Legalism and Lawlessness as Two Opposite Extremes?

Tullian:

Spend any time in the American church, and you’ll hear legalism and lawlessness presented as two ditches on either side of the Gospel that we must avoid. Legalism, they say, happens when you focus too much on law or rules, and lawlessness when you focus too much on grace. Therefore, in order to maintain spiritual equilibrium, you have to “balance” law and grace. If you start getting too much law, you need to balance it with grace. If you start getting too much grace, you need to balance it with law. This “balanced” way of framing the issue has kept people from really understanding the Gospel of grace in all of its radical depth and beauty. 

It is more theologically accurate to say that the one primary enemy of the Gospel—legalism—comes in two forms. Some people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by keeping the rules, doing what they’re told, maintaining the standards, and so on (you could call this “front-door legalism”). Other people avoid the gospel and try to save themselves by breaking the rules, doing whatever they want, developing their own autonomous standards, and so on (you could call this “back-door legalism”). In other words, there are two “laws” that we typically choose from: the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I keep the rules,” or the law that says, “I can find freedom and fullness of life if I break the rules.” Either way, you’re still trying to save yourself—which means both are legalistic, because both are self-salvation projects. “Make a rule” or “break a rule” really belong to the same passion for autonomy (self-rule). We want to remain in control of our lives and our destinies, so the only choice is whether we will conquer the mountain by asceticism or by license. So it would be a mistake to identify the “two cliffs” as being legalism and lawlessness. What some call license is just another form of legalism. And there’s always and only been one solution to our self-salvation projects: God’s salvation project in Christ.

Read the rest.

Books by Tullian:

• Jesus + Nothing = Everything 
• Surprised by Grace: God's Relentless Pursuit of Rebels 
• Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different
• One Way Love: Inexhaustible Grace for an Exhausted World

Why Rejecting The Best New Hymn of the Last 50 Years is Unloving

Michael Horton:

The majority on the PCUSA hymnal committee apparently favor the subjective or moral theory of the atonement: Christ died on the cross to show us how much God loves us.  Surely this display would persuade us to repentance.  To illustrate this view, Leon Morris used the analogy of a person responding to a drowning friend by jumping into the river and drowning himself. The demonstration might express one’s love, but it doesn’t do anything to actually save the friend. 

Strictly speaking, Christ’s death has no significance for God according to this view.  He loves and accepts people regardless of their guilt. God has no enemies.  We may need to be reconciled to God, but God does not need to be reconciled to us.  We simply need to be reminded how much God loves us.  Thus, the death of Christ could only serve as an object lesson.  And what a cruel one indeed!  After all, if Christ’s death was unnecessary for satisfying God’s righteous law, then it is the symbol of senseless slaughter. 

The Apostle Paul says that “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” (Rom 5:8-9).  Christ’s death manifests God’s love for sinners only because it actually propitiates God’s wrath.  He took our place— fulfilling the law, bearing our sentence for violating his law—and thereby removed every legal basis for our condemnation.  It is this point that the committee voted to omit, and yet it is precisely what makes the cross the manifestation of God’s amazing love. 

In other words, God’s love is manifested and magnified in Christ’s death only if it is more than a demonstration or object lesson.  Christ’s cross can be a demonstration of God’s love only because in it God reconciled enemies to himself forever.  “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” (Rom 5:10). Now that’s good news!

Read the rest.  

How To Spot a Legalist

And as you are spotting legalism... Just be sure you don't turn into a Pharisee.  It's easy to be the "Thank God I'm not like that idiot who doesn't have their grace-filled theology straight like I do" guy and not even realize it.  Humility will be your refuge.

That being said, these ten points from Greg Stier are very important.

1) They cheapen grace by focusing on what we must do rather than on what Christ has done.

2) They’ll say non-sensical things like, “Salvation is free but it will cost you everything you have.”

3) They are “fruit inspectors” and hypothesize how much spiritual fruit a person must produce in order to truly be saved.

4) They focus on things like turning, trying and crying instead of faith alone in Christ alone for salvation.

5) Their “gospel” could never be falsely accused of being a license to sin (like Paul’s was in Romans 3:8!)

6) They scare others with assertions that, if you preach too much grace, people will run amok.

7) They conveniently avoid or mis-exegete large portions of gospel-centric New Testament books like Galatians, Romans and John.

8) They blend justification passages with sanctification passages and then try to get us to drink a heresy smoothie.

9) They bake the same works-based righteousness cake that Mormons and Muslims do but cover it with evangelical frosting.

10) They use the phrase, “You mean to tell me…” a lot. Then they create worst case salvation scenarios of those who claim to be Christians but abuse the grace of God. “You mean to tell me that someone can be saved and still….?”

Read the rest of the post.

The question is not "how can a just God send people to Hell?" The question concerns how a just God can allow sinners into Heaven.

Doug Wilson:

If there are ten innocent citizens rounded up, and five of them are shot by a despot, there is a gross injustice. But if there are ten inmates on death row, and the governor pardons three of them, there is no injustice done at all to the remaining seven. The only question of possible injustice arises with regard to the three who were pardoned. In other words, the question of justice does not arise when we are talking about Hell. It does arise when we are talking about Heaven.

The question is not "how can a just God send people to Hell?" The question concerns how a just God can allow sinners into Heaven. A God-centered concern about justice would worry far more about Heaven than Hell. A self-flattering, man-centered approach would worry aloud, and does worry aloud, about the purported justice of Hell. But we needn't worry. The Scriptures teach plainly that at the point of judgment, every mouth will be stopped. The Bible tells us that when it comes down to it, there will be nothing to say. The debates will be over.

The real problem, the problem of justice and Heaven, is resolved in the cross. Christ died as a blood atonement so that God could be both just and the one who justifies. God could be just and send us all to Hell. He could be the one who justifies and let us all into Heaven on a boy-will-be-boys basis. But in order to be both just and the one who justifies, Christ had to bleed.

And that is our final theodicy. Christ is the one who bled.

Read the rest.

Some Questions for Recent "Gospel-Centered" Debates

Mark Lauterbach writes well.

‘Tis strange how self righteousness thrives at the foot of the cross. “Tis not surprising where the devil plays.

I am no blog-monger nor tweet afficionado, but it seems there is a web-buzzing about “Gospel” these days. It’s all about justification and sanctification (is there a hole in our holiness?), about law and grace, about gospel motivation, about depravity and regeneration, about feeding on our justification and the danger of self-righteousness.

I read all this and wonder. I wonder if, from my limited perspective, we are experiencing the work of the devil. I wonder if Satan, the master of jiu jitsu of the soul, is not doing what he always does — pushing us to extremes. I wonder if he is not going about stirring up strife between people who are gospel-focused, and pushing them to think they are the most consistent, the most careful, the most grace motivated. I wonder if he is not at work to make us think we are “more gospel centered than thou.” Really.

Let me be clear. I am grateful for the working of God to renew Gospel focus across so many denominations and churches. It was just not so 30 years ago. The Gospel was the entry message for the Christian life, and after that, it was all law. I preached that way for the first ten years of ministry, until God sent a messenger to correct me. Now it seems every day a new book is published applying the Gospel to another area of life!

But, in all this debating about Gospel motivation, have we been drawn into something that is a rat’s nest?

So, let me ask some questions...

Read the rest.

His questions:

• First, are we making the Scriptures harder to understand than they are?
• Second, I ask, are we confusing the internal function of the Gospel with the objective truth of the Gospel?
• Third, have we created both a new law and a perfectionism?
• Fourth, have we changed the “involuntary” working of God into a voluntary and conscious activity of the believer. Have we allowed our therapeutic, self-aware, constantly-checking-out-the-state-of-our-heart culture to shape our doctrine?

You Are Not a Sinful Wretch, Part 2

A good follow-up to this post from a few days ago that received some (I knew it would be coming) push-back:

“Sinner” is an identity word and is misapplied if it’s used to name the Christian’s identity—their person. Before God, identity is not a both/and (sinner and righteous); it is an either/or (sinner or righteous). The basis of this difference is not anthropological (what I do or don’t do). It is strictly and solely Christological: to be in Christ is to be righteous before God. 

Paul does something unprecedented (in comparison with early Jewish literature) in that he designates all people outside Christ with the identity “sinner” (Rom 5:8, for example). But even more novel and scandalous is his corresponding claim that it is precisely “sinners” who are identified as “righteous” in Christ (Rom 3:23-24). So, to borrow an expression from a Reformation confession, while the old Adam is a “stubborn, recalcitrant donkey,” this does not define Christian identity before God. 

In light of this, it’s important to clarify that simul iustus et peccator is NOT a description of our Christian identity; it is NOT a description of who we are before God. What it is, however, is a description of the both/and that characterizes the Christian life as lived. 

The pastoral payoff here is that it enables us to affirm (without crossing our fingers) that in Christ—at the level of identity—the Christian is 100% righteous before God while at the same time recognizing the persistence of sin. If we don’t speak in terms of two total states (100% righteous in Christ and 100% sinful in ourselves) corresponding to the co-existence of two times (the old age and the new creation) then the undeniable reality of ongoing sin leads to the qualification of our identity in Christ: the existence of some sin must mean that one is not totally righteous. This is acid at the very foundation of the peace we have with God on the other side of justification. To say simul iustus et peccator is therefore not to say that “sinner” is our identity; it is to say that while we remain sinful in ourselves we are, in Christ, totally righteous.

Read the rest.

You Are Not a Sinful Wretch

This is a helpful corrective.

Many will be locked and loaded with the  "Yeah... But..." comment.  I feel it coming.

Gutsy Guilt

John Piper: 

Oh, how many times we are tempted to lick our wounded pride and shrink from some good work because of the wounds of criticism—especially when the criticism is true! A sense of being weak and flawed can paralyze the will and take away all passion for a worthy cause. Comparison with others can be a crippling occupation. When it comes to heroes, there is an easy downward slip from the desire for imitation to the discouragement of intimidation to the deadness of resignation. But the mark of humility and faith and maturity is to stand against the paralyzing effect of famous saints. The triumphs they achieved over their own flagrant sins and flaws should teach us not to be daunted by our own.

God never yet used a flawless man, save one. Nor will he ever, until Jesus comes again.

In the case of our weaknesses, we must learn with the apostle, and the swans who sang his Song after him, that the grace of Christ is sufficient, and that his strength is made perfect in weakness. We must learn from the Scripture and from the history of weak victors to say, “Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The suffering of weak saints can make them sink with defeat or make them strong. From Paul, Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, we can learn to say, “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10, KJV).

In the case of our flaws and our sins, we must learn gutsy guilt. This is what we see, especially in Luther. The doctrine of justification by faith alone did not make him indifferent to practical godliness, but it did make him bold in grace when he stumbled. And well it should, as Micah 7:8-9 declares: “Do not rejoice over me, O my enemy. Though I fall I will rise; though I dwell in darkness, the LORD is a light for me. I will bear the indignation of the LORD because I have sinned against Him, until He pleads my case and executes justice for me. He will bring me out to the light, and I will see His righteousness.”

Even when we have “sinned against him”—even when we “bear the indignation of the LORD”—we say to the accusing and gloating adversary, “Do not rejoice over me. . . . Though I fall I will rise.” The Lord himself, who frowns in chastisement, will be my irresistible advocate and he will triumph in court for me. He will plead my case. He will be my light. The cloud will pass. And I will stand in righteousness, not my own, and do the work he has given me to do. Oh, let us learn the secret of gutsy guilt from the steadfastness of sinful saints who were not paralyzed by their imperfections. God has a great work for everyone to do. Do it with all your might—yes, and even with all your flaws and all your sins. And in the obedience of this faith, magnify the glory of his grace, and do not grow weary in doing good.

Read the rest.

There is Nothing Left For You To Do

Can you see that this death of self is not, in the final anal­ysis, something you can do? For the point is that God has once and for all reserved for himself the business of your salvation. There is nothing you can do now but, as the words of the old hymn have it, “climb Cal­vary’s mournful mountain” and stand with your helpless arms at your side and tremble before “that miracle of time, God’s own sacrifice com­plete! It is finished; hear him cry; learn of Jesus Christ to die!”

Can you see it? Can you see that really the last, bitter death is there? That in that cross God has stormed the last bastion of the self, the last presumption that you really were going to do something for him? Can you see that the death of Jesus Christ is your death? He has died in your place! He has done it. He made it. He created a salvation in the midst of time and his enemies. He is God happening to you. It is all over, fin­ished, between you and God! He died in your place that death which you must die; he has done it in such a way as to save you. He has borne the whole thing! The fact that there is nothing left for you to do is the death of self and new birth of the new creature. He died to make a new crea­ture of you, and as he arose, to raise you up to trust God alone.

If you can see it, perhaps then you can see, or perhaps at least begin to see, what is the power of God’s grace and rejoice. For that is the other side of the coin once you have gotten out of your self-enclosed system. Then perhaps you can turn away from yourself, maybe really for the first time, and look upon your neighbors. Maybe for the first time you can begin to receive creation as a gift, a sheer gift from God’s hands. And who knows what might happen in the power of this grace? All possibilities are open. You might sell your car, or even give it away – for someone else. You might find even that you could swallow your pride and stage a protest march – for your neighbor – or begin to seek to in­fluence the power structures! For in the power of his cross the way is open! The way is open to begin, at least, perhaps in faltering ways, in countless little ways, to realize what it means to die to self. For that, in the final analysis, is his gift to you, the free gift of the new man, the new woman, the one who can live in faith and hope, for whom all possibili­ties are open!

- Gerharde Forde, “Sermon on the Death of Self”

His books here.

Gospel Fellowship

Dane Ortlund with a great reflection on how justification relates to our personal relationships.

Amazing Story of Redemption - Brian Banks

Rick Reilly:

It's not every day that the Washington Redskins call up a man convicted of rape and ask him if he'd agree to a one-day workout, but it happened Tuesday. 

Oh, and the Kansas City Chiefs called Tuesday, too. And the Miami Dolphins. And they were three days behind the Seattle Seahawks, who will work him out on June 7.

Why are all these NFL teams eager to check out a convicted sex offender, a man who served five years in prison and wore a GPS ankle bracelet for another five?

Because Brian Banks didn't do it.

A judge in Long Beach, Calif., threw out his kidnapping and rape conviction last week after looking at a videotape of his accuser admitting she lied. After 10 years, he was suddenly a free and innocent man.

"My mouth hurts from smiling so much," Banks told me Tuesday night. "Unbelievable."

Read the rest.

If you think you really understand the gospel – you don’t

If you think you really understand the gospel – you don’t. If you think you haven’t even begun to truly understand the gospel – you do. As important as our ‘gospel theologizing’ is, it alone will not reach our world. People today are incredibly sensitive to inconsistency and phoniness. They hear what the gospel teaches and then look at our lives and see the gap. Why should they believe? We have to recognize that the gospel is a transforming thing, and we simply are not very transformed by it. It’s not enough to say to postmodern people: ‘You don’t like absolute truth? Well, then, we’re going to give you even more of it!’ But people who balk so much at absolute truth will need to see greater holiness of life, practical grace, gospel character, and virtue, if they are going to believe. 

Traditionally, this process of ‘gospel-realizing,’ especially when done corporately, is called ‘revival.’ Religion operates on the principle:I obey; therefore I am accepted (by God). The gospel operates on the principle: I am accepted through the costly grace of God; therefore I obey. Two people operating on these two principles can sit beside each other in church on Sunday trying to do many of the same things – read the Bible, obey the Ten Commandments, be active in church, and pray – but out of two entirely different motivations. Religion moves you to do what you do out of fear, insecurity, and self-righteousness, but the gospel moves you to do what you do more and more out of grateful joy in who God is in himself. Times of revival are seasons in which many nominal and spiritually sleepy Christians, operating out of the semi-Pharisaism of religion, wake up to the wonder and ramifications of the gospel. Revivals are massive eruptions of new spiritual power in the church through a recovery of the gospel. In his sermon on Mark 9 Lloyd-Jones was calling the church to revival as its only hope. This is not a new program or something you can implement through a series of steps. It is a matter of wonder. Peter says that the angels always long to look into the gospel; they never tire of it (I Pet. 1:12). The gospel is amazing love. Amazing grace.

- Tim Keller

Lazarus as Model of our Salvation - No Cooperation Needed

"Now when Jesus performed this miracle, he did not first have to secure the cooperation of Lazarus. Rather, the miracle resulted in the cooperation of Lazarus. After he was raised from the dead, Lazarus did all the hopping and all the mumbling through the grave clothes. But prior to the resurrecting word of authority, Lazarus was simply dead, to state it simply. The raising of Lazarus was not a cooperative effort between Christ and Lazarus"

- After Darkness, Light, p. 141

(HT)

Hope is Built on Nothing Less

So then, have we nothing to do to obtain righteousness? No, nothing at all! For this righteousness comes by doing nothing, hearing nothing, knowing nothing, but rather in knowing and believing this only–that Christ has gone to the right hand of the Father, not to become our judge, but to become for us our wisdom, our righteousness, our holiness, our salvation!

Now God sees no sin in us. For in this heavenly righteousness, sin has no place. So now we may certainly think, “Although I still sin, I don’t despair, because Christ lives–who is both my righteousness and my eternal life.” In that righteousness I have no sin, no fear, no guilty conscience, no fear of death. I am indeed a sinner in this life of mine and in my own righteousness, but I have another life, another righteousness above this life, which is in Christ, the Son of God, who knows no sin or death, but is eternal righteousness and eternal life. For if the truth of being justified by Christ alone (not by our works) is lost, then all Christian truths are lost…On this truth and only on this truth the Church is built and has its being.

Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, Preface (**Get this book on Kindle for $2.99**)

(HT: Tullian)

The Impact of Ultimate Aquittal

Tullian T:

The judgement of others is a surface echo of a judgment that goes deeper. So if we’re living in an environment or we are in a relationship that feeds this fear of judgment with constant judging, we deflate and detach because it becomes discouragingly exhausting trying to satisfy the demands and appease the judgment of the other. We become depleted of the hope that we can ever attain the affirmation that seems so necessary for us to live and breathe and so the relationship flounders.

The fact is, that relational demand always creates relational resistance. Control produces relational chaos, demand produces relational detachment, criticism produces relational commotion.

Most preachers and parents, spouses and siblings, fall prey to the false idea that real change happens when we lay down the law, exercise control, demand good performance, and offer constant constructive criticism. And then we wonder why our spouse, or our children, or our friends, or our colleagues, or our congregants become relationally and emotionally detached from us. We are feeding their deep fear of judgement by playing the judge.

When we feel this weight of judgment against us, we all tend to slip into the slavery of self-salvation: trying to appease the judge (friends, parents, spouse, ourselves) with hard work, good behavior, getting better, achievement, losing weight, and so on. We conclude, “If I can just stay out of trouble and get good grades, maybe my mom and dad will finally accept me.” “If I can work hard at the way I look, maybe my husband will finally pay attention to me.” “If I can become more attentive, maybe my wife will finally respect me.” “If I can change, maybe my boyfriend will finally love me.” But, as is always the case, self-salvation projects experientially eclipse the only salvation project that can set us free from this oppression. “If we were confident of ultimate acquittal”, says Zahl, “judgment from others would not possess the sting it does.”

Read the rest.

Can God Forgive a Serial Killer?

ALBANY - Notorious "Son of Sam" serial killer David Berkowitz has no interest in getting out of jail.

Berkowitz said prison is "not a good place" but he has no plans to seek his release because God has already made him a "free man" by forgiving him.

"Jesus Christ has already forgiven and pardoned me," Berkowitz wrote in a recent letter to a Fox News reporter. "He has given me a whole new life, which I do not deserve."

Berkowitz added that "while society will never forgive me, God has."

The famed serial killer is serving six consecutive 25-years-to-life sentences at the maximum-security Sullivan Correctional Facility in the Catskills for a string of killings that terrorized the city during the 1970s.

Berkowitz, a former Yonkers resident, has been denied parole five times and has been in prison 34 years.

He is eligible for a sixth parole hearing next year.

"I would do anything if I could go back and change things and have prevented the tragedy from happening," Berkowitz wrote.

How you respond to this story can tell you a lot about your view of God,  sin, and the Gospel.

Be honest. What was your immediate thought when reading him say, "while society will never forgive me, God has"?

Most honest, for me, it was, a quick thought of, "Really?  Wow.  That is pretty scandalous."

Exactly.  Quite scandalous.  What this reaction exposes is that I am still in process to believe that my justification is truly by grace through faith.  Completely a work of Jesus' righteousness given to me.  I still like to contribute a little here and there.

If God can't forgive a serial killer, why should be forgive you?  On what basis?

Her Blood Cries Out: Casey Anthony, Caylee, and the Justice of God

Timothy Dalrymple:

If Casey is not guilty of murder, then may God sustain her — for whatever else she might have done, she does not deserve, on top of the grief of Caylee’s loss (however deeply buried that grief might have been), to be universally scorned as the murderer of her own daughter.

If she is guilty of murder, then may God have mercy on her soul. And I mean that literally. Jonah did not want the people of Ninevah to repent and be saved (Jonah 4), and he was rebuked for it. I am a Christian, and as such I should always hope for repentance, for mercy, for redemption and reconciliation with God. God does not will that any should perish — not even a mother who murders her own daughter. God can save Caylee. God has saved Caylee, and she is peacefully and joyfully present with him. Yet God wishes to save Casey too. God will see that the righteous are rewarded, but in the end the only one righteous is Christ. God would see that the wicked are saved (and by the wicked I mean all of us), and God went to extraordinary lengths to make redemption possible for those who would receive it.

Some have walked further down the road to perdition; they’ll have further to walk back along the path (sanctification) after their repentance. But repentance is not walking down the path. Repentance is simply turning around. Whether we’ve taken ten steps down the road, or ten thousand, it’s the turning around (justification) that saves us. In absolute terms, Casey’s sins may be worse than my own. But she doesn’t need to live down her sins — to be sanctified — in order to be saved. She just has to take refuge in the grace of God in Christ. And in some ways, those who’ve walked further down the path have it easier; they won’t be tempted to believe they can walk back on their own. The grace of God does not have to overcome our sinfulness. It has to overcome our pride.

So this may sound like a pious exaggeration, but theologically I sincerely believe it’s true: if the grace of God were not this radical, then neither Casey Anthony nor I would have any hope. That is, I’d better hope that the grace of God is powerful enough to reach a mother who murders her child, lest it be too weak to reach me. May God have mercy on us all.

Read the rest. Timothy has a great blog that warrants your attention.

Power For Spiritual Growth

Tullian Tchividjian:

Christian growth does not happen by working hard to get something you don’t have. Rather, Christian growth happens by working hard to daily swim in the reality of what you do have. Believing again and again the gospel of God’s free, justifying grace everyday is the hard work we’re called to.

This means that real change happens only as we continuously rediscover the gospel. The progress of the Christian life is “not our movement toward the goal; it’s the movement of the goal on us.” Sanctification involves God’s attack on our unbelief—our self-centered refusal to believe that God’s approval of us in Christ is full and final. It happens as we daily receive and rest in our unconditional justification. As G. C. Berkouwer said, “The heart of sanctification is the life which feeds on justification.”

Read the rest.

Why The Gospel is Such a Shocker

The gospel of justification by faith is such a shocker, such an explosion, because it is an absolutely unconditional promise. It is not an “if-then” kind of statement, but “because-therefore” pronouncement: because Jesus dies and rose, your sins are forgiven and you are righteous in the sight of God! It bursts in upon our little world all shut up and barricaded behind our accustomed conditional thinking as some strange comet from goodness-knows-where, something we can’t really seem to wrap our minds around, the logic of which appears closed to us. How can it be entirely unconditional? Isn’t it terribly dangerous? How can anyone say flat out, “You are righteous for Jesus’ sake? Is there not some price to be paid, some-thing (however minuscule) to be done? After all, there can’t be such thing as a free lunch, can there?”

You see, we really are sealed up in the prison of our conditional thinking. It is terribly difficult for us to get out, and even if someone batters down the door and shatters the bars, chances are we will stay in the prison anyway! We seem always to want to hold out for something somehow, that little bit of something, and we do it with a passion and an anxiety that betrays its true source–the Old Adam that just does not want to lose control.

Justification by Faith: A Matter of Death and Life, pg. 24

(HT:  Tullian)

Smuggling Character Into Grace

The glory of the gospel is that God has declared Christians to be rightly related to him in spite of their sin. But our greatest temptation and mistake is to try to smuggle character into his work of grace. How easily we fall into the trap of assuming that we remain justified only so long as there are grounds in our character for our justification. But Paul's teaching is that nothing we do ever contributes to our justification. So powerful was his emphasis on this that men accused him of teaching that it did not matter how they lived if God justified them. If God justifies us as we are, what is the point of holiness? There is still a sense in which this is a test of whether we off the world the grace of God in the gospel. Does it make men say: 'You are offering grace that is so free it doesn't make any difference how you live'? This was precisely the objection the Pharisees had to Jesus' teaching!

- Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction, pages 82-83

(HT:  Josh Harris)