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David Platt:

To the one who never feels as though their striving to please God is enough and is never sure of his salvation:

No matter what you do – even if you sell all your possessions and move to the most dangerous country in the world for the sake of ministry – you cannot do enough to be accepted before God. And the beauty of the gospel is that you don’t have to. God so loved you that, despite your hopeless state of sin, he sent his Son – God in the flesh – to live the life you could not live. Jesus alone has kept the commands of God. He alone has been faithful enough, generous enough, and compassionate enough. Indeed, he alone has been radical enough.
Though Jesus was free from sin through his life, he bore the penalty of sin in his death. He took your place and your punishment, dying the death you deserved. Then he rose from the grave in victory over sin. And…when you turn from yourself and trust in your Savior, he will cleanse you from all your rebellion and clothe you in his righteousness. The starting point of your radical life is your radical death – death to yourself and death to you every attempt to do enough before God.
The gospel has saved you from your work, and you are free from any effort to overcome your guilt before God. You can stop working and start believing. If you have never trusted in Christ like this, then I urge you to put down this book and place your faith in him. You don’t have to repeat a prayer, sign a card, or sell a thing. Based on nothing you have done and everything Jesus has done – by grace alone through faith alone – God will declare you right before him.

And to the one who lives as though faith alone has zero impact on their life:

So called faith without acts prompted by that faith is a farce. Real faith always creates fruit…
The reality is that when you believe in Christ for salvation, you not only are declared right before God as Father, but you also begin to walk with God as friend. In addition to new birth, Jesus gives you new life: a life of joyful obedience and overflowing love. So when you hear Christ’s radical call to live sacrificially, you do not think, In the gospel I am free to flout his commands. Instead you think, In the gospel I am free to follow his commands. And the faith that God has graciously given to you begins to produce radical fruit from you.

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Read my review here.

He who prays without fervency does not pray at all. We cannot commune with God, who is a consuming fire, if there is no fire in our prayers. Many prayers fail of their errand because there is no faith in them. Prayers which are filled with doubt, are requests for refusal. Imagine that you wrote to a friend and said, “Dear friend, I am in great trouble, and therefore tell you, and ask for your help, because it seems right to do so. But though I thus write, I have no belief that you will send me any help; indeed, I should be mightily surprised if you did, and should speak of it as a great wonder.

Ask and Have: A sermon preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon on October 1, 1882 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle.

Reading through John recently, I came across a very familiar passage that I’ve heard dozens of sermons on.  You may recognize it as well.

So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” And he himself believed, and all his household. -John 4:46-53

So many times, we think of the faith that it took the official to leave his son on his deathbed and go seek help from this healer called Jesus. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see this as a huge leap of faith.

You’re child is dying.
You hear that a healer is coming nearby (sort of nearby).
You go to the healer.

I guess that just makes sense to me.

However, I do think that this official displayed incredible faith – just not where we typically think.

“The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way.” -John 4:50b

Rather than coming and healing this man’s son, Jesus speaks the word. He doesn’t lay hands on the boy. He doesn’t cast demons out of the house. He simply tells the man to go home and he’ll live.

Words. Not visible works.

For those who call Christ their Savior, that’s our hope as well: Jesus’ words.

The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it’s sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. -John 3:8

The man heard Jesus’ words and left – trusting that what Jesus said was true. All he could rely on was that if Jesus says it will happen, it must.

And that’s faith.

Scripture is of no use to us if we read it merely as a handbook for daily living without recognizing that its principle purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ and his gospel for the salvation of sinners. All Scripture coalesces in Christ, anticipated in the OT and appearing in the flesh in the NT. In Scripture, God issues commands and threatens judgment for transgressors as well as direction for the lives of his people. Yet the greatest treasure buried in the Scriptures is the good news of the promised Messiah. Everything in the Bible that tells us what to do is “law”, and everything in the Bible that tells us what God has done in Christ to save us is “gospel.” Much like medieval piety, the emphasis in much Christian teaching today is on what we are to do without adequate grounding in the good news of what God has done for us in Christ. “What would Jesus do?” becomes more important than “What has Jesus done?” The gospel, however, is not just something we needed at conversion so we can spend the rest of our Christian life obsessed with performance; it is something we need every day–the only source of our sanctification as well as our justification. The law guides, but only the gospel gives. We are declared righteous–justified–not by anything that happens within us or done by us, but solely by God’s act of crediting us with Christ’s perfect righteousness through faith alone.

from Justified: Modern Reformation Essays on the Doctrine of Justification.

HT: Tullian Tchividjian

I found this extremely helpful to glance at when teaching on Holy Week.

Click for full-size image

Once again, Bible Gateway to the rescue. Get more information here.

I loved this quote from Tim Chester‘s book, You Can Change.

I used to think sanctification was a bit like pushing a boulder up a hill. It was hard, slow work, and if you lost concentration you might find yourself back at the bottom. But it’s more like a boulder rolling down a hill. There’s something inevitable about it, because it’s God’s work, and God always succeeds. The sad thing is that often I try to push the boulder back up the hill. I say in effect, “Don’t change me yet – I like doing that sin.”

My lack of faith that the one “who began a good work in [me] will bring it to completion” never fails to amaze me. The beauty and wonder of the Gospel – the very reality that makes it such good news – is that it’s not about me, but about God’s work in me.

And with that mindset, sanctification no longer comes as an undesired struggle and chore, but the wonderful work of God molding and shaping me to be more and more like Christ.

Sanctification is God’s work. But we’re not passive. We have to respond with faith and repentance. And again it turns out that faith and repentance are God’s work in us. So salvation from start to finish is God’s work, in which we are active participants through faith and repentance by the grace of God. We work hard, but then say with Paul, “It was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).

Do you?