Reflections for October 13, 2011

Galatians 2:17 But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid. (KJV)

I must not show or allow hypocrisy in my life, for Christ is not a minister of sin. Jesus Christ teaches me throughout His Word that His grace will allow me to live here on earth without being enslaved to sin I cannot help, but through His love for me exhorts and bids me always to come to Him for His strength to combat my weakness. Hebrews 2:18 And now he can help those who are tempted. He is able to help because he himself suffered and was tempted. (ERV)

Gal 2:18-21 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. (KJV)

No person can ever be justified before God by any outward working of the law (none of the ceremonials rituals, i.e. receiving the sacraments, reciting rehearsed prayers, church attendance, praying to dead people (patron saints), infant baptism, etc. All of these things are of no effect in the saving of anyone’s soul. By trying to do enough good works to merit your salvation, a person frustrates Christ grace and renders it powerless to save them. Not that Christ grace is powerless, but it cannot work along with man’s perceived good works.

But for those who have acknowledged ourselves to be nothing but helpless sinners and received Him into our hearts, Christ now lives there and creates a new man internally that is now capable through His grace and power to live a new moral life acceptable to Him; a life that will now bring Glory to Him now on the earth. It is now all about Christ’s grace working effectually in me to bear the newness of life Paul speaks of in Romans 6. Romans 6:4-7 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. (KJV)

Morning

2 Corinthians 7:10 For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. (KJV)

Genuine, spiritual mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in nature’s garden. Pearls grow naturally in oysters, but penitence never shows itself in sinners except divine grace works it in them. If thou hast one particle of real hatred for sin, God must have given it thee, for human nature’s thorns never produced a single fig. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.”

True repentance has a distinct reference to the Saviour. When we repent of sin, we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the cross, or it will be better still if we fix both our eyes upon Christ and see our transgressions only, in the light of his love.

True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates sin, if he lives in it. Repentance makes us see the evil of sin, not merely as a theory, but experimentally-as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall be as much afraid of it, as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed is afraid of the thief upon the highway; and we shall shun it-shun it in everything-not in great things only, but in little things, as men shun little vipers as well as great snakes. True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue, lest it should say a wrong word; we shall be very watchful over our daily actions, lest in anything we offend, and each night we shall close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming, and each morning awaken with anxious prayers, that this day God would hold us up that we may not sin against him.

Sincere repentance is continual. Believers repent until their dying day. This dropping well is not intermittent. Every other sorrow yields to time, but this dear sorrow grows with our growth, and it is so sweet and bitter, that we thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it until we enter our eternal rest.

By Charles H. Spurgeon