Chapter One: How Good is Good Enough?
I started reading "The Discipline of Grace: God's role and our role in the pursuit of holiness" by Jerry Bridges this week. In the first chapter, Bridges explains how our effort and God's grace are each necessary components to holiness. I will use itallics whenever I am quoting entire passages from the book. This first chapter is 28 pages long and I will not be able to do it justice. But it's hard for me to leave out the parts that impacted me the most. So, if you have the time (and interest) to read, go get a cup of coffee and settle in for the long haul. Bridges begins with the tension between holiness and grace.
The pursuit of holiness requires sustained and vigorous effort. It allows for no indolence, no lethargy, no halfhearted commitment, and no laissez faire attitude toward even the smallest sins. In short, it demands the highest priority in the life of a Christian, because to be holy is to be like Christ--God's goal for every Christian...At the same time, however, the pursuit of holiness must be anchored in the grace of God; otherwise, it is doomed to failure. That statement probably strikes many people as strange. A lot of Christians seem to think that the grace of God and the vigorous pursuit of holiness are antithetical--that is, in direct and unequivocal opposition to one another.
To some, the pursuit of holiness sounds like legalism and man-made rules. To others, an emphasis on grace seems to open the door to irresponsible, sinful behavior based on the notion that God's unconditional love means we are free to sin as we please.
Bridges goes on to explain that many believers don't understand the relationship of grace to personal discipline; they view grace and the pursuit of holiness as incompatible or even opposed to one another. An understanding of how God's grace and our effort work together--as well as how essential both are for a lifelong pursuit of holiness--is the theme of this chapter.
Bridges lays out the "good day/bad day" mindset that plagues most of us as Christians. We tend to view our relationship with God and His blessings in our lives in conjunction with our day to day performance. But God's blessing does not depend on our performance.
Why then do we think this way? It is because we do believe that God's blessing on our lives is somehow conditioned upon our spiritual performance. If we've performed well and had a "good" day, we assume we are in a position for God to bless us. Oh, we know God's blessings come to us through Christ, but we also have this vague but very real notion that they are also conditioned on our behavior. A friend of mine used to think, If I do certain things, then I can get God to come through for me.
Such thinking is even stronger when we've had a "bad" day. There is virtually no doubt in our minds that we have forfeited God's favor for some period of time...
But going back to the "good" day, ...the day when your spiritual disciplines are all in place and you are reasonably satisfied with your Christian performance. Have you thereby earned God's blessing that day? Will God be pleased to bless you because you've been good? You are probably thinking "Well, when you put it like that, the answer is no. But doesn't God only work through clean vessels?" To which I reply, "Let's assume that is true. How good then do you have to be to be a clean vessel? How good is good enough?"
Bridges reminds us that James tells us, in James 2:10, if we keep the whole law and yet stumble at just one point, we are guilty of breaking all of it.
Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing.
At the same time, the good news of the gospel is that God's grace is available on our worst days. This is true because Christ Jesus fully satisfied the claims of God's justice and fully paid the penalty of a broken law when He died on the cross in our place...Does the fact that God has forgiven us all our sins mean that He no longer cares whether we obey or disobey? Not at all. The Scripture speaks of our grieving the Holy Spirit through our sins (Ephesians 4:30)...[however,]...
If God's blessings were dependent on our performance, they would be meager indeed. Even our best works are shot through with sin--with varying degrees of impure motives and lots of imperfect performance. We are always, to some degree, looking out for ourselves, guarding our flanks, protecting our egos. It is because we do not realize the utter depravity of the principle of sin that remains in us and stains everything we do, that we entertain any notion of earning God's blessings through our obedience. And it is because we do not fully grasp the fact that Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins that we despair of God's blessing when we have failed to live up to even our own desires to live a life that is pleasing to God.
Bridges then addresses the promises of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience that are a significant part of the Mosaic Law. This was very helpful to me. I read a book a couple of years ago about these blessings and curses. With my background of legalism, I am richly cultivated soil for any kind of performance-driven relationship with God. Bridges helped me to see this subject more clearly with just a few sentences. As I read these words, I remembered Danny trying to tell me this when I was reading the book. Regarding the principle of blessings and curses, Bridges says this:
Some Christians live as if that principle applies to them today. But Paul said that "the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24). Christ has already borne the curses for our disobedience and earned for us the blessings of obedience. As a result we are now to look to Christ alone--not Christ plus our performance--for God's blessings in our lives. We are saved by grace and we are to live by grace alone.
When we pray to God for His blessing, He does not examine our performance to see if we are worthy. Rather, He looks to see if we are trusting in the merit of His Son as our only hope for securing His blessing.
Bridges examines why we are so prone to fall into this good day/bad day performance mode of thinking when we know from the Scriptures that our relationship with God is based on His grace instead of our performance. His answer is that "we have relegated the gospel to the unbeliever." We view the gospel as something that unbelievers need to hear. But once we become believers, we think that we move on to other things. But only continuing to hear the gospel of God's grace every day of our Christian lives--the gospel of God's grace through Christ--will keep us from falling into good day/bad day thinking, "wherein we think our daily relationship with God is based on how good we've been."
It is only the joy of hearing the gospel and being reminded that our sins are forgiven in Christ that will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery. It is only gratitude and love to God that comes from knowing that He no longer counts our sins against us (Romans 4:8) that provides the proper motive for responding to the claims of discipleship.
However, Bridges points out another critical element of receiving the gospel. "The gospel is meaningful for us only to the extent that we realize and acknowledge that we are still sinful." And without a continual reminder of the gospel's good news, "we can easily fall into one of two errors. The first is to focus on our external performance and become proud like the Pharisees...The second error is the exact opposite of the first. It is the feeling of guilt...We believe God is displeased with us, and we certainly wouldn't expect His blessing on our lives. After all, we don't deserve His favor."
Because we are focusing on our performance, we forget the meaning of grace: God's unmerited favor to those who deserve only His wrath. Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God's blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God's blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God.
The gospel, applied to our hearts every day, frees us to be brutally honest with ourselves and with God...With the assurance of total forgiveness through Christ, we have no reason to hide from our sins anymore.
Rather than being driven by guilt and performance, we should be motivated by love and gratitude for what has already been done for us. Notice what compelled Paul in such a strong manner:
...It was not a continual challenge to be more disciplined, or more committed, or more holy. Rather it was his constant heartfelt awareness of Christ's love for him. It was not the thought that "I ought to do this or that" or a feeling of guilt for not doing something that motivated Paul. Rather it was his overwhelming sense of Christ's love for him that spurred him on.
We believers do need to be challenged to a life of committed discipleship, but that challenge needs to be based on the gospel, not on duty or guilt. Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ's love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.
If the love of Christ for us is to be the motivating force for a life of discipleship, how then can we come to the place where we are acutely conscious of His love? The answer is, through the gospel...The good news of the gospel is that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and that we are thereby forgiven. As we continually reflect upon that gospel, the Holy Spirit floods our hearts with a sense of God's love to us in Christ. And that sense of His love motivates us in a compelling way to live for Him.
Bridges explained the context of Paul's testimony by answering the question, "What is it that caused him to have such an intense yearning?"
The context is Paul's testimony of how he renounced his own self-righteousness in order to gain the righteousneess that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:1-9). It is in the context of recounting the gospel as it applies to him personally that Paul feels this surge of desire to know Christ more intimately welling up within him.
A sense of obligation and duty never stimulates such a desire within us. Only love does that...
Preaching the gospel to ourselves every day addresses both the self-righteous Pharisee and the guilt-laden sinner that dwell in our hearts. Because the gospel is only for sinners, preaching it to ourselves every day reminds us that we are indeed sinners in need of God's grace. It causes us to say to God, in the words of an old hymn, "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling." It helps us to consciously renounce any confidence in our own goodness as a means of meriting God's blessing on our lives.
Perhaps more important, though, preaching the gospel to ourselves every day gives us hope, joy, and courage. The good news that our sins are forgiven because of Christ's death fills our hearts with joy, gives us courage to face the day, and offers us hope that God's favor will rest upon us, not because we are good, but because we are in Christ.
I love this book. I've only read the first chapter and it has already helped me so much.
The pursuit of holiness requires sustained and vigorous effort. It allows for no indolence, no lethargy, no halfhearted commitment, and no laissez faire attitude toward even the smallest sins. In short, it demands the highest priority in the life of a Christian, because to be holy is to be like Christ--God's goal for every Christian...At the same time, however, the pursuit of holiness must be anchored in the grace of God; otherwise, it is doomed to failure. That statement probably strikes many people as strange. A lot of Christians seem to think that the grace of God and the vigorous pursuit of holiness are antithetical--that is, in direct and unequivocal opposition to one another.
To some, the pursuit of holiness sounds like legalism and man-made rules. To others, an emphasis on grace seems to open the door to irresponsible, sinful behavior based on the notion that God's unconditional love means we are free to sin as we please.
Bridges goes on to explain that many believers don't understand the relationship of grace to personal discipline; they view grace and the pursuit of holiness as incompatible or even opposed to one another. An understanding of how God's grace and our effort work together--as well as how essential both are for a lifelong pursuit of holiness--is the theme of this chapter.
Bridges lays out the "good day/bad day" mindset that plagues most of us as Christians. We tend to view our relationship with God and His blessings in our lives in conjunction with our day to day performance. But God's blessing does not depend on our performance.
Why then do we think this way? It is because we do believe that God's blessing on our lives is somehow conditioned upon our spiritual performance. If we've performed well and had a "good" day, we assume we are in a position for God to bless us. Oh, we know God's blessings come to us through Christ, but we also have this vague but very real notion that they are also conditioned on our behavior. A friend of mine used to think, If I do certain things, then I can get God to come through for me.
Such thinking is even stronger when we've had a "bad" day. There is virtually no doubt in our minds that we have forfeited God's favor for some period of time...
But going back to the "good" day, ...the day when your spiritual disciplines are all in place and you are reasonably satisfied with your Christian performance. Have you thereby earned God's blessing that day? Will God be pleased to bless you because you've been good? You are probably thinking "Well, when you put it like that, the answer is no. But doesn't God only work through clean vessels?" To which I reply, "Let's assume that is true. How good then do you have to be to be a clean vessel? How good is good enough?"
Bridges reminds us that James tells us, in James 2:10, if we keep the whole law and yet stumble at just one point, we are guilty of breaking all of it.
Some days we may be more acutely conscious of our sinfulness and hence more aware of our need of His grace, but there is never a day when we can stand before Him on our own two feet of performance, when we are worthy enough to deserve His blessing.
At the same time, the good news of the gospel is that God's grace is available on our worst days. This is true because Christ Jesus fully satisfied the claims of God's justice and fully paid the penalty of a broken law when He died on the cross in our place...Does the fact that God has forgiven us all our sins mean that He no longer cares whether we obey or disobey? Not at all. The Scripture speaks of our grieving the Holy Spirit through our sins (Ephesians 4:30)...[however,]...
If God's blessings were dependent on our performance, they would be meager indeed. Even our best works are shot through with sin--with varying degrees of impure motives and lots of imperfect performance. We are always, to some degree, looking out for ourselves, guarding our flanks, protecting our egos. It is because we do not realize the utter depravity of the principle of sin that remains in us and stains everything we do, that we entertain any notion of earning God's blessings through our obedience. And it is because we do not fully grasp the fact that Jesus paid the penalty for all our sins that we despair of God's blessing when we have failed to live up to even our own desires to live a life that is pleasing to God.
Bridges then addresses the promises of blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience that are a significant part of the Mosaic Law. This was very helpful to me. I read a book a couple of years ago about these blessings and curses. With my background of legalism, I am richly cultivated soil for any kind of performance-driven relationship with God. Bridges helped me to see this subject more clearly with just a few sentences. As I read these words, I remembered Danny trying to tell me this when I was reading the book. Regarding the principle of blessings and curses, Bridges says this:
Some Christians live as if that principle applies to them today. But Paul said that "the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith" (Galatians 3:24). Christ has already borne the curses for our disobedience and earned for us the blessings of obedience. As a result we are now to look to Christ alone--not Christ plus our performance--for God's blessings in our lives. We are saved by grace and we are to live by grace alone.
When we pray to God for His blessing, He does not examine our performance to see if we are worthy. Rather, He looks to see if we are trusting in the merit of His Son as our only hope for securing His blessing.
Bridges examines why we are so prone to fall into this good day/bad day performance mode of thinking when we know from the Scriptures that our relationship with God is based on His grace instead of our performance. His answer is that "we have relegated the gospel to the unbeliever." We view the gospel as something that unbelievers need to hear. But once we become believers, we think that we move on to other things. But only continuing to hear the gospel of God's grace every day of our Christian lives--the gospel of God's grace through Christ--will keep us from falling into good day/bad day thinking, "wherein we think our daily relationship with God is based on how good we've been."
It is only the joy of hearing the gospel and being reminded that our sins are forgiven in Christ that will keep the demands of discipleship from becoming drudgery. It is only gratitude and love to God that comes from knowing that He no longer counts our sins against us (Romans 4:8) that provides the proper motive for responding to the claims of discipleship.
However, Bridges points out another critical element of receiving the gospel. "The gospel is meaningful for us only to the extent that we realize and acknowledge that we are still sinful." And without a continual reminder of the gospel's good news, "we can easily fall into one of two errors. The first is to focus on our external performance and become proud like the Pharisees...The second error is the exact opposite of the first. It is the feeling of guilt...We believe God is displeased with us, and we certainly wouldn't expect His blessing on our lives. After all, we don't deserve His favor."
Because we are focusing on our performance, we forget the meaning of grace: God's unmerited favor to those who deserve only His wrath. Pharisee-type believers unconsciously think they have earned God's blessing through their behavior. Guilt-laden believers are quite sure they have forfeited God's blessing through their lack of discipline or their disobedience. Both have forgotten the meaning of grace because they have moved away from the gospel and have slipped into a performance relationship with God.
The gospel, applied to our hearts every day, frees us to be brutally honest with ourselves and with God...With the assurance of total forgiveness through Christ, we have no reason to hide from our sins anymore.
Rather than being driven by guilt and performance, we should be motivated by love and gratitude for what has already been done for us. Notice what compelled Paul in such a strong manner:
...It was not a continual challenge to be more disciplined, or more committed, or more holy. Rather it was his constant heartfelt awareness of Christ's love for him. It was not the thought that "I ought to do this or that" or a feeling of guilt for not doing something that motivated Paul. Rather it was his overwhelming sense of Christ's love for him that spurred him on.
We believers do need to be challenged to a life of committed discipleship, but that challenge needs to be based on the gospel, not on duty or guilt. Duty or guilt may motivate us for awhile, but only a sense of Christ's love for us will motivate us for a lifetime.
If the love of Christ for us is to be the motivating force for a life of discipleship, how then can we come to the place where we are acutely conscious of His love? The answer is, through the gospel...The good news of the gospel is that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and that we are thereby forgiven. As we continually reflect upon that gospel, the Holy Spirit floods our hearts with a sense of God's love to us in Christ. And that sense of His love motivates us in a compelling way to live for Him.
Bridges explained the context of Paul's testimony by answering the question, "What is it that caused him to have such an intense yearning?"
The context is Paul's testimony of how he renounced his own self-righteousness in order to gain the righteousneess that comes from God through faith in Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:1-9). It is in the context of recounting the gospel as it applies to him personally that Paul feels this surge of desire to know Christ more intimately welling up within him.
A sense of obligation and duty never stimulates such a desire within us. Only love does that...
Preaching the gospel to ourselves every day addresses both the self-righteous Pharisee and the guilt-laden sinner that dwell in our hearts. Because the gospel is only for sinners, preaching it to ourselves every day reminds us that we are indeed sinners in need of God's grace. It causes us to say to God, in the words of an old hymn, "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling." It helps us to consciously renounce any confidence in our own goodness as a means of meriting God's blessing on our lives.
Perhaps more important, though, preaching the gospel to ourselves every day gives us hope, joy, and courage. The good news that our sins are forgiven because of Christ's death fills our hearts with joy, gives us courage to face the day, and offers us hope that God's favor will rest upon us, not because we are good, but because we are in Christ.
I love this book. I've only read the first chapter and it has already helped me so much.
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