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Subtract Jesus from the universe, and everything falls apart. He is not a bobblehead Savior, to be smiled at and merely added to an otherwise well-oiled life. He is the mighty sustainer of the universe, to whose supreme rule we will bow the knee in either this life or the next (Phil. 2:10).
Consider that you have already been raised spiritually (Eph. 2:6; Col. 2:12; 3:1). When you sin, you behave out of accord with who you now are. You’re acting like a former orphan who’s been adopted yet keeps running out of his new house to the curb to beg for bread when the kitchen is fully stocked and freely his. You are destined for glory.
Therefore: nothing can touch you that does not touch him. To get to you, every pain, every assault, every disappointment has to go through him. You are shielded by invincible love. Everything that washes into your life, no matter how hard, comes from and through the tender care of the friend of sinners.
At your point of deepest shame and regret, that’s where Christ loves you the most. The old Puritan Thomas Goodwin wrote that “Christ is love covered over with flesh.”4 It’s who he is.
The New Testament tells us again and again, however, that pain is a means, not an obstacle, to deepening in Christian maturity. The anguish, disappointments, and futility that afflict us are themselves vital building blocks to our growth.
Rather, we should acknowledge that our hearts will latch on to anything in this world short of God himself and will seek to draw strength from that created thing instead of the Creator and his love.
Sin feels like riches, but it is counterfeit riches, and one very quickly hits bottom on its pleasures. It doesn’t deliver. Christ, on the other hand, is real riches, and one never hits bottom on them. They are unsearchable.
Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief!
