By Grace Alone

Excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian post:  On Death To Self

Ever since the Enlightenment, we’ve been told in a thousand different ways that accomplishment precedes acceptance; that achievement precedes approval. And since we all long for affirmation and validation, we set out to prove our worth by doing.

Unwittingly, Christians in this cultural context have absorbed this mentality and taken it into their relationship with God and their understanding of the Christian life.

This was apparently a problem in Jesus’ day too. For instance, when Jesus was asked in John 6:28, “What must we do to be doing the works of God?” he answered, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him who he sent.” What? That’s it? How terribly anti-climactic!

As it was with Martha in Luke 10:38-42, so it is with us: we just have to be doing something. We can’t sit still. Achieving, not receiving, has become the mark of modernity’s version of spiritual maturity.

Martin Luther once wrote:

To be convinced in our hearts that we have forgiveness of sins and peace with God by grace alone is the hardest thing.

The hardest thing to do even as believers in Christ is to simply receive something. In fact, there’s nothing we fear more than having all control taken out of our hands.

This MUST-READ sermon on Matthew 17:22-27 and 26:47-56 by the late Gerhard Forde expounds the beauty and brilliance of Christ’s finished work for us and its impact on the way we live here and now. The truth is, that it’s only when we come to terms with the fact that we can’t to do anything for Jesus (Jesus paid it all) that we will want to do everything for Jesus (all to him I owe).

Enjoy…

.... (follow link at top to read Gerhard Forde's sermon) ....