Make WAR!

The closer I get to God through Christ Jesus by abiding in his word striving to please him, it is in this closer relationship to Christ  I realize all the more the depth of my sin. So on the one hand I rejoice in the grace of God who for our sake made his Son to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God; yet on the other hand the closer I press towards being nearer to God and his glory, I find myself becoming more confounded and grief stricken with my own sin. Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of death? 


While I continue to grow, being conformed to Christ through his Spirit, I see that the many sins, while becoming less, the sin that is now less than before is now even weightier and more burdensome to my soul as was the many sins. The closer I approach the glory of the living God the more magnified is my impurities. Though my casual sin is less frequent, when I find myself making myself a slave to it again I fall into a much more desperate state of sorrow than when I was at a greater distance from God and embracing much more sin. I have moved away from many sins in my life only to realize that sin is still at my heels all the while ready to spring up. I have not distanced myself at all from its reach.


Oh you silly man! Do not fall prey to the wiles of the evil one. It is not as if you do not have the Spirit of Christ in you. Though your body is dying due to sin nevertheless you live because of the Spirit that dwells in you! God is faithful to restore your confidence that he may keep you from letting the evil one have an advantage. Quickly turn from your sorrow to the joy that is in Christ Jesus! Let your life be a life of repentance that you may never make peace with your sin. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received the Spirit of adoption as Sons by whom we cry Abba Father! Do not pretend as if you yourself can distance yourself from what you cannot see in the power of sin but by the Spirit we can make war on our sin and by the Spirit put to death the deeds of the body. 


Beloved we must decide to actually make war with our sin. It is not faithful stewardship to the ministry of righteousness for us to yield to sin. Fight the good fight and so prove that you are in the faith. You are more than conquerors in Christ Jesus. Now be bold and have confidence for you have overcome the world and this is the victory that overcomes the world, your faith. 

Works have nothing in common with Grace

Wherever faith is proclaimed to be the only decisive means of taking hold of salvation for the believer, there will be those who will scream even louder that faith in Jesus Christ is not enough. Those who say such things openly pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ and hinder the grace of God. Let me say it this way first: Faith that comes from God always comes with good works and these good works were prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. The New Covenant is glorious because it is the proactive grace and mercy of God poured into our hearts. The New Covenant is essentially God creating in us what he commands. If there be anything which I am to do in the covenant to secure it, then will it be an insecure covenant; But if the covenant be all God’s doing and if my name be in that covenant, my soul is as secure as if I were now walking the streets of heaven. This truth of the gospel is for some hard to completely receive even when we know it to be the grace of God. As fallen creatures we naturally want to have the reigns of control on our own happenings. We are always looking for our end of the deal and this end of the deal must be a work. Works and achievements cater to our self promoting pride. Pure grace to the human heart is rejected and makes us uncomfortable and vulnerable. Grace is unsettling to the fallen condition of man because it seems to rob us of our precious pride and boasting and this concept is hard to make sense of. To make sense of it, many will desperately create ways to advance the human will component in salvation. People will go to great pains to promote the human doings and never give the grace of God its full measure of splendor. The way of salvation as stated in Scripture is done in the very plainest terms, and yet there is no truth about which more errors has been uttered, than that concerning the faith which saves the soul. It is faith that ties the heart to God. Paul says that Israel while pursuing the law of righteousness never arrived at the law. He means they never obtained the righteousness they were pursing. Why? because they did not pursue it by faith but as though it were by works (Romans 9:31-32).This same unfaithful understanding that cursed old Israel has been carried over into the age of grace and has cursed many would be followers of Christ. The principle of works has no part in the grace of God other than work of Jesus’ perfect life lived on our behalf to be a substitute for our sinful works.  Some will think if I do this or if I do that and to place confidence in such things. The truth is that you could not believe in Jesus if you had done that because then you would believe in yourself and not Christ. This is the plain truth of it. There is no getting around it. If you were so and so or if you did this and that then you could have confidence. Confidence in what? Confidence in your doings. To have that is the exact opposite of confidence in Christ. Grace is not fifty-fifty or even sixty- forty. Grace is 100% God. Faith is not to gage from something good within you or to somehow lower the standards of Gods perfect law as to delude yourself into thinking you are actually pleasing God by your filthy rags. But faith is to say in spite of the fact that I am guilty in the sight of God nevertheless I believe that the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin. To have faith like this is the scariest thing in the world and the most assuring thing in the world because God is never changing and he is eternally faithful.  Because of the human soul’s propensity to default to a works based righteousness, it is no wonder there is a widespread misunderstanding of the Covenant of grace and saving faith. There will always be a need of reminding ourselves of Christ alone and there will remain a need for teaching and biblical persuading in the ways of true grace.

Sections of this article contain restated excerpts from Faith, what it is and what it leads to by Charles H. Spurgeon