I’m reading along with Tim Challies as he reads yet another Christian classic for his Reading Classics Together program.
This week’s reading in The Discipline of Grace is the third chapter, Preach the Gospel to Yourself. It’s a reminder that the believer’s pursuit of holiness is carried out “in the atmosphere of the gospel.” We should be constantly reminding ourselves of the truth of the gospel, and to do this we need to understand what the gospel is and how it applies to our lives as believers.
The biblical statement of the gospel that Bridges uses in this chapter is Romans 3:19-26. From this passage he draws these seven truths:
- No one is declared righteous before God by observing the law (verses 19-21). As believers, we know this, at least as far as it applies to our salvation. We know that we could never be good enough to be saved on account of our own obedience. Yet as believers, we sometimes “act as if we can live lives acceptable to God,” when we can’t! The first step in preaching the gospel to ourselves is to stop thinking like this.
- There is a righteousness from God that is apart from the law (verse 21). Christ perfectly fulfilled God’s law on our behalf, and so, in our justification, “He declares us righteous on the basis of the real, accomplished righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is … credited to us through faith.” As believers, we must live our lives by daily trust in Christ’s righteousness.
- This righteousness from God is received through faith in Christ Jesus (verse 22). The nature of this faith is a “complete renunciation of any confidence in our own righteousness” and wholehearted reliance on Jesus—his obedient life and sin-bearing death. We must live our lives in daily dependence on Christ for our righteous standing before God.
- This righteousness is available to everyone on the same basis, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (verses 22-23). Believers should keep on confessing their guilt before God because of their sin.
- All who put their faith in Jesus Christ are justified freely by God’s grace (verse 24). Bridges writes: “Justification is like the two sides of a coin. On the one side we are declared “not guilty” before God, and on the other we are positively declared to be righteous through Christ.” As believers, we continue to sin, so it’s only natural that we sometimes feel that God must be against us. When this happens, we can remind ourselves of our two-sided justification and know that we stand before God counted righteous in Christ. It’s on this basis that he is never against us, but always on our side.
- This justification is “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (verse 24). It may be free to us, but Christ paid for it. The claims of justice have been met, something we can think on when our consciences are bothering us because of our sin: “the penalty has been fully paid by Him.”
- “God presented [Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood” (verse 25). We should appropriate it daily, over and over, to cleanse our consciences.
These seven truths encompass the gospel that we must preach to ourselves. When we pursue holiness, we will see our sinfulness more and more clearly, and without a constant reminder of the righteousness from God received through faith we might lose hope. One of the doctrines I love most is the doctrine of imputed righteousness, because it is knowing that Christ’s own righteousness is counted as my own that keeps me sane. I think I’d be in a constant state of discouragement without it.