Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
-Romans 5:1-11
There are nights when I dive heavy into the Word of God and I become so angry. The Blood, the Grace, the Mercy, and the Glory are right there on every page, and we treated it like an elementary principle to be learned in an hour and moved on from.
Our message of reconciliation is for believer and unbeliever alike. It is not
part of the message; it is
THE message. Our foundation, our hope, our life, and we treated it with such scandal. It was a technical knowledge briefly displayed before moving on to the more important topics of "
how to live your life like a good Christian should."
We neglected to realize that what we were being taught, and in turn taking out and pushing onto others, was a form of moralistic deism. Our premise was that if we did the
good stuff and avoided the
bad stuff, then we would please God, and He would be happy with us.
This resulted in a backbiting congregation that constantly compared everyone to everyone else. Those who were better and
more blessed were obviously the Christians that most pleased God because they were able to do the most
good stuff. Those who struggled and weren't as
blessed, obviously were failing at being good Christians.
Somehow we made the message about us. We were heroes strong and mighty to do every good work that brought us praise and earned us points. We claimed that we had
the way, but in truth what we had was religion, and we used it against each other.
The message isn't about us. It is about God. It is about who He is and what He has done. It is about the one and only God who reached down into this wrecked world and
SAVED bad people. It is about Him and the hope He has given us. And
all of this, and
all things, are for and to
HIS glory.
What absurdity that we would try to make our message of hope and reconciliation about us. And how offensive we become when we make the Gospel out to be a minor elementary principle to be learned and moved on from so we can talk about what we ought to do in order to be a
good Christian.
The things the Bible calls us to, the things that we
ought to do as Christians is what we
ought to do because of God in us. Meaning
ought as in
as a bird ought to fly or a
fish ought to swim, (to borrow from John Piper). Certainly we will fail daily in those things that we
ought to be doing, but it is all the more reason for us to take joy in the message of the Gospel which proclaims that all who repent and believe are redeemed, forgiven, reconciled, and loved by God. When we fail we can be all the more thankful for the grace and mercy of God which reminds us that:
There is therefore now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.
-Romans 8:1
The foolishness that God has rescued me from is staggering. I cannot help but to stand back and see the filth that I once loved and know, that if not for the grace and mercy of God, I would still be wallowing in the religious excrement of my youth trying to be the best
good Christian I could be by the works of my own hands.
The call of my heart isn't to be a better person by doing all the
right things, but to draw closer to God. As I draw nearer to Him, I become more and more of what we are called to be; a reflection of Christ.
