This is an excerpt from HomeLife Magazine.
There are many days when we feel the weight of our inability to overcome our flesh, and we feel frustrated at ourselves. Recognizing and acknowledging both our sin and our inability to eradicate our sin is important. This is what the Bible calls being poor in spirit; we’re spiritually bankrupt in and of ourselves, and we know it. However, there is more to the story, and what we do at our point of recognition is vital. Do we vow to try harder next time? Or do we return to the gospel of Christ?
This is the gospel: Not that we’re right with God because of what we do but rather because of what Christ did for us.
The gospel can be twisted so easily into a different “gospel” altogether, one that whispers so convincingly that our salvation was a gift received and the rest of the Christian life is up to us. But we must not pursue what we already possess. We must not be debtors, giving our lives over to the fruitless chasing of goodness and image and religious plate-spinning.
No, we must not be obsessed with being good apart from God; we must be obsessed with God Himself. We can, therefore, release our grip on our own agendas, ambitions, and dreams of self-glory so that our hands are free to receive His love. We must refuse to stiff-arm the truth of God’s love because we feel unworthy. Christ stands in our place and God loves His Son; therefore God loves us.
When we’re assured of God’s love, we’re compelled by Him to love others.
Christine Hoover
We know that the Christian life is impossible on our own merit. We can’t love sacrificially, forgive easily, or obey joyfully without someone leading and helping us. We must not walk in self-sufficiency but rather in dependence on the Holy Spirit to lead and empower us.
We identify with Christ, and our true home is built with the bricks and mortar of grace. Because of His grace, we can be free from thinking too much about ourselves and free from thinking too much about the opinions others have of us. We make it our aim to please God alone.
When we’re assured of God’s love, we’re compelled by Him to love others. We participate boldly in the community of the Beloved, where we sharpen and are sharpened and we go to share the love we’ve experienced.
When we’re assured of God’s grace, we give grace to others, with the goal of unity rather than uniformity. We trust God to lead us all, knowing that sometimes He leads us differently on open-handed, secondary issues. Different is quite beautiful, so we use our differing gifts to show off the beauty of Christ, and we champion others as they use theirs.
In all these things, we live and die and live again, all by Christ. We don’t allow ourselves to be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. That makes Christ nothing. We stand firm in grace’s freedom, where Christ is everything.
This is the gospel.
