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by
Tony Reinke
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March 15 - March 27, 2016
long-term Christian obedience will fail if not fueled by the glorious beauty of Christ in the gospel. Apart from this revelation of glory, the Christian life has no combustion. The tension leaves a tortured life, pitting right duty over and against selfish pleasures, one pulling left and one pulling right. The beauty of Christ brings the two into harmony, rightly aligning into one pursuit our joy in him and our obedience to
“When your hearts feel the comforts of God’s pardoning love, you will delight to imitate him. When you can truly rejoice that he has freely forgiven you that immense debt, which is expressed by ten thousand talents, you will have no desire to take your fellow-servant by the throat for a few pence” (Matt. 18:21–35). A daily renewed sense of Christ’s beauty softens our heart and erodes angry and resentful thoughts against those who have offended us.
it’s impossible to love like Christ until we are first loved by Christ (1 John 4:19).
the imitation of Christ’s love to be an outward display of an inner receiving of Christ’s love. Christ’s love must first be received before Christ’s example of love can be pursued.
As our love and appreciation for Christ reorient our affections, we begin to take on characteristics of the Savior. In Christ we are counted righteous before God (justification); but in Christ we are also made righteous (sanctification).
The entire Christian life finds its orbit around the sun of Christ: his perfect person, his perfect works, and his perfect substitutionary death for us. The Christian is drawn toward Christ and his attractive beauty, and a sure mark of health is an appetite for more of Christ. The Christian is attracted to books about Christ and sermons about Christ and songs about Christ. Duty and pleasure merge. Simultaneously, the world’s foolish vanities become like child’s toys in the light of Christ.
In those remaining areas of sin we run to the Savior, not away from him. He exposes our sins, but then he covers them.
Privilege, wealth, education, learning, and culture are all powerless to convert the immortal soul. The only hope for the prince or the pauper, or for that matter the boy born to a slave, is the gospel of Jesus Christ.
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”29
In Christ our spiritual deadness is overcome, our guilt and condemnation before God are removed, our captivity to sin is broken, our sanctification is made possible (and is empowered!), and all our hopes for freedom from this fallen world are made certain and secured. All these realities converge in 1 Corinthians 1:30.31 In the all-inclusive language of Newton, Jesus is mine: in him I have wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, an interest in all the promises and in all the perfections of God: he will guide me by his counsel, support me by his power, comfort me with his
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The beauty of Christ works in both ways: (1) it empties us of our futile self-sufficiency, and (2) it fills us with the empowering sufficiency of Christ.
The Gospel, rightly understood and cordially embraced, will inspire the slothful with energy, and the fearful with courage. It will make the miser generous, melt the churl [rude] into kindness, tame the raging tiger in the breast, and, in a word, expand the narrow selfish heart, and fill it with a spirit of love to God, cheerful unreserved obedience to his will, and benevolence to mankind.40
The pace of growth and maturity in the Christian life is not like a mushroom; it’s like an oak tree. A mushroom sprouts overnight and vanishes just as fast. An oak tree begins from an acorn by sending a deep taproot straight down into the earth before it begins working its way into the sky. The oak grows slowly, with deep roots to endure droughts, absorb rain, and withstand harsh seasonal changes, and while the tree looks more alive in the summer than in the winter, it’s always alive. “The full-grown oak that overtops the wood, spreads its branches wide, and has struck its roots to a
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All conversions start with the drawing grace of an all-sufficient Father (John 6:44). We are dead in trespasses and sins, strangers to God, hostile to him and his grace. All of us, “whether wise or ignorant, whether sober or profane, are equally incapable of receiving or approving Divine truths.”6 Every Christian testimony begins with a necessary transformation from spiritual death to new birth by the glorious work of
True spiritual knowledge that fails to warm the affections is hypocritical knowledge.
Gospel maturity never means self-sufficiency—quite the opposite. The spiritual man, the father, always lives in “absolute dependence” on God.
The mature Christian life is marked by a daily return to the Lamb of God and diligent Bible reading, not merely as a daily discipline, but as a means to lead to heart-satisfying delight in the all-sufficient Savior. The mature Christian prays not out of a sense of mere duty, but because the all-sufficiency of Christ draws him to ask and plead in confidence. He listens intently to sermons because he awaits a glimpse of the precious Savior. The more he sees of Christ, the more he seeks by the means of grace (Scripture reading, prayer, and fellowship with the gathered church). His spiritual life
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For Newton, the irreducible and irreplaceable core power for Christian growth is the daily discipline of treasuring God’s glory shining in the face of Jesus Christ. Newton clearly saw the centrality of this point in Paul (2 Cor. 3:18; 4:6) and structured his own pastoral ministry around
In the Christian life, new affections for Christ clash with habitual sin patterns. To put it more strongly, new affections for God eject old habits of sin. Or to say it in the negative, failure to find satisfaction in Christ leaves in the soul a vacuum filled by self, idols, and false securities.
Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847) would later call this phenomenon the expulsive power of a new affection
Holiness grows out of an inner change within the affections, the fruit of the Spirit’s awakening a dead sinner to the beauty of God’s holiness in Christ (Pss. 29:2; 96:9).
Holiness must first be rooted in new tastes and new desires if it is to lead to right actions
Opposing sin and temptation with mere resolutions to holiness proves to be powerless; only a sight of Christ crucified is powerful enough to wean us from the world (Gal. 6:14).27
It is spiritual suicide to claim Christ as your fountain of joy but then feed your soul on sin, idols, and worldliness. The sinful pleasures of this world usurp true affection for Christ, and vice versa.28
By this new affection, beholding Christ’s glory in Scripture becomes dynamite to loosen sin from us, and a superior pleasure to shield us from worldly enticements.
Temptations lose potency, and obedience finds its power in the glory of Christ beheld in Scripture.
So, if obedience be the thing in question, looking unto Jesus is the object that melts the soul into love and gratitude, and those who greatly love, and are greatly obliged, find obedience easy. When Jesus is upon our thoughts, either in his humbled or his exalted state, either as bleeding on the cross, or as worshipped in our nature by all the host of heaven, then we can ask the apostle’s question with a becoming disdain, “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” God forbid.32
Confidence in God’s love is a powerhouse for strengthening obedience and ad...
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Whenever hard thoughts of God plague the Christian (God is against me), obedience must grow feeble and temptations grow alluring. But where the conviction of God’s favor is certain (God is for me), faith and holiness are prop...
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the beholding of Christ’s all-sufficient glory as a daily disc...
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the beauty and loveliness of Christ outshine the sparkle of sin.
Wonderful are the effects when a crucified, glorious Savior is presented by the power of the Spirit, in the light of the Word, to the eye of Faith. This sight destroys the love of sin, heals the wounds of guilt, softens the hard heart, and fills the soul with peace, life, and joy; and makes obedience practicable, desirable, and pleasant. If we could see this more, we should look less at other things. But, alas! Unbelief places a veil before our sight, and worldly-mindedness draws our eyes another way. A desire to be something that we are not, or to possess something that we have not, or to do
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The glory of Christ annihilates sin’s glamour. Beholding Christ’s glory is affective and effective at killing sin, and it is a practical way we experience the vital sap of spiritual life flowing to us from our vital union with Christ himself, depending on our faith.38 If we are to mature, we mature in Christ (Col. 1:28), and this happens as we make biblical discoveries of his glory—a sin-expelling diet for the
In other words, the expulsive power of Christ’s glory is the secret to Christian maturity. It’s the glory moving Christians from blade to ear to full corn—from infant to adolescent to father.
the expulsive power of Christ’s glory is the secret to Christian maturity. It’s the glory moving Christians from blade to ear to full corn—from infant to adolescent to father.
The Christian life grows, not hastily like a mushroom or like the speed-sprouting plant over Jonah’s head, but rather like Newton’s oak, a tree buffeted by winds and hailstorms and winters and scorching summers, but firm and resolute from branch to root. Such growth requires patience because Christ “works powerfully, but for the most part gently and gradually.”40 “We are hasty, and would be satisfied at once, but his word is: ‘Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure’” (Pss. 27:14; 37:34).41
Faithful pastor, don’t fuss over the imperceptible growth in your flock. Let God’s timing recalibrate your expectations for what maturity will look like in them. Although the progress is often unseen, and your pastoral labors never end, the Spirit-born fruit is growing.
Christian, don’t fuss over your current mood as a gauge of your spiritual health, but keep two eyes focused daily on the Christ who hung on a
Yet of all people, the Christian is aware that it matters not how much money is left in his bank account after years of bargaining. What matters at the end of a Christian’s life is how he used the money that passed in and out of his wallet. Was it used in a way that honored God and reflected gospel simplicity? Was it used to care for others? Or was it withheld to take advantage of others?12
Religion is not confined to devotional exercises, but rather consists in doing all we are called and qualified to do, with a single eye to his glory and will, from a grateful sense of his love and mercy to us. This is the alchemy which turns every thing into gold, and stamps a value upon common actions.22
Christian hope rests in the first and ultimate sovereign cause of all things: “The LORD reigns” (Pss. 93:1; 96:10; 97:1; 99:1). This phrase should be printed as the lead story with bold black headlines at the top of every daily newspaper.27 It was Newton’s firm resolution on politics and politicians. “There is a peace passing understanding, of which the politicians cannot deprive us.”28
Nothing in the world of politics or war was outside of the crucified Christ’s supremacy.
He who loved you and died for your sins, is the Lord of glory. All power in heaven and in earth is committed unto him. The Lord reigneth, let the earth be never so unquiet. All creatures are instruments of his will. The wrath of man, so far as it is permitted to act, shall praise him, shall be made subservient to the accomplishment of his great designs; and the remainder of that wrath, of all their projected violence, which does not coincide with his wise and comprehensive plan, he will restrain.34
“The greatest problem we face as a nation is our sin, and the only ultimate solution is Christ crucified.
and he was quick to dismiss all hints to the contrary. No afflictions in the Christian life are accidental. No trials in the Christian life are the product of coincidence.
Every affliction in the life of the believer is designed by God and sovereignly implemented by
If the Christian’s trials are designed by God (and they are), and if the Christian’s salvation is secure in Christ (and it is), then no trial is the experience of God’s punitive wrath poured out on us for our sins. “There is no sting in your rod, nor wrath in your cup.”6 Christ was crushed under the searing sting of God’s white-hot wrath so we would never experience it. Christ’s suffering was punitive; Christian suffering is restorative. The cup Christ drank was filled with wrath; the cup of suffering God calls his children to drink during the Christian life is “only medicinal to promote their
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God uses disease and sickness and poverty and all the large and small pains of life for our good
Christ is the Author and Perfecter of our faith, and he weaves trials into the storyline of our lives for a twin benefit: his glory and our
The end of the Christian life is one port (Zion), and every Christian is like a vessel on the open seas. Our destination is the same, but we all take slightly different courses to get there, and Christians will endure vicious storms along the way, some more than others, depending on the route God has intended. All these light and momentary afflictions on the open sea of the Christian life are working together by God in our lives to prepare for us “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17). The pain we experience now cannot compare with the glorious end in store for us
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