Gospel-Driven Quote of the Week (8-17-09)
Aug 16, 2009
“You cannot truly live a holy life unless you are totally assured of your justification and reconciliation with God, totally apart from the works of the law. This is the only way you can truly obey the law! This is totally contrary, of course, to the way the world understands good works. Everyone outside of the gospel of grace thinks that good works earn you God’s forgiveness. However, the gospel does not conform to worldly wisdom. The gospel says that when you are firmly assured of God’s love for you, you will respond by living a holy life. If you do not understand God’s love for you, you will fall into a sinful life!...
This is the truth of the gospel: you can be confident that God will work his salvation out in your precisely because your reconciliation with God is what produces your good works…You will never receive any spiritual life that can free you from this dominion of sin unless this guilt and curse of sin is removed from you. This, of course, is what happens when God justifies you- the guilt and curse of sin are removed from you (Galatians 3:13-14; Romans 6:14). You know that as long as you see yourself still under the curse and the wrath of God, you can have nothing but despair…
The nature of true obedience to the law absolutely requires you to understand that you are reconciled to God, loved by him, and under his favor, if you really are going to obey the law…When we speak of love, we are not talking about the kind of love that a scientist might have toward his experiments, where he is just trying to please himself by gaining more knowledge. We are talking about a practical, life-changing love,” (The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, pp. 29, 30, 31).
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