Are we comfortable with the fact that we don’t and never will in this life measure up to the standard of even one command of God's holy law? In one sense, hopefully, Yes… and yet in another, certainly No! It's not that we don’t feverntly wish that we could truly and faithfully obey, even as we - now born of the Spirit - under grace and not under law, with our own insufficient means (the remnant of sin hanging on our back) work to that end… but it is by trusting in Christ, that we who are still sinners now understand ourselves to be at peace with God through Christ our Savior who died for us, who has justified us and has given us the seed of willingness, by the Holy Spirit, to now walk in faith unto (towards) obedience of that holy law. Yet(!) we do so with much limitation and imperfection, so that we look not to ourselves for the evidence of our salvation, but look "to Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”
Let’s not kid ourselves as to our present capabilties and the inherent qualities of our works before God’s judgment seat. Rather we should rightly tremble... and in faith look to the throne of grace, to which Christ our Surety implores us to approach. We have no other sure avenue of salvation.
Let’s not kid ourselves as to our present capabilties and the inherent qualities of our works before God’s judgment seat. Rather we should rightly tremble... and in faith look to the throne of grace, to which Christ our Surety implores us to approach. We have no other sure avenue of salvation.
Amen, Jack. I love how WCF 16.5-6 puts it re: our good works:
ReplyDelete5. We cannot by our best works merit pardon of sin, or eternal life at the hand of God, by reason of the great disproportion that is between them and the glory to come; and the infinite distance that is between us and God, whom, by them, we can neither profit, nor satisfy for the debt of our former sins, but when we have done all we can, we have done but our duty, and are unprofitable servants: and because, as they are good, they proceed from his Spirit; and as they are wrought by us, they are defiled, and mixed with so much weakness and imperfection, that they cannot endure the severity of God's judgment.
6. Notwithstanding, the persons of believers being accepted through Christ, their good works also are accepted in him; not as though they were in this life wholly unblamable and unreprovable in God's sight; but that he, looking upon them in his Son, is pleased to accept and reward that which is sincere, although accompanied with many weaknesses and imperfections.
Christ is my only righteousness before God, I am accepted "in Him" alone. Yet, because I am accepted "in Him," my weak, imperfect, sinful works are likewise accepted graciously by God, as Christ purifies all their weakness & imperfection with His blood, and graciously "crowns His own works." It is all to the praise of the glory of His grace, start to finish.
Tony, I love that section of the WCF also. Very helpful stuff!
ReplyDeleteIf all sin is the same as not believing the gospel, then being christian is being moral, and if being moral is being Christian, then being Mormon is being Christian. If all sin is the same as not believing the gospel, then there are no Christians but only sinners.
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