the gospel

I don't normally post videos, for various reasons, but I came upon this video today on someone else's blog. I wanted to share this because I was confronted by God today (once again) and reminded of how much I had been hiding from him, in little ways, in my heart. As I struggle against my own fearful and perfectionistic nature, it is a huge idea for me to fathom that God favors me eternally....that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...that God has me in a process, a very beautiful process...that he will complete the work he began...that he gives grace to me...that he knows my frame and remembers that I am dust. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. My life is hidden with Christ in God. He is my righteousness.

I guess the truth is that I want so much for my heart to understand the gospel more every day. I don't think that as people who are in redeemed relationship with God we can ever move past the gospel. Absolutely, there is growth and maturity, and a progression of faith from struggling with simple doctrine to a deep, unwavering, God-shaped reservoir of hope... but I think that the gospel is everything, it is his story that has become our story. It is through the gospel that we are both saved and sanctified. Trevor and I listened to this series of classes while students at Multnomah and it helped me understand the relationship between my walk with Jesus and the gospel, post-conversion. It really just helped me understand the gospel. In these classes, Tim Keller talks about Martin Luther's understanding of the link between salvation and justification, which is that Christ himself is not only our salvation, but our sanctification as well. " And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption..." (1 Corinthians 1:30).

Having dinner the other night with some friends, we talked about the tendencies of the human heart, and that some people's hearts tend toward righteousness (really self-righteousness) while other's tend toward unrighteousness. Both are tragically wrong, and both equally alienate us from our Creator. I definitely have a heart that tends toward self-righteousness. It's like I cling hard to the shreds of self-respect that I have because I know inside who I really am-- a great sinner. I know that I am selfish, prideful, vain, conceited....the list could go on. So I try to make up for it by earning approval and employing other tactics. Yet in the gospels, Jesus always cuts to the heart in his encounters with people. I guess that is why I am posting this...to prompt you to examine the things you are leaning on, consider their true worth, and consider the much greater, beautiful worth of being God's child forever. This is something even Christians need to hear... maybe something especially Christians need to hear.