Do You Believe?: 12 Historic Doctrines to Change Your Everyday Life

by Paul David Tripp

The gospel of justifying grace is not just a means of entrance into relationship with God and a guarantee of eternity with him, but it is also a brand-new culture to be lived right here, right now.

If godliness could be produced in our own strength, the cross of Jesus Christ would not have been necessary.

“For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (1:9).

As those who have been justified by grace, we now have every single thing we need to live a godly life between the “already” of our conversion and the “not yet” of our homegoing.

they put their trust in things they shouldn’t trust, they give way to things they have the power to defeat, they hope in things that will fail them, and they settle for an ineffective and unfruitful life.

The doctrine of justification devastates self-glory. It puts a hammer to human pride. It makes a mockery of self-righteousness and the self-aggrandizing, self-justifying arguments that go with it. This truth destroys our pride in our power and our wisdom. It removes your ability to think that you have done something to be deserving. This truth requires you to confess that you have no power on your own to keep yourself from being without God and without hope. When you admit that what this doctrine says about you is true, humility results.

Pride crushes compassion and sympathy. Pride makes it very hard for you to be patient and understanding. Pride makes you entitled and demanding. Pride never produces a willingness to forgive. Pride makes you judgmental and condemning. Pride makes you far more concerned about the sin of others than you are about your own. Pride is the enemy of self-sacrificing love. Pride makes you picky and easily irritated. Pride forces you to deny your wrongs and to shift blame to someone or something else. Pride makes it easier for you to complain than to give thanks. Proud people don’t tend to be peacemakers. Proud people don’t suffer well. Proud people don’t tend to be generous. Proud people tend to think they deserve what is comfortable and tend to hate what is difficult. Proud people envy the blessings of others. Proud people resist confession and are defensive when confronted. Proud people find winning more attractive than loving. Proud people are better at division than unity and create more enemies than friends. Proud people are always keeping score and tend to hold on to wrongs. Proud people thrive on being noticed, getting respect, and receiving acclaim. Proud people tend to see themselves as deserving the spotlight and thrive when on center stage. Proud people take credit for what they couldn’t have produced on their own. Proud people demand loyalty, but will forsake you when they are not getting what they want from you. Proud people have to be right and need to be in control....

Sin is self-centered.

Gratitude is a beautiful thing. You become grateful when you come to understand that who you are and what you have is not about what you have done, but what has been done for you. You know that the richest things in your life are not there because you are an achiever, but because by grace you are a receiver. Gratitude means you understand that your biggest blessings are gifts of love and not wages that you’ve earned. Gratitude is knowing that your biggest problem, sin, has been dealt with by the sacrificial generosity of another. Gratitude looks up and remembers.

The justifying mercies of Christ set you free from the burdens of the law. Since Jesus perfectly measured up to every requirement of the law, we now have peace with God and full access to relationship with him even though, in this life, we will never measure up. Yes, we should determine to obey and we should resist sin, but we are freed from doing either as a means of achieving acceptance with God.

How much of your life is motivated by fear? Where it really matters, are you living in the freedom that is yours because you are a recipient of the blessings of justifying grace?

We no longer have to search for identity, meaning, and purpose because we have these in Christ.

We are freed from having to be something. We are freed from having to prove we are worth something. We are freed from longing for something that will give us importance, prominence, or power. We are freed from being addicted to people’s acclaim, respect, appreciation, and love. We are freed from letting accomplishments define us. We are freed from letting titles depict that we have worth. We are freed from asking cars, houses, and vacations to be markers of our identity. We are freed from the identity we get from political tribalism. We are freed from getting our identity from being in charge or in control. We are freed from needing to look strong, prepared, capable, and unafraid. We are freed from needing to hide our weaknesses and deny our failures. We are freed from putting on a public face as an attempt to hide what is actually going on inside. Because we don’t get our value from how others respond to us, we are freed from bitterness and fantasies of vengeance when we are mistreated. We are freed from the toxic identity anxieties that haunt so many of us, that get in the way of what we have been called to do, and that harm our relationships. One of the sweet blessings of God’s justifying grace is how vertical identity frees us from horizontal identity chaos.

Vertical identity amnesia

We are not just forgiven, not just adopted, not just eternally loved, but we are also given, in the presence of God within us, new potential for a brand-new way of living. There is no Christian life without the Spirit of the living Christ dwelling within us.

There is no greater defense against the lies of the enemy, which are meant to weaken your faith and your resolve, than the truth of the doctrine of justification. Let me explain. Satan has two things in your life that he works with. First, he works with your ongoing sin, weakness, and failure. When you sin, failing to live up to God’s clearly revealed standards, he comes close to you and says, “Maybe you are not one of God’s children after all,” or, “God must be so disappointed in you,” or, “If God really loved you, wouldn’t he help you right now to do what is right?” or, “Look at your life. Maybe everything you’ve believed is not as true as you thought.”

There is a second thing that Satan will use to weaken your faith and your resolve. It is the mystery of God’s sovereignty. In those moments when life is difficult and suffering is near, he will come to you and say, “Where is your God now?” or, “I thought God loved you. Would a loving God let this happen to you?” or, “Maybe God has abandoned you; maybe his promises aren’t trustworthy after all,” or, “Maybe God doesn’t have the power to help you that he said he had.” Once again, your best defense against these attacks is the doctrine of justification. Because of what Jesus has done for you, there is nothing in heaven and earth that can separate you from God’s love. Difficulty in your life is never a sign of God’s unfaithfulness, weakness, or neglect. Instead, these hard things become tools of redeeming love in your life.

we shouldn’t preach this doctrine of justifying grace just to unbelievers, but to believers as well.

He will not be satisfied until he has actually formed true righteousness in us. The process by which true righteousness is formed in us is called sanctification. Sanctification is the process by which God actually makes us what he has declared us to be in Christ, righteous. This means our Savior is still at work saving us.

The primary focus of sanctification is the ongoing, lifelong rescue of us from us. Although we have been forgiven, declared righteous, and adopted as God’s children, the muck and mess of sin still remain in us. The doctrine of sanctification requires you to admit that you are deeply in need of help. It requires you to admit that your need of help is so profound that only divine intervention will be able to provide the help that you need. And it requires you to accept that your problem with remaining sin is so multilayered, pervasive, and expansive that it will take the rest of your earthly days to solve. The doctrine of sanctification is a rebuke to any kind of self-satisfied and passive Christianity. You are not good enough, you are not clean enough, you are not Christlike enough, and you do not have enough to solve these problems on your own. Sanctification declares to all believers that we are people still in need of what God’s grace alone is able to provide for us.