Kindle Notes & Highlights
Christian is a sinner who can stand in the presence of God, not because he is no longer sinful, but because his sins have been paid for by the shed blood of Christ, who stands between us and the Father’s justice and uses his sacrifice, which the Father has accepted, to plead on our behalf. To be born again therefore is not to be cleansed from sin by baptism, but to be united with Christ in his death and resurrection.
The only way that we can make any favourable impression on God is if we are set free to serve him as we ought to, and that is made possible by his free gift of salvation in and through Jesus Christ. We have not asked for this gift and have done nothing to deserve it – it is a gift, after all, and not a reward for services rendered. We are incapable of wanting it, or even of understanding what it is, until we receive it, which is why the article says that God’s grace in Christ ‘prevents’ us, ‘prevent’ being used here in the older sense of ‘precede’. When God gets to work in our lives he
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An alcoholic does not choose his condition, any more than a sinner does. Doing what comes naturally to him is not freedom, but a slavery to self-destruction so powerful that only the most radical treatment can change it. The libertarian philosopher may say what he likes, but the recovering alcoholic, like the redeemed sinner, understands that he has been delivered from a bondage greater than his power to resist. Neither wants to return to his former state, and both rejoice in the freedom to build a new life, which they have acquired for the first time. What appears to some outsiders as an
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they have been set free to exercise their good will in the way that God originally intended, and they have no desire to go back to anything less than that.
We stand in the presence of God not because of anything we have done but by virtue of what Jesus Christ has done for us. This is a great relief, because we know that what he has done is adequate to save us, whereas we can never be sure that we have done enough to deserve anything from God other than condemnation and punishment.
If salvation depended on our works, the holiest people would be the ones least assured of having obtained it! That is a nonsensical position, of course, but it helps us to see why justification by faith alone is such an important doctrine. Without it we would never know if we were saved or not, and our relationship with God would be rooted in fear rather than in faith, hope and love.
Righteousness is not a thing or a quality that we possess, but a status that we enjoy because we have been accepted by God in Christ.
To be justified by faith alone is to be set free from that anxiety and have the confidence that we have fellowship with God
even though we have not deserved it. This is why the article says that justification by faith is ‘a most wholesome doctrine and very full of comfort’, because we no longer have to worry about whether we are accepted by God or not.
The answer to this question can only be that sin is not inherent in human nature.
Our sins are taken away, not in the sense that we become sinless in the way that Jesus was, but in the sense that they no longer stand as a barrier blocking our access to God. We go on being sinners and therefore we go on sinning. Even if we can learn not to commit particular sins deliberately, every action of ours has something sinful about it because of our inherent sinfulness. We can recognise it and struggle against it, but we cannot get rid of it as long as the ‘old Adam’ continues to shape and control our human nature.
As Christians we are not called to do what Jesus did (or what we might think he would do if he were in our shoes) but to do what he tells us to do – to obey his commands, not to copy his actions (unless, of course, that is what he tells us to do!)
In a very real sense, election is the doctrine most deeply opposed to sacramentalism, because it states that a person is chosen by God in a way that is unique and mysterious to him, and not processed into the kingdom of heaven by means that are controlled and administered by other human beings.
The trouble with this apparently attractive idea is that it is impossible to share our faith without sharing the claims that it makes. Jesus said that he is the way, the truth and the life, and that no-one can come to the Father except through him (John 14:6). Are we supposed to say that he was wrong? If we do, then we cease to be Christians and can no longer claim to speak for the church with any integrity. But if we uphold the teaching of Christ, what dialogue is possible with those who cannot accept his exclusiveness? We do
not have to be unpleasant to them or persecute them, of course, but we do have to try to persuade them that we are right and that they are wrong. Christians are not morally superior to anyone else – we are sinners saved by grace, after all – but we do know the truth, and the truth has set us free. To fail to say this, and to accept other beliefs as equivalent to ours, is to deny the truth and leave those who have not accepted it in bondage. If we love them as Christ loves them and believe that he has died for them, we cannot do this. We cannot sit back and assume that the world is full of
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Sympathy for homosexuals is not the same thing as tolerance of deviant sexual practices, a distinction which is unfortunately lost on many people today, who seem to think that ‘love’ means accepting and allowing almost anything.
right up until the Reformation the Irish clergy, including abbots of monasteries, were usually married with children.
