Every moment of Jesus’ life he perfectly obeyed the law of God and never gave in. The same law that is applicable to all of us as we struggle along and succumb daily to temptations like pride, selfishness, and impatience.
I don’t know about you but my personal list is a lot longer than just pride, selfishness, and impatience. And to think that Jesus, unlike me, never gave in to any temptation…what an awesome God we serve! The ultimate act of obedience by Jesus to endure the wrath of God I deserve, so that I could have a relationship with the heavenly Father, is something that humbles me to tears. To realize that Jesus gave up his relationship with the Father so that I could have one instead is the ultimate act of love for each of us. And why me, I sure don’t deserve this type of unconditional love and monumental blessing?
The first bookend of the Christian life: To all who trust in Him, God counts as righteous because He has appointed Christ to be our representative and substitute. Christ’s perfect righteousness credited to the ledger of my sinful life so that when God looks on me He doesn’t see my sin but only sees what Christ has done for me (justification).
Now we can start to see how the story of our lives is already being written. We are really in the middle of our own story now, and how easily the temptations come to slip into worry, guilt and condemnation. Pride and the fear of man have always been big ones for me, and feeling like I had to perform a certain way to gain acceptance. Problem was that my acceptance was through the fickle eyes of man and endless changing expectations. So what a lie it was for me, and for you, to feel the pressure of performance in light of God’s perfect plan for my life and the undeserved righteousness of Christ perfectly cleaning my ledger.
A word picture that I treasure is that of a beautiful tapestry. The colors and designs are perfectly woven and on display for others to enjoy, but just flip it over and look at the back side. What a mess of tangles! So how can this mess and seeming disaster of tangles I produce become anything like the beautiful design on the front of the tapestry? I submit that it is all because I am not the author of my own story or the master artist, I am just an actor in my life’s story and the writer is God Himself. So until I get to the end of my story, it will often look to me like the messy back side of a tapestry being woven into something beautiful. And in the end, the tapestry and my story will be one full of God’s righteousness in ways that bring a confident reliance on Christ, peace and comfort to others and a gratitude to Jesus Christ for the present reality of justification.
Why should I seek to grow in Christ like character? Chapter two awaits…..
Here is a link to some study helps as we read this book: http://www.thebookendsbook.com/studyguides/introduction-study-guide/
I like the analogy of a watch mainspring that needs to rewound every day. To quote the book "Because we have a natural tendency to look within ourselves for the basis of God's approval or disapproval, we must make a conscious daily effort to look outside ourselves to the righteousness of Christ, then to stand in the present reality of our Justification."
ReplyDeleteI know I have this temptation to not stand in the present reality of my Justificaiton. It's easy for me to get my eyes off Christ's righteousness and start trusting in my own Sanctification rather than in Christ alone. Whether I an comforted by my Sanctification (when I feel God making prgress in me) or discouraged by my slow progress in Sanctification, neither of these is to be trusted I think. Only Christ's righteousness alone and His salvation is to be the basis of my comfort.
I see it like Peter stepping out of the boat and walking on the water towards Jesus. As long as he has his eyes on Christ he is fine. But if he looks at the surface of the water that's holding him up and marveling (i.e. taking comfort in his progress), or if he looks at the stormy waves around him and starts to sink (discouraged by his lack of progress) then he is in trouble.
I don't know about you all but when I look to the past I think the times in my life where I see the most progress in Sanctification are the times where I've been least focused on my Sanctification and most focused on the reality of Christ's righteousness in Justification. The larger Christ's righteousness for my Justification looms, the greater my progress in Sanctification.
Those are my thoughts after reading the first chapter.
May we all make it our habit to revisit this first bookend daily.