Martin Luther talks about the need to beat the gospel into your own head, continually. I’ve captured a second list of Paul David Tripp’s statements that help me do just that.
“Here I must take counsel of the gospel. I must hearken to the gospel, which teacheth me, not what I ought to do, (for that is the proper office of the law), but what Jesus Christ the Son of God hath done for me: to wit, that He suffered and died to deliver me from sin and death. The gospel willeth me to receive this, and to believe it. And this is the truth of the gospel. It is also the principal article of all Christian doctrine, wherein the knowledge of all godliness consisteth. Most necessary it is, therefore, that we should know this article well, teach it unto others, and beat it into their heads continually.” *
* Martin Luther, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (Smith, English & Co. 1860), p. 206.
Worship is war. The eyes of our hearts are easily seduced by the touch-and-taste, sight-and-sound pleasures of creation.
Are we worshippers of God, or people who have inserted passive, episodic experiences of worship into a lifestyle shaped by other values?
We must fight for our hearts; warning ourselves daily against the disappointment and danger of looking for life where life can’t be found.
When you daily celebrate grace, you go to a worship service not to begin worshipping, but because you have already been worshipping.
Worship: we all make daily offerings, sacrifices of time/energy/money/focus, to the thing that has captured our attention and desire.
Self-righteousness means that what you say to you about you removes from you any sense of personal need for God’s grace.
Grace doesn’t excuse your sin, rather it pays the price for what is inexcusable.
Grace doesn’t free you from the call to obedience, but liberates you from the delusion that you can obey your way into God’s acceptance.
Sadly, we easily become desensitized to how astonishing grace is and religate it’s celebratIon to the religious dimension of our lives.
Apart from Christ, there is simply nothing in life that is worthy of the devotion, celebration, dedication, and adoration of of your heart.
Apart from God’s grace I would be in the center of my world, I would make up my own laws, worship the creation, and live for my comfort.
Lose your gratitude for your welcome into God’s kingdom and you will lose your zeal for its work and pursue the work of another kingdom.
Do you hide what Jesus has already covered? Do you fear what Jesus has already conquered? Do you seek what Jesus has already purchased?
Your success in life is not the foundation of your hope, but Christ’s victory in death.
Grace dismantles your confidence in you, while it gives you more hope and courage than you have ever had.
If you are God’s child, the cross guaranteed your ultimate victory. Will you live today, tomorrow and the next day like you believe it?
When grace is your rest, you no longer panic when you are driven beyond the borders of your own wisdom and strength.
At the center of Christianity is not the world’s best system of theology and rules, but a gloriously compassionate Savior.
We need to guard against making understanding/living grace the new law, thereby contradicting the grace we are calling others to live.
