True peace of heart is possible only after the cross becomes the standard by which one judges all his circumstances. The most blessed life may be construed as an elaborate trap set to destroy a man, if he does not accept that God has proven unchanging favor by sending His Son to die for him.
Each day I fall short, neglecting the everlasting enterprise of the eschaton for endless entertainments of earth. My mind is more preoccupied with work than worship; profits than prayer; with play above piety; preferring the path of an earthly champion above the portion of charity, character, and the cross of Christ. Each day and every hour I need new grace, renewing grace, to continue upward in the Christian way.
Faith knows God is in our corner even in rounds where we feel ourselves taking a beating; that Christ declares our victory before the bell has even rung.
Faith sees God’s hand over every step of our spiritual race, including any missteps.
The next time you feel hopeless and helpless in your war with sin, remember that Jesus Christ is on your side, and His Spirit will never forsake His post within you.
Paul told the saints at Ephesus to put on the “helmet of salvation.” This was to say, an assured faith in Jesus Christ is essential for the believer’s battle with this world. Hope that is grounded on the promises of God is the armor best-suited to protect the mind as we push onward, upward, against so many opposing ideas and temptations.
Beatitudes: Thoughts on Matthew 5:3-11.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” None but Christ live up to the beatitudes perfectly. Yet being united with him by faith, we become partakers of every blessing which Jesus merited through his perfect obedience. Having sure inheritance does not excuse God’s people from upright living; all the more we ought to seek to live according to this high standard, being moved by gratitude and a due sense of righteousness as sons of God through grace.
Waking and Living With Peace and Power
I have been poor in body and spirit. I have been desperate in circumstances and heart. I have been condemned by the law, the world, and my own conscience to the point of paralysis and terror. Yet I have not been condemned in Christ. Rather, I have found the Lord Jesus able to raise the lowest condition to a place beside him in heaven, by uniting himself to the weakest sinner through faith in Him alone. My whole existence thrives on grace.
Grace is the unmerited favor of the Father, promised to those who rest in Jesus for all their needs. Grace is the power of the Spirit which enables me to do the slightest thing with gratitude. By grace I wake up, because God grants me life and a will to live for His sake. By grace I rest sweetly, because He promises I am forgiven for a day of faults, accepted in Him, and protected by His providence for the life to come. So whether I eat, drink, or sleep, I do it all by faith that His grace overshadows every thought and action of my will. If I do anything at all acceptable to God, I do it by grace alone.
Too often we block our own view of Christ. Yet when we look around ourselves and our present circumstances to the cross and who we are in Him, we suddenly discover fresh beauties to behold.
Why Many Professed Christians Will at Last Be Condemned
Many professed Christians will at last be condemned, who have for the object of their faith, not Christ alone—His freedom to be gracious to whom He chooses; His substitutionary life and death in the place of His elect people; His application of grace to saints by His Spirit—as that upon which they solely rely for acceptance with God. They do not know God’s favor because they seek it behind veiled forms of works-righteousness. Instead of true faith, they lean upon the vain hope that one’s compliance with a set of religious terms, carried out by the power of an unregenerate will rather than resulting from a special act of God’s grace, is that which could activate God’s willingness to receive sinners into heaven.
If one of them should chance upon these paragraphs, he would likely say, “the writer describes someone else. I do not trust in keeping the whole Law like Pharisees.” Yet no matter how seemingly insignificant the duties are which false converts think move the Lord to bestow mercy, they always look to something within their natural selves to be the ultimate determining element in God’s choice to forgive. Whether it be the instance when they prayed a “sinner’s prayer”, walked an aisle to sign a faith-card, or swore to “live for Jesus”, they allow the very self-willfulness of these decisions to become the deciding factor in justification. But having faith in faith itself, as the fulfillment of one’s side of the terms to merit grace, is not true Christian faith at all. No, crediting man’s willingness to respond as being that which makes God willing to receive makes the gospel call into a works-contract, and is therefore only subtle legalism.
True faith looks entirely outside one’s self, to the mercy of God eternally fixed in Christ alone. It declares with humble reverence, “I may not know exactly why the Father receives me, but I know it has nothing to do with anything I’ve done, whether good or bad, and everything to do with what God has done for me, and in me, by grace alone through Jesus.”
