More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 14 - May 5, 2019
The unilateral salvation of the gospel of grace also reminds us that our life belongs totally and ultimately to God. We are reminded, in the sovereignty of salvation by grace, of the sovereignty of the God of grace. He is the one upholding the universe (Heb. 1:3). He is the one in control. He created the world and called it good, and he will see it to its predetermined end and new beginning. And if this God who is ordaining all things can be trusted—if he is good and loving and also just and wise—who are we to be impatient with the way things are going?
Over time, following Jesus cultivates a quicker retreat to patience in us. The Spirit produces more and more patience in our hearts, because as we grow in faith we also grow in our realization of our sin. We see more of our inadequacy as we mature in Jesus, not less. Our subsequent humility results in patience with God (who is astoundingly patient with our sinful selves) and with others as we become more inclined to let them off the hook.
The gospel is an exclamation point.
In ourselves none of us stands justified. In Christ we are justified. In the gospel his goodness becomes ours. So along with the article of justification we must include the incredible doctrine of imputation. Justification speaks to our right standing before God. We’ve been forgiven; we’ve been declared righteous. But imputation speaks to our righteousness in God (2 Cor. 5:21). We’ve not just been forgiven and declared righteous; we are in Christ actually made righteous. It’s not just that God wipes our sinful slate clean (justification); he also writes onto the slate of our heart the perfect
...more
In fact, he is so gracious that even though our faith is imperfect and weird and wonky, he shores it up still and evermore with his perfect grace and the perfect righteousness of his Son. Our faith could even be as small as a mustard seed, but so long as it’s genuine it will still afford us the totality of Christ’s eternal riches.
The saying is trustworthy, for: If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him; if we deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful— for he cannot deny himself. (2 Tim. 2:11–13)
Gentleness is inextricably connected to restfulness. So long as we are restless, so long as we are bucking against Christ’s sovereignty, tugging at and stifling under his kindly yoke, we will not be shaped by his gentleness. But the more we rest in our salvation, in the security of our position in him for all eternity, the more gentle we will become. He is gentle with us. And his gentleness is conferred to us, transferred to us as we find him gentle in the face of our own stubbornness and failure to get our act together. The more into his grace we rest, the more from his grace we will become
...more
As we grow in Christ over the years, we have more and more opportunities to find our faith tested and to see how well his goodness stacks up against the petty offerings of the world. As we grow older in Christ, we have more opportunities to discover how lacking in lasting satisfaction things like money and sex and notoriety and anything else under the sun actually are. We see more of Christ’s joy strong and steady against the seemingly endless stream of worldly happiness.
Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit because those who abide in Christ have transformed desires. They want the satisfaction of Christ more and the gratification of the world less.
The law can tell us what to do but it cannot help us do it. The law cannot empower its own implications. The gospel, on the other hand, announces to us both Christ’s fulfillment of the law and, by consequence, Christians’ worshipful freedom to obey the law without fear of being crushed by it.
The good news is that it is God who keeps us from failing; God ensures that we will stand before him blameless (Jude 24).
The Holy Spirit is making us more like Jesus and at the same time more like our true selves.
I know the words of the gospel. The problem is that too often the words of the accuser(s) are on video, as I’ve heard Tim Keller say, while the words of the gospel are on audio.
It’s funny but it’s not. I spent thirty years fighting a war that was over, struggling to believe God could love me, struggling to believe God could even stomach me, warring with the devil over where I belonged, warring with myself over where I stood. So many of the sinful patterns that plagued my life for so long arose from the mistaken belief that my soul was in some kind of spiritual limbo.
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. . . . For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col. 3:1, 3)
I lost my taste for lots of things in that moment, and one of those was trying to “get better” by the law. We ask for bread and God doesn’t give us stones. I learned there, in the rubble of my dreams for my life, my ministry, my everything—the rubble of myself—that Christ is all and that trying to measure up is garbage.
When hardship comes, when sickness comes, when trouble comes, our true selves are revealed. What we really worship is revealed. Stress does this too. Irritations. Inconveniences. People and circumstances frustrating our wish dreams, interrupting our self-established agendas, challenging our self-styled sovereignty.
Charles Spurgeon said, “Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.”2
Martin Luther’s Letters of Spiritual Counsel, we find these words of encouragement written to a young correspondent: When the devil throws our sins up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak thus: “I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there shall I be also.”3
And now we’re beginning to see how deep this gospel really is. Because it doesn’t just give us forgiveness of sins. And it doesn’t just give us the righteousness of Christ. And it doesn’t just unite us eternally to Christ. And it doesn’t just promise us the work of spiritual sanctification throughout our life. It also promises us the hope of glory when all is said and done.
And so, like my friend Ray says to do, I stare at the glory of God until I see it. I am weak. If I hear anything long enough I will start to believe it. This works for gospel words too. So I stop listening to myself and start talking to myself, preaching to myself. I am not who they say I am; I am who God says I am, and I don’t have to be an Osteen fanboy to say that and think that. I just have to be a Christian.
In 2 Corinthians 11, he goes on a tear about the qualification of his hardships that blows our stupid complaints out of the water. He’d been sick, tortured, near death, and shipwrecked. He knew what it was like to be hated, starved, and attacked. Paul knew suffering. And yet he was totally abandoned to Jesus. Something extraordinary had happened to him. One day, while he was minding his own religious business, he got hijacked by grace, waylaid by Jesus Christ. Paul stepped into the bear trap of the gospel. And, ever after, he was “all in.” If he was in a pit, he was all in that pit. If that’s
...more
Grace is all-sufficient for suffering. In speaking of his weakness, Paul sketches out a curious predicament: So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:7–9)
