I am grateful for the gospel. I continually rebel, and God is gracious to me in spite of this. It’s funny and not utterly devastating because, while God shows me how pathetic I am apart from Him, He simultaneously extends the hope of the gospel. By the grace of the Cross, I do not have to live with the guilt of my sins and failures (attempts at atonement) because Jesus was crucified by God for MY sins; all of them. It is not a “feel good, don’t think about sin” mentality which enables me to be free and full of joy. Rather, it is a “think about the horror of sin, Jesus hanging on the Cross for sin, and sin being fully atoned for.” I do not have to bear guilt for my sin–not because it is not inherently worthy of guilt; it is–because Jesus bore the guilt of my sin.
Even now it seems strange that I can be joy-filled in the aftermath of being in tons of pride that has hurt people. I think that I should qualify this by saying that I am not happy for the hurt my sin has caused people; rather it is painful to recall and leads me to commit these people to God. Instead of being burdened by guilt and anxiety over what will happen to people because of my sin, I walk in the freedom of justification and can trust God to do what is best with the situation. This is not to say that there are not things I must do to reconcile; there are. It is to say, however, that the things which are beyond my control–namely a person’s heart and decisions–I must humbly entrust, or “cast” onto the only one who does have control, my Father in Heaven.
Furthermore, in addition to the freedom from guilt through the Cross (Romans 3:21-26) and the peace of entrusting my care and anxieties to God (1 Peter 5:6-7), I have the hope of personal transformation. If the power of the Cross only affects my justification, I am hopeless and should despair of my time on earth. How will I ever change from being the failure that I am in myself, apart from Christ? When I look inside, no matter how highly I think of myself, I know that I cannot truly change. Maybe for a few days or weeks or even years, but for life? In myself, I have no guarantee or confidence that there is anything which will keep me from being an adulterous husband and self-righteous dad who only “loves” his wife and kids based on their performance. Actually, when I look only into myself, it terrifies me–because that is exactly who I will be. The Apostle Paul summed up my condition in Romans 7, when after testifying to the struggle with the flesh, he cried, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
My hope and confidence for change are in Jesus.
The same Jesus whose words cut to my pride and tell me that I can only create sin, death, and destruction apart from Him also promises that if I abide in Him, humbly acknowledging my weakness and absolute need for Him, I will be transformed by Him and bear fruit. John 15:5 is one of my favorite verses. It encompasses the “humble confidence” of the gospel. First, I can’t do anything in myself; second, that being the case, if I abide in Christ I will bear fruit and life. What is the limit to this concept of bearing much fruit? Philippians 4:13 is where I go next. Through Christ I can truly do all things. This means that whatever God calls me to do, through Christ, I am able to do it. These verses, among others, are the bedrock and source of all my strength, confidence, and hope.
To sum it all up, my identity is in Christ. I don’t need to die for my sin; Jesus died in my place. I don’t need to be burdened by the fears and anxieties of life; my Father in Heaven rules the universe, and not a sparrow falls to the ground apart from Him; He loves me and always does what is best, so I can rest in peace. I don’t need to be ruled by pride, whether manifest in despair or boasting; the man I would boast in is dead and Jesus, the only one who is good, lives in me. I am so glad that my identity is in Christ–not my intellect, friends, appearance, success, job, the approval of others, or anything. The fact of the matter–as much a fact as the existence of the MacBook whose keys I’m typing on–is that I am in Christ. Though I may suppress this truth and at times live out of false identities, the fact of the matter, the unchangeable reality is that I am in Christ.
Galatians 2:20–”I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
SOLI DEO GLORIA (glory to God alone)