Grace for the Race

After our first full week of blogging and so many wonderful and encouraging comments, the question finally came up about our title.  I was asked, “Coach, what does it mean when you say grace for the race?”  My response was, in a word…the Gospel.  And as long as the Good Lord has me sending out these messages, the Gospel is what we will be focusing in on. 

You see, most believers believe the Gospel is only for the unsaved.  Preach the Gospel, get them saved, and move on to the next lost person you can find.  They do not understand just how much the Gospel is needed after salvation as it was before salvation.  From the pen of the apostle Paul we read, “I am not ashamed of the gospel…for in it the righteousness of God is revealed” (Romans 1:16-17).  What is this righteousness of God?  It is the perfect obedience of Christ.  This is what God requires and this is the standard by which we all will be judged.   

Christian’s believe they need the righteousness of Christ for salvation, but most mistakenly believe they need their own righteousness for God’s daily acceptance and approval.  They do not understand that even their best works are like “filthy rags” in God’s sight (Isaiah 64:6), which means they need the righteousness of Christ just as much after salvation as they did prior to it.  Theologian B.B. Warfield said regarding the need of the gospel for the believer,

There is nothing in us or done by us, at any stage of our earthly development, because of which we are acceptable to God.  We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake, or we cannot ever be accepted at all.  This is not true of us only when we believe.  It is just as true after we have believed.  It will continue to be true as long as we live.  Our need of Christ does not cease with our believing; nor does the nature of our relation to Him or to God through Him ever alter, no matter what our attainments in Christian graces or our achievements in behavior may be.  It is always on His “blood and righteousness” alone that we can rest. 

Here is where we get tripped up.  We begin convincing ourselves that we are really “not that bad.”  We are doing our best, we are good people, and we have not committed any of those “scandalous” sins.  We are so focused on the “speck” in our brother’s eye we miss the “plank” in our own…pride, anger, selfish ambition, critical spirit, impatience, and lust, just to name a few of the sins we commit before lunch.  As my friend and pastor Tullian continually preaches, “We are indeed great sinners in need of a Greater Savior.”  We are sinners by nature and habit which requires the righteousness of Jesus for both eternal life and everyday life. 

In the days and weeks to come, we will unpack this incredible Gospel truth known as “The Great Exchange” where God exchanged our sin for the righteousness of Christ.  Our dirty and sin filled slate was not only washed clean by the blood of the Lamb, it was filled with the righteousness of Christ.  Everything we need to stand before a holy God we already have because we have Jesus.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

Matthew 10:31

And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

As I read this verse today it got me thinking.  It’s hard to go anywhere without seeing a cross.  From body piercing to bookends the cross is everywhere.  But do we really know this thing called the cross?  When Jesus spoke these words His audience knew what He was talking about.  The roads were lined with criminals nailed to crosses so the cross for them meant one thing…DEATH!  The death that Jesus died on that cross was the death we should have died.  He laid His life down for you.  Are you willing to lay your life down for Him? 

Everyone united to Christ by faith has been given a cross.  Some choose not to submit their shoulder to it and trade a life of sacrificial service for selfish ambition.  They choose the way of personal preference.  They choose the way of self-centeredness.  They might agree to carry a cross but only a cross of their own making.  But this is not for you! 

Your cross has been assembled and assigned to you by the infinity of His love, the immutability of His character, and the infallibility of His wisdom.  It is just the right shape, size and weight and you will carry it the exact number of steps God has ordained for you and not one step further.  God is bringing you to the end of yourself and His way is the way of the cross.  There is no better way for rebels like us.  If there was, He would have given it to us.  Jesus was our cross-bearer.  Shall we not be like our master and carry our cross and walk in His footsteps? Remember, because His footsteps took Him to Golgotha’s Hill our footsteps will take us into glory.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

I lead four exercise classes during the week here at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in what I call the F.I.T. (Faithful In Training) Program.  These classes consist of core training, medicine ball work, fight training, self-defense, sport training and flexibility.  Never in all of my years of fitness training and coaching have I seen someone go from “strength to strength” during a workout as the psalmist writes in Psalm 84:7.  It is simply a natural result of physical work that one ultimately goes from strength to weakness.  So what can the psalmist mean when he says the experience of every child of God is to go through this life from strength to strength? 

I think the answer is clear.  It is grace for the race.  The Christian united by faith to Christ is continually given fresh supplies of grace to make consistent progress in the race God has set before him.  That is why we hear countless stories about Christian pilgrims who have been walking with our Lord for decades who have as much zeal, enthusiasm and vigor at the end of their race as they did when they first began, if not more.  Older…yes.  Physically weaker…yes.  To be sure, the years of toilsome travel over rough terrain have taken its toll on these pilgrims passing through.  Yet, they have gone from “strength to strength” because they understood the psalmist to be suggesting progress…not perfection.  This was a source of great strength to them because they knew that everything they did, they did imperfectly.  They…

• Worshipped imperfectly
• Witnessed imperfectly
• Walked imperfectly
• Prayed imperfectly
• Served imperfectly
• Loved imperfectly

With all of this imperfection, falling short and missing the mark, how can someone truly go from “strength to strength” on this side of the grave?  In a word…the CROSS.  The perfection of the cross covers all of our imperfection.  His perfection…our pardon.  His perfection…our patience.  His perfection…our persistence.  His perfection…our power.  His perfection…our protection.  His perfection…our  peace.  His perfection…our promotion.  His perfection…our position.

Because of our position of being united to Christ, we already have everything we need to live the life God is calling us to live.  This is the good news of the Gospel that we would go from “strength to strength” until we go into glory.  NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

Yesterday we cried, “He is risen!” Today is the day after. So what, if anything, has changed for us? Everything- if we understand the gospel. The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ left behind an empty tomb and that is the absolute proof that the payment Jesus made on that cross on our behalf was accepted in full. God counted every one of our sins, past, present and to come but not against us. He counted them against the One who knew no sin, His beloved Son, our beloved Savior. We are now free to live the life we could not live because He paid the debt we could not pay. This is known in Christian circles as the Great Exchange – our debt for His payment – our sin for His righteousness – our forgiveness for His condemnation – our crown of glory for His crown of thorns. All who are in Christ by faith do not stand before God with a clean slate, but rather, a slate filled with the righteousness of Christ. Theologically this is known as justification. More simply put, it means “just-as-if-I-had-never-sinned.”

Only when this sinks deep down into our bones can we begin to live like sons rather than slaves. Only when this truth moves past instructing our minds to enflaming our hearts can we grow into the person God is calling us to be. And what kind of person is that? A God-centered, gospel-saturated, grace-driven Christian who is making an eternal difference in this world by being different from this world. Don’t mistake this description for one who is perfect or sinless. The apostle Paul put it this way, “None is righteous, no, not one…” (Romans 3:10). Only One can claim that on this side of the grave and said it Himself, “I always do the things that are pleasing to him” (John 8:29).

We do everything imperfectly. We stain everything with our sin. That is why it is only the gospel that keeps us going because only the gospel tells us we are accepted by God because of what Christ has done for us. That’s right. Accepted by God, in spite of our sin stained lives, because Jesus paid for every one of our sins and God only sees us clothed in the righteousness of Christ. What an awesome freedom to know at the deepest level regarding our place in the family of faith…not our performance, but His perfection. It is living out the truth of Galatians 2:20 “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.”

So back to my opening question, “What if anything has changed for us the day after we celebrate the empty tomb?” If we continue looking to ourselves for our salvation (eternal life)…nothing has changed. If we continue looking to ourselves for our sanctification (everyday life)…nothing has changed. But if we look for both outside of ourselves to the finished work of Christ, understanding that we stand before a Holy, Just and Perfect God clothed in the Holy, Just, and Perfect righteousness of Christ, and we do it every day, then everything has changed for us. Pain is not so painful. Fear is not so fearful. Sorrow is not so sorrowful. Disappointment is not so disappointing. And challenges are not so challenging. Everything has changed for us because Jesus has secured all the grace we will ever need to run the race set before us. NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

Welcome to our inaugural BLOG. Thank you for taking the time to visit with me. I pray that the words you read will, by God’s grace, prove profitable to you.

LOVED TO DEATH
For Christians all over the world, today is known as Good Friday…the day Jesus Christ went willingly to the cross and nailed our sins…all our sins…to that dirty tree. Yet to fully be able to receive and respond to the “good” part of Friday, we have to understand the bad. And what is the bad? You and me! That’s right. We are the bad part of Good Friday. It was because of our sin, our iniquities, our transgressions that our Lord and Savior paid our price on what should have been our cross. The prophet Isaiah writes, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned–every one–to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:4-6).

The bad news on Good Friday is that we are responsible for the death of our Lord. We betrayed him. We deserted him. We crowned him with thorns. We drove in those nine inch nails. All we, like deaf, dumb and blind sheep willingly went astray from the only real beauty this fallen world has ever seen…Jesus. And what was the response of our Lord to such sinful and selfish treatment? Love. Unconditional, sacrificial, radical love. So radical was his love for us, he loved us to death! Never think for a moment that those nine inch nails kept our Lord hanging up on that cross. It was love that kept him there.

When you think about it for just a moment, the good news of the gospel simply doesn’t make sense without the bad news. The only reason we need a Savior is because we are sinners who are incapable of saving ourselves. It took the perfect righteousness of Christ; his sinless life, his sacrifical death and his resurrection from the grave, to satisfy the just judgment of God the Father. When Jesus cried out on the cross, “It is finished!” he was making it clear that the payment for sin was paid in full. Nothing we do that is”good” can add to the finished work of Jesus on the cross and nothing we do that is “bad” can take away from it. Because Jesus paid the full price for all of our sins…past, present and to come…God does not come after us when we sin looking to exact his pound of flesh. God himself would be denying his own Son and what he did for us on that cross if he came after us to pay for sins that were already paid for in full. When that sinks down into the marrow of our bones, we can begin to live the life God has called us to with both freedom and faithfulness to the One who saved us. We no longer have to feel guilty about our past or fearful about our future, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). No matter what you have done or will ever do, you are never beyond the reach of his radical love and renewing grace. This is indeed good news for every battle-weary believer like myself.

Accepted. Adopted. Assured. Everything we need we have in Jesus. As my friend and pastor Tullian often reminds us, “Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Everything minus Jesus equals nothing.” So the two questions that need to be asked and answered on this Good Friday is this, “Do you know yourself as a great sinner in need of this Great Savior?” “And have you confessed your sins to this Jesus and received him by faith as both your Savior and Lord? If this is true for you, then today is indeed Good Friday. Today is a day of victory and celebration. If you have not, cry out to Jesus. His love is far too radical to let a sincere cry go unanswered. NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!

Thanks for visiting this blog. 

I will begin posting on April 1st…no fooling!

Lord willing, posts will appear weekly on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

See you soon!