Our sin ruins us in two ways. It makes us guilty before God, so that we are under his just condemnation; and it makes us ugly in our behavior, so that we disfigure the image of God we were meant to display. It damns us with guilt, and it enslaves us to lovelessness.
The blood of Jesus frees us from both miseries. It satisfies God’s righteousness so that our sins can be justly forgiven. And it defeats the power of sin to make us slaves to lovelessness.
He writes that Jesus is more than a powerful example and one who inspires us to free ourselves from selfishness. While he is certainly that, He is even more.
Sin is such a powerful influence in our lives that we must be liberated by God’s power, not by our willpower. But since we are sinners we must ask, is the power of God directed toward our liberation or our condemnation? That’s where the suffering of Christ comes in. When Christ died to remove our condemnation, he opened, as it were, the valve of heaven’s mighty mercy to flow on behalf of our liberation from the power of sin.
In other words, rescue from the guilt of sin and the wrath of God had to precede rescue from the power of sin by the mercy of God.
This is the distinction between justification and sanctification. The former precedes and secures the latter. The former is "an instantaneous declaration" while the latter is "an on-going transformation".
This is why the Bible can make the amazing promise: “Sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14). Being “under grace” secures the omnipotent power of God to destroy our lovelessness (not all at once, but progressively). We are not passive in the defeat of our selfishness, but neither do we provide the decisive power. It is God’s grace.
No comments:
Post a Comment