Chesterbrook Taiwanese Presbyterian Church

When you charge something, it incurs a debt that you will owe. Sin is like swiping that card. We often do know the costliness of it all until much later. We’ve all racked up a debt that we cannot repay. We incur massive penalties as a result. . We think our good works can even the score, but we simply cannot. We are sunk and bankrupt with no hope.

But here’s the hope. Jesus does something that we cannot do for ourselves. Here is what Jesus did for us:

“Just as God charged our sin to Christ, so he credits the perfect obedience of Jesus to all who trust in him. In what is often called the Great Exchange, God exchanges our sin for Christ’s righteousness. As a result, all who have trusted in Christ as Savior stand before God not with a clean-but-empty ledger, but one filled with the very righteousness of Christ!

Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, The Bookends of the Christian Life

Jesus gets charged for a debt he did not owe. We are credited with a righteousness that we did not earn nor deserve. We have a totally new standing! We have a new assurance! May these truths increase our affection for Christ and in Him alone!

How do we train ourselves to be godly? It starts and ends with the gospel. We need to trust in the gospel and preach it to ourselves for our own sakes. Jerry Bridges lends his insight on how to practically apply the gospel to all of life:

Since the gospel is only for sinners, I begin each day with the realization that despite my being a saint, I still sin every day in thought, word, deed, and motive. If I am aware of any subtle, or not so subtle, sins in my life, I acknowledge those to God. Even if my conscience is not indicting me for conscious sins, I still acknowledge to God that I have not even come close to loving Him with all my being or loving my neighbor as myself. I repent of those sins, and then I apply specific Scriptures that assure me of God’s forgiveness to those sins I have just confessed.
I then generalize the Scripture’s promises of God’s forgiveness to all my life and say to God words to the effect that my only hope of a right standing with Him that day is Jesus’ blood shed for my sins, and His righteous life lived on my behalf. This reliance on the twofold work of Christ for me is beautifully captured by Edward Mote in his hymn “The Solid Rock” with his words, “My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” Almost every day, I find myself going to those words in addition to reflecting on the promises of forgiveness in the Bible.

What Scriptures do I use to preach the gospel to myself? Here are just a few I choose from each day:
As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)
“I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” (Isaiah 43:25)
All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. (Romans 4:7-8)
There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)
There are many others, including Psalm 130:3-4; Isaiah 1:18; Isaiah 38:17; Micah 7:19; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 2:13-14; Hebrews 8:12; and 10:17-18.
Whatever Scriptures we use to assure us of God’s forgiveness, we must realize that whether the passage explicitly states it or not, the only basis for God’s forgiveness is the blood of Christ shed on the cross for us. As the writer of Hebrews said, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (9:22), and the context makes it clear that it is Christ’s blood that provides the objective basis on which God forgives our sins.

Over the weekend, I made the point that the “storms” in our lives are often meant to show us very clearly that our idols fail us when put to the test. We don’t need to wait for storms to come into our lives for us to wake us up from that reality. We just need to be honest with ourselves and ask ourselves tough questions. Here are some good diagnostic questions I found in the short book, “The Bookends of the Christian Life” by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington. They adapted it from Ken Sande’s “the Peacemaker”:

I am preoccupied with ________________.

If only ________________, then I would be happy.

I get my sense of significance from _________________.

I would protect and preserve _______________ at any cost.

I fear losing __________________.

The thing that gives me the greatest pleasure is ______________.

When I lose ___________________ I get angry, resentful, frustrated, anxious or depressed.

For me, life depends on _________________.

The thing I value more than anything in the world is ______________.

When I daydream, my mind goes to ________________.

Whatever we fill out, they become functional saviors. The point is to identify these counterfeits, reject them, so that we can truly savor the ultimate Savior, Jesus Christ. As Bridges points out, “to depend on [functional saviors] requires us to forsake God.” Rather, let’s forsake idols, and depend on Christ instead.

For those of you on break (or not), I would suggest using your time to read good books that you wouldn’t have time otherwise. I just picked up the book, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World, by Paul Miller. Here’s a quote from the book:

If God is sovereign, then he is in the control of all the details of my life. If he is loving, then he is going to be shaping the details of my life for my good. If he is all-wise; then he’s not going to do everything I want because I don’t know what I need. If he is patient, then he is going to take time to do all this. When we put all these things together – God’s sovereignty, love, wisdom, and patience – we have a divine story.

People often talk about prayer as if it is disconnected from what God is doing in their lives. But we are actors in his drama, listening for our lines, quieting our hearts so we can hear the voice of the Playwright.

You can’t gave a good story without tension and conflict, without things going wrong. Unanswered prayers create some of the tensions in the story God is weaving in our lives. When we realize this, we want to know what God is doing. What pattern is God weaving?

I’ve read my share of books on prayer, but this one is honest, realistic and hopeful. I’m still making my way through it, and I may sprinkle a quote here and there to whet your appetite.