Approach to Reading the Bible

Yesterday, I ran across this well-balanced quote from J.D. Greear’s book, Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary.

A Great New(ish) Gospel Tract

If you have not read The Story gospel tract, click on the link below for a beautiful online version.  It is definitely one of the best I’ve ever come across.  With Easter coming up, now would be a great time to order some copies.

Read The Story online

Order The Story here

Get the free iPhone app here

Get the free Android app here