They say it’s your birthday...

Too many years ago yesterday, God granted me breath. He placed me with two radically sacrificial parents, who, through God’s grace, came to Christ when I was three years old.

To hear my mother recount the history, she was a pagan who came from pagan roots, having no hope and without God in the world (Eph 2:12). It was the many tearful prayers of my great-grandmother that were eventually answered with the redemption of, not only my parents, but my aunts and grandmother as well. What might have been if God had not overcome their resistance to Him? Thankfully, in His kind providence, I’ll never know.

I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that I trashed being a living example of the Gospel as a high school and college student through blatant rebellion against what I had been taught. Nevertheless, it has served me for good in that I only have to look back a little ways to see the kind and firm Hand of providence pulling me back, overcoming my rebellion against His rule, and then healing a shredded heart that firmly believed it could never again be considered forgiven.

Hebrews 6:4-6 is a crushing verse if it is not rightly understood in context. But, that crushing was a means of God’s grace to me, granting me repentance and greatly humbling me under His Hand.

It is precisely at this point that I caught an urgency to study God’s Word. I had finished law school. What a blessing being trained to “think like a lawyer” has been to me when I approach Scripture!

The questions were thundering in my head. Had I been cut off from Christ (Rev. 3:15-22)? Was there a way back? If so, what guarantees did I have that I would not fall away again? Basically, my questions were concerning assurance of salvation. How do I know if I am really in Christ? How do I know if I can persevere?

After much wrestling and study, I found simply that I can’t. There’s no way I can guarantee that I’ll persevere. I have a faithless heart. I see in myself that same fickleness that Paul saw in himself. (Rom. 7:15-24). What a struggle! I want to love Christ. I want to be like Him. I want to know that I will always want to press forward to the finish line. (Phil. 3:12-16). At least, I want to today, or most of the time, or until I’m distracted by some shiny object. How often I prefer the temporal to the eternal!

In Paul, I found the answer to the dilemma.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:24-25)

It is God Who preserves those who believe. More than that, it is God Who provides the heart (Ezek. 36:26; 2 Cor. 3:3), the Christ-conforming character (Gal. 5:22-23), and the desire to press on (Phil. 2:12-13). In fact, it is all of Him from start to finish. (Rom. 8:28-30).

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39)

And there it was. Later, I discovered that some people called this Calvinism, or the Doctrines of Grace. To me, it was a lifeline, the lifeline. It was and is the Gospel. Not just the beginning, but the certainty of the end.

Christ, Who loved me, not because of anything special in me (Eph 2:8-9) like self-produced faith or spiritual sensitivity, but out of sheer sovereign grace, died for me even while I rebelled against Him. (Rom. 5:6-11) He called me to Himself (John 6:44; 2 Cor. 4:6) and overcame my resistance. He will not let me go (John 10:28-29), but will sustain this gift of faith in me (1 John 5:4) forever.

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Phil. 1:6)

There is a danger in these more personal posts of sounding elitist and like you’ve got it all together. I cannot say that I don’t have periodic concern over whether or not I am “in the faith” (2 Cor 3:5-6). I still blow it. I still have to come broken and humbled to Christ, confessing where I have preferred other people or things to Him. Sometimes my mind wanders and I feel the regrets and sorrow of how I have treated others in the past. But, I look at where I was and where He has brought me and I know that my confidence and trust must remain in Him and Him alone. I look to the Cross again and again. What about you?

One has only to look at the standard God has set before man and realize that we have all blown it. (Ex. 20:1-17; Matt. 5:21-30) If we break just one of these, we’ve broken all of them. (James 2:10) All of God’s commandments have at their core, this one: Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37) It is grace that He has shown us what that looks like through commandments. But, do not think that you can achieve this perfectly. None of us can. (Rom. 3:23; Jer. 13:23) All of us deserve judgment. (John 3:17-18) We are condemned already. So don’t demand fairness. Plead for grace.

We need someone to live the life we should have lived and die the death that we should have died. We need someone worthy enough to absorb the infinite judgment of God on our behalf. We need Christ. I need Him and you do too. (Romans 10:8-13)