How Do You Start Your Day?

Here's a bit of biblical teaching that absolutely astounds me with its clarity and depth. It is from a wonderful but weighty book entitled Dynamics of Spiritual Life by Richard Lovelace. Lovelace addresses what I believe to be the principle problem for both guilt-ridden Christians and nominal religious people.

Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God's holiness and of the extent and guilt of their sin that conciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theoretical commitment to this doctrine, but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification... drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience.

Few know enough to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand on Luther's platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude.

Sadly I think Lovelace is exactly right. Justification is God's legal pronouncement that we as Christians are pardoned because of the substitute death of Jesus. That is the ground of all our hope. And yet, I meet people within the church all the time that cannot articulate this hope, and it's clear that being justified by Christ's sacrifice and being bathed in Christ's righteousness (his sinless right standing before God) is not where they draw their strength and joy. The guilty hand-wringers feel like they haven't done enough to earn God's favor and the cultural religious types see no need for a deep, passionate embrace of the Gospel that results is a transformed life. It would not be an overstatement to say nearly every counseling situation I have had falls into one of these two errors.

Thankfully, Lovelace and Luther's answer to this problem is also entirely accurate. In fact, it is the core of the Gospel message: you are accepted. You cannot earn acceptance by cleaning up your life, but you can lean on the acceptance of God in Christ and let that truth turn your life into passionate, sanctified worship. In Jesus, you are accepted. If this truth is the fuel of your life, it will drive you into the relaxed "quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude."