True and unimagined peace comes only as we understand God’s character. If we erroneously envision that God is always angry and frowning then we will never know perfect peace. If we falsely picture that we have to perform to gain His approval, then we will be in a continual uproar. If we mistakenly imagine that God, having purchased us by blood, will someday wither in His faithfulness and desert us then we will be tossed to and fro by every circumstance. However, to enjoy true peace reigning in our hearts we need to be fastened firmly to the rock of the gospel and the revelation it gives us of God.
Our understanding of gospel truth is vital for many reasons not least of which is that, being holy, the Holy Spirit will neither bless the worship of a false God nor the false worship of the true God. The living and true God is the, “the God of all grace”(1 Peter 5:10), He is the God of the gospel (Rom 1:1) and it is the love of this true God that the Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts (Romans 5:5).
Nor does the Holy Spirit produce false feelings in us so that we can go around thinking wonderful things about ourselves, things which might establish a false confidence before the Lord. He continues to destroy every vestige of self-righteousness as He causes us see that we are saved from beginning to end by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The grace of God destroys all our supposed works and self-worthiness yet comes to us without cost to us or a cause in us. Grace is either absolutely free or it is not at all (Rom 4:4, 16; Eph 2:8-9; 2 Tim 1:9).
The object of the Spirit’s work is to bring us to such a gospel understanding of Yahweh that we can fully rest in Him. As He does this, He continues to show us our innate lostness and at the same time God’s immense goodness, power and grace towards us. He does not allow us false comfort by our feelings or even our faith. He does not cause us to place false hope in our supposed progress in the Christian faith, but rather works in us turning our eyes away from His own work and fixes our gaze on the love of God in Christ Jesus for us.
May the power of grace by the Spirit continually turn our eyes to see the cross and the Crucified One. ———–Who is this crucified One? He is God Himself; incarnate love hanging upon a cross. He is the God who created us, suffering and dying for the ungodly. Can you question His commitment to you? Can you ask anything further to bring you to the place of wholehearted trust and confidence? It is no wonder that we read, “Herein is LOVE, not that we love God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation of our sins.” (1 John 4:10). As the Puritan, Tomas Watson observed,
“The emperor Trajan tore off a piece of his robe to bind up one of his soldier’s wounds. But Christ tore off His own flesh for us! “He gave Himself for us to redeem us” (Titus 2:14). Christ gave Himself for us—what more could He give?
“Lamb of God, we fall before Thee,
Humbly trusting in Thy cross.
That alone be all our glory;
All things else are only dross.
Thee we own a perfect Savior,
Only source of all that’s good.
Every grace and every favor
Comes to us through Jesus’ blood.
All our prayers and all our praises,
Rightly offered in His Name—
He that dictates them is Jesus;
He that answers is the same.”
And That’s the Gospel Truth
Miles
Miles McKee Ministries
Box 541,Kingston Springs,
TN, 37082, USA
Permission is granted to republish the Wednesday Word on your Website, Blog or Church Bulletin on condition that no content of the actual message is altered.
Please forward this message to your friends.
We are funded through the faithful giving of precious people who love the gospel of Christ crucified.
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Tags: Wednesday Word
There is nothing quite so stupid as someone attempting to do good works in order to earn God’s favor and acceptance (Matt 7:27, Job 9:20). Such behavior is unbelief in its worst form and also a severe form of ‘spiritual lunacy’ (Luke 24:25). Religious un-believers think God‘s standards are so low that He will accept any old decayed and fractured efforts as being equal to His own righteousness. If the poor man who is living like this knew himself as God does, he would no more try such nonsense than he would think of attempting to scale a sheer precipice using a piece of string.
But the religious, self-righteous unbeliever thinks that his good works can bring God into his debt. Take for example the case of the late lamented Edward Malloy of County Cork, Ireland. The inscription on his tombstone reads as follows,
“I. H. S.
Sacred to the memory of the benevolent Edward Molloy; a friend of humanity, the father of the poor; he employed the wealth of this world only to procure the riches of the next; and leaving a balance of merit in the book of life,he made heaven debtor to mercy. He died October 17th, 1818, aged 90.”
Amusing, but tragic!
I’ve always found that the most difficult people to reach with the gospel are the self-righteous—the ones who reject their need of a righteousness entirely outside of themselves (Romans 10:3). They deny their guiltiness and hold the foolish hope that they shall enter into heaven by some work of their own. Nothing but the power of the Holy Spirit can undo their foolishness!
Others, however, who know they are bad, humanly speaking, are potentially closer to heaven than the self-righteous for at least they know their sin has separated them from God. Knowing this, they can sue for mercy at the foot of the cross (1 Peter 2:24). The self-righteous, on the other hand, are in imminent danger because they equate their righteousness as being equal to that of God’s. In other words, they have an awfully low opinion of the Lord and understand neither His holiness nor the necessity of the cross. They may be good church people, but they are unbelievers. They are lost (Phil 3:18)!
Did you know that Hell is full of ‘good’ people? They were so ‘good’ that they saw no need of the Redeemer. Martin Luther said that although he scarcely ever preached a sermon without giving vent against self-righteousness he found “that still I cannot preach it down. Still men will boast in what they can do, and mistake the path to heaven to be a road paved by their own merits, and not a way besprinkled by the blood of the atonement of Jesus Christ.”
Self –righteousness, however, must eventually wither and die in the light of the cross. The cross teaches loudly and clearly that everything required for our safe passage to Heaven has already been accomplished. The cross shows us that our substitute’s finished work has entirely satisfied the Father. Our righteousness is now found in Christ alone (Phil 3:9).
Rejecting the righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone, the unbelieving self-righteous man projects a wretched misrepresentation of God’s character and thus slanders His gracious name. The self-righteous believe a lie and reject the truth. Their unbelief is an attempt to obliterate the cross and to destroy the gracious name of Christ. Unbelief worships another god, an unknown god, no indeed a non-existent god from whom comes no peace for the sinner and no rest for the weary.
May we be given grace to accept and trust entirely in the character of God as demonstrated in Christ crucified. May we yet learn to rest entirely on the One who saves to the uttermost (Heb 7:25)!
“Lay your deadly doing down
Down at Jesus’ feet
Stand in Him and Him alone,
Gloriously complete.”
And That’s the Gospel Truth!
Miles
Miles McKee Ministries
Box 541,Kingston Springs,
TN, 37082, USA
Permission is granted to republishthe Wednesday Word on your Website, Blog or Church Bulletin on condition that no content of the actual message is altered.
Please forward this message to your friends.
We are funded through the faithful giving of precious people who love the gospel of Christ crucified.
To partner with us, please use the mailing addresses above or to donate online click or pastethe following link
http://www.milesmckee.com/invest_in_our_ministry.html
Tags: Wednesday Word
The only reason it is safe for us to draw near to God is because of something that has happened entirely outside of ourselves in history (Gal 3:13). There’s no point in looking within ourselves for something to qualify us for God’s favor as everything pertaining to us, that is everything outside of Christ, is already condemned. Apart from Christ Jesus we have no hope (Romans 3:10 ff).
But here’s how ridiculous things are; condemned men whose best efforts are rejected by heaven try to use religious works to impress God. In doing so they reject that Jesus is the only qualified mediator to mend the God-declared separation between themselves and the Holy One. They will try anything and everything other than resting on Christ alone for their entire reconciliation. Are you in anyway like that?
Horatius Bonar tells the story of a man, troubled by his sense of separation from God, who thought that if he could just be religious enough he could fix things up between himself and the Almighty. He chose prayer as his religious practice and reasoned that the Lord would be impressed by a praying man and would, therefore, accept him. After many weeks of praying he felt that not much progress was being made so he doubled the amount of his devotions, saying to himself, “Surely if I try harder God will take notice and will give me peace.” But no peace came. So he then decided to have family worship in his home, reasoning that, ” Now the Lord is bound to take notice of me and my efforts.” But there was still the great awareness of separation. Eventually he decided to hold a prayer meeting in his house and set aside a particular night. He invited his neighbors and prepared himself for conducting the meeting by writing a prayer and learning it off by heart. As he finished learning it, he threw it down on the table saying, “Surely that will do, God will now give me peace.” In that moment, a still small voice seemed to speak in his ear, saying, “No, that will not do; but Christ will do.” Immediately, the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw that Christ had done enough in His doing, dying and rising again. He saw that, in the light of the gospel, his efforts to impress God were redundant to the uttermost. Instantly, peace poured into his soul like a river. From then on “Christ will do,” became his lifetime motto!
He was so right! Christ will do! Christ will do for He is the only reconciler of man to God (Eph 2:13). Christ will do for He alone is the appointed mediator between the sinner and the All-Holy majestic One (1 Tim 2:5). Christ will do for He is the only one who poured out His life’s blood for sinners (Heb 10:19-22). Christ will do for He has risen in glorious triumph over the grave (John 10:17-18). Christ will do for He is heaven’s champion (Heb 2:10). Christ will do for He is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), the brightness of His glory and the express image of his person (Heb 1:3). Christ will do for the Father has one crowning purpose, which is to demonstrate His glory and grace in His well beloved Son (Eph 2:7). Christ will do for all events are moving towards that day when every knee will bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is the Kurios, the Lord (Philippians 2:9-11).
What a great life motto for us as we learn to look away from ourselves and our supposed sufficiency —“Christ will do.”
He has bought me with His blood;
Reconciled my soul to God;
Made me fit for glory too,
And will bring me safely through.
Christ will do!
What a great folly there is in performing religious works to try to get closer to God. If that’s what we are doing, then deep within our hearts we are saying, “Christ will not do!” The truth is, we can’t be any nearer to God than we already are in Christ. What a disaster, then, to think that our performance can improve on that of Christ’s finished work. Yes, Yes, Yes, Christ will do!
And that’s the Gospel Truth!
Miles
Miles McKee Ministries
Box 541, Kingston Springs,
TN, 37082, USA
Permission is granted to republish the Wednesday Word on your Website, Blog or Church Bulletin on condition that no content of the actual message is altered.
Miles McKee Ministries is a 501(c)(3) faith ministry. We are funded through the faithful giving of people who love the gospel of Christ crucified.
To donate: please use the mailing addresses above or to donate online click or paste the following link
http://www.milesmckee.com/invest_in_our_ministry.html
Tags: Wednesday Word
Key Scriptures
Deut 33:27 The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms: and he shall expel and drive out the
enemy from your presence and shall say, Destroy them.
John 6:37 All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and he that comes to me I will never cast out.
It is a settling and establishing truth to realize that we belong to the Lord. There’s a verse that says, “My beloved is mine and I am His.”
What a verse! It’s a wonderful truth to know that ‘He is ours’ but an even better truth to grasp that ‘we are His’. Just to know that HE is
mine doesn’t do it for me because I am in the habit of losing things. But Christ Jesus has lost nothing or no one, so when He tells me I am
His, that is enough for me.
We are His! But how did we become His? We became His because, first He made us then the Father gave us to Him as a gift. Then, He
bought us and looked for us till He found us and finally conquered us. You are His! Do you really believe this? You are His, not because of your performance, but because of His performance and grace.
So then, let me ask, is your sufficiency in yourself or in Jesus? Is He enough? Poor old Job, he would have utterly fainted had he not
believed that He belonged to the all-sufficient Lord. There was once a time when Job could talk about all that he had. He could boast
about his health, wealth and children, but suddenly, in one day, they were all gone. He had nothing left but the Word of the Lord
and the Lord of the Word. Was this enough? Would it be enough for you? He lost all things but could say with faith, “I know that my
Redeemer lives.’ Think about it, could you say that in a similar situation?
Is your redeemer enough for you? We have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Is that enough? We have His
precious promises: Are they enough? He has promised, “Come unto me and I will give you rest.” Is His rest enough? What more can He
do than he has already done? Is there something else you want to add to Him in order to find fulfillment?
We are His! What a great and excellent truth! When we stumble and fall, we are still His. When we fall, we actually fall into His embrace for, “underneath are the everlasting arms.” His arms are almighty, they catch us, hold, strengthen and restore us. Sometimes the very best thing that can happen to us is to fall, for through our abysmal failures we can learn our nothingness and His sufficiency. Through our fall we can learn to hate sin. When we are knocked down, it’s then we can look up. And here is the wisdom of the Lord: He wants us to look away from ourselves and fix our gaze on Him. He wants us to learn that He is our source, safety and salvation.
When we fall, the everlasting arms catch us. It is then we realize that, were it not for His grace, we would still deserve hell and destruction. In spite of our new life as Christians, we remain, at best, sinners saved by grace. So have you fallen? Have you fallen badly? Are you into pornography? Immorality? Adultery? Does that mean then that you are finished as a believer? Has God forgotten to be gracious? Has He turned His back on you? No! You have fallen into His everlasting arms! Let Him teach you, therefore, the horror of your sins, let Him show you your nothingness; let Him strengthen your heart and demonstrate the power of His might. Don’t be dismayed under the sense of our your own vileness and insufficiency. You are in His arms now! You are His! He will restore you and make you stand. Is this enough?
But be warned, not every one who says they are a follower of Jesus acts like one. And no, I’m not talking about Christians who fall. What I’m saying is, not every one will give you the same grace Jesus does. In their little self-righteous Pharisee hearts, many so-called Christians may reject and exclude you because you fell. But Jesus won’t—is that enough? Is His grace enough? Is His restoration enough? Can you live in grace even though other believers blacklist you?
Perhaps you are struggling with this very thing! Look up and see, Jesus sitting majestically, robed in love upon a throne of Grace. He is your King! Look again and see He is your advocate who pleads your cause. Look underneath, there are the everlasting arms of sovereign power. What authority then can snatch you out of the everlasting arms of the almighty God. What force can undo your reconciliation. What power can undo your redemption? What foul
Spirit can defy the Holy Spirit? “The eternal God is thy refuge:” He has surrounded you with His grace, love, might and power. Is this enough for you? Purpose today to walk into freedom by rejecting the rejections of others and declare that Jesus is enough.
Further Food: Song 2:16; Deut 33:27; Col. 1:16; Jn 6:37; Lk.19:10; Ps 27:8
Action item Scriptures
John 16:33 These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
No matter how many religious things we do or feel, whether praying, generous giving or abstaining from our ideas of worldliness, we cannot find, in any of them, a qualification by which we can approach God. Religious activity provides no resting place on which to discover the smile of God. If sin were a simple thing like a disease then perhaps religious observations might be helpful in mending the separating gulf between man and the Almighty. But sin is much worse than any disease; the unsaved sinner is not merely ‘sin-sick’, he is ‘sin-dead’ (Eph 2:1). Worse still, he is under the righteous condemnation of inflexible justice (Jn 3:18). God, the unchangeable judge has an unalterable hatred of sin and has warned about His coming wrath against the unsaved sinner and his sin (Matt 23:33).
Unbelieving self-righteous religious people make the awful mistake of trying to present their character to God as the basis of approaching Him. Approaching God in an acceptable way, however, has nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of our character. God says that our goodness, as a qualification, is non-existent: there is no goodness in us that entitles us to or recommends us for His acceptance (Job 15:14-16).
But unbelieving religious folk are not the only ones who have got the wrong idea about approaching God. There are many professing believers who think that if they pray for several hours or so, study the Bible and are really in earnest then they are now qualified to find a welcome from God. But, this makes zero sense since they are offering something they have done as the basis of their acceptance. Have you ever been like that?
This kind of thinking overlooks another question, “How am I to approach God in the first place?” When we pray we are trying to approach God, but how can we actually approach Him when His explicit testimony against all of us is, “You are unfit to approach me in your own merit”? (Ps 53:2-3). To imagine that we can pray ourselves out of unfitness towards God and into acceptable fitness is ridiculous. Unbeliever and believer alike must learn that our religious efforts can never be the ground of our approach to God. No amount of praying, working or feeling, can satisfy the righteousness of God, or open the door to the presence of the Holy One.
The big question that must then be answered is, “How shall a sinful man approach God and find acceptance before Him?” (Job 25:4). No appeal can be made to God based on our personal character, goodness, or religious performances (Romans 3:10 ff)——If God is not sufficiently impressed with our puny efforts or with us, what then are we to do? The good news is that we are not left to work this matter out for ourselves. God has already done something about our problem. He has settled the dilemma of approaching Him in the doing, dying and rising of Christ. It only remains for us to, by faith alone, receive what He has done. It is on the basis of Christ and His shed blood that we have an open and welcome approach to Heaven itself (Heb 10:22).
“Wherewith shall we approach the Lord
And bow before His throne?
By trusting in His faithful word,
And pleading Christ alone.
The blood, the righteousness and love
Of Jesus, will we plead;
He lives within the veil above,
For us to intercede.”
To approach God we need to remain poor, needy and broken, dependant entirely and exclusively on the person, work, name and grace of Christ Jesus our Savior, Shepherd and Substitute.
And that’s the Gospel Truth
Miles
email– milesmckee@comcast.net
Ministry mailing address
Box 541, Kingston Springs, TN, 37082, USA
Permission is granted to republish the Wednesday Word on your Website, Blog or Church Bulletin on condition that no content of the actual message is altered.
Miles McKee Ministries is a 501(c)(3) faith ministry. We are funded through the faithful giving of people like you who love the gospel of Christ crucified.
To donate: please use the mailing addresses above or to donate online click or paste the following link
That which makes it safe for us to draw near to God, and right for God to receive us, must be something altogether outside of ourselves. Why so? Because God has already rendered His verdict and everything pertaining to us, outside of Christ, God has already condemned (Romans 3:10 ff). So here is the folly of the matter: Condemned men whose best efforts are rejected by heaven and whose works have earned them condemnation try to use a religious work like prayer to impress God and thus to make Him more amenable to them! Instead of realizing that Jesus is enough to mend the separation between the sinner and man, man attempts all manner of religious activities to impress His maker.
Horatius Bonar tells the story of a man, troubled by his sense of separation from God, who thought that if he could pray hard enough he could get peace. Not much progress was being made so he doubled the amount of his devotions, saying to himself, “Surely God will give me peace.” But the peace did not come. He set up family worship, saying, “Surely God will give me peace.” But there was no peace. At last he thought the sure remedy would be to have a prayer meeting in his house. He set the night; invited his neighbors; and prepared himself for conducting the meeting, by writing a prayer and learning it by heart. As he finished learning it, he threw it down on the table saying, “Surely that will do, God will give me peace now.” In that moment, a still small voice seemed to speak in his ear, saying, “No, that will not do; but Christ will do.” Immediately, the scales fell from his eyes, and the burden from his shoulders. Peace poured in like a river. “Christ will do,” became his motto for the rest of his life.
It’s a great life motto for us too —“Christ will do.”
Jesus is Enough!
I am so thankful for the ministry of the Holy Spirit in relation to the gospel. He gives us faith (Eph 2:8) and then persuades us of impossible things, the most unfeasible of these being the gospel itself!
Have you ever considered the unlikeliness of the whole gospel story? Here we are on a tiny, insignificant speck of a planet, un-noticeable in the vast array of galaxies and yet God, the creator of all things, has a special interest in us.
And the skeptic says, “What a far-fetched idea!”
Well it may be far fetched to some, but the truth is He came here and became one of us!
And the doubter says, “Wait a minute, I don’t believe in fairy stories!”
But this is no fairy story my friend; not only did He become one of us, He also died the cruelest of deaths for us as He took responsibility for our sins and failures. And not only did He die for us, He also became a curse for us and at the cross became the greatest reject in the world.
And the cynic says, “But that’s impossible”
Impossible to believe? Yes indeed, the whole thing is impossible to believe unless the Holy Spirit possesses us and, in grace, opens our spiritual eyes. It’s all impossible to grasp unless He gives us faith to believe. He lets us see that the baby born in the stable was the Mighty God (Isa 9:6). He births faith that we might see that our redemption and security are in the Lamb of God alone (John 1:29). He convinces us that our righteousness is in Christ alone (Jeremiah 23:6). He shows us that, because of the blood, our conscience can be at peace (Heb 9:14). He guarantees us that we are fully accepted in heaven, right now and forever, because of Jesus (Eph 1:6). He assures us that our adversary, Satan, has been judged and defeated at the cross (Col 2:15). He persuades us that there is a fierce judgment to come and yet witnesses to us that we can approach it with confidence because the Lord Jesus was slain as our substitute (Rom 3:25).
The Holy Spirit continually takes us to the Lord Jesus whom we have never seen and does the impossible by making Him exceedingly precious to our hearts. He magnifies the Lord Jesus and causes our desires to go after Him. We could see nothing in Christ Jesus to desire were it not for the ministry of the Spirit. The great English preacher, William Romaine said it this way;
“This is the way in which the Holy Ghost glorifies Jesus: He gives the believer such views of the infinite fullness and everlasting sufficiency of Emmanuel, that he is quite satisfied with Him. His conscience is brought into sweet peace through the sprinkling of the blood of the Lamb of God: and when guilt would arise and unbelieving fears disturb, he is enabled through faith in Jesus to maintain his peace; because, whatever rendered him hateful to God, he sees it removed by his adorable Surety: —-Thus he enters into the promised rest; thus he maintains himself in it.”
William Romaine: Letter 11 (Dec. 29th, 1764).
Without the ministry of the Holy Spirit the whole gospel record and it’s ensuing mercies are impossible to grasp. It is far fetched. It is foolishness (1 Cor 1:18). Someone says, “I see what you mean, when I think about it I find it’s almost impossible to believe that one simple act of faith on my part can wipe out the entire record of sin and the accumulated filth of a lifetime of wickedness.”
Well no, that’s not what I mean. You talk about the impossibility of faith wiping out your sin—– well I agree with you. No amount of believing on your part can erase the horror and depth of your sin—that is indeed impossible! But, here’s the reality. Jesus Christ Himself has already purged our sin. Jesus Christ Himself has already redeemed (paid for) us. Because of Him we are out of spiritual debt; we are free and clear. Your believing does not purge your sins; your believing does not redeem you. Your believing doesn’t pay your debt to God. And it doesn’t have to because Christ has already finished and accomplished our redemption at Calvary. The Holy Spirit gives faith to believe this—He gives faith to rest on this. Believe on Christ Jesus, rest on Him and the impossible will become reality—you will be saved!
And that’s the Gospel Truth!
Miles
Ministry mailing address
Box 541, Kingston Springs, TN, 37082, USA
Spread the Word! —– Please forward the ‘Wednesday Word’ to your friends and family.
Permission is granted to republish the Wednesday Word on your Website, Blog or Church Bulletin on condition that no content of the actual message is altered.
Miles McKee Ministries is a 501(c)(3) faith ministry, dedicated to restoring the gospel to its rightful place through radio, writing, proclamation, missionary activity and web ministry. We are funded through the faithful giving of people like you who love the gospel of Christ crucified.
To donate: please use either of the mailing addresses above or to donate online click or paste the following link
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Tags: Wednesday Word
There are many great and wonderful truths taught in the Bible, but which of them do we primarily need to rest in order to receive acquittal before God? Take the ‘Second Coming ’, for example, (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18): that Christ will one day return to this earth in great glory is an excellent truth. In fact, if someone told me that they were a believer, but rejected this truth I would probably question their salvation (1 Jn 3:3). Yet we are not in any sense declared not guilty by believing in the second coming of our Lord.
We believe that Christ ascended into heaven (Eph 4:10) and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high (Heb 10:12), but wonderful as this truth is, it is not the basis of our justification.
We believe that the Holy Spirit has been sent to earth as the exclusive substitute for Christ (John 14:16-20) and that He is actively calling out a bride for the wonderful Son of God, yet again, believing these things does not cause us to receive right standing before the all-holy and righteous God.
What about the resurrection? Faith looks at the resurrection and sees it as the proof that Christ satisfied the justice of God. Romans 4:25 tells us that He, “…was raised again for our justification.’ Faith sees that the resurrection was, therefore, the visible pledge of a justification already accomplished. However, although the resurrection is the proof of our justification, it is not the ground of our acquittal.
So what then is the belief that we need to have in order to be saved? What we need is faith in Christ Jesus, the God/Man, who was crucified on our behalf. It is not merely enough to assent to the fact that He died; we must be possessed by a faith in His person and death. What we need is a faith that Christ, the man who is God, died as our substitute and our propitiation to remove the righteous wrath of the all-holy God. But more than that, the faith that justifies also grasps that Christ Himself is now our only righteousness (Jeremiah 33:16; Romans 1:16-17). Faith sees that no other righteousness other than Christ’s admits us to heaven. Faith also sees that no other righteousness is either requested or required (Phil 3:9)!
No one will stand in the presence of God who does not have the righteousness of Christ as their very own. His righteousness is the only perfect righteousness in existence (Isa 11:1-5; Ps 40: 7-8;) and it is given to us as a free gift in the gospel (Rom 5;15-18; Heb 10:9-14). The only way of salvation is in Christ plus nothing. If He and His finished work are not your exclusive hope then, regardless of what else you believe in the Bible, you are lost; you are still under sin, guilt, and condemnation.
Faith, although it receives all the great truths of the Word, always brings us back to Christ crucified as the exclusive ground and basis of our justification. Christ plus nothing received by faith plus nothing is where we stand.
There’s a marvelous text in 2 Timothy 1:12 where the apostle says “Nevertheless I’m not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed unto him against that day.” Many years ago, ‘Rabbi’ Duncan, Professor of Hebrew at New College, Edinburgh, (he was nicknamed Rabbi for he was so steeped in learning), was lecturing in class and they were discussing this particular verse. One of the students cited the text, “I know in whom I have believed and am persuaded.” Professor Duncan stopped him and said, “Repeat that text.” He said, “I know in whom I have believed,” “My dear sir,” interrupted Rabbi Duncan, ” it’s ‘I know whom I have believed;’—- you must never let even a preposition come between you and your Savior.”
So let’s say it again, it is Christ plus nothing received by faith plus nothing that is the true gospel ground.
And that’s the Gospel Truth
Miles
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Tags: Wednesday Word
The great sin of the religious, self-righteous man is not his pride; it is that he does not believe, rest on and love the Lord Jesus (John 3:18; 1 John 5:10; 1 Cor 16:22). This is his sin of sins. This is his most severe sin, carrying with it a more concentrated condemnation than all his other sins combined.
Jesus taught this when He said, “When he (the Spirit) is come he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment — because they believe not on me” (John 16:8-9). According to our Master, the first sin that the Holy Spirit convicts us of is that of not believing on Him. Notice how the Spirit’s priority is not to convince people that they are lawbreakers, but rather, His first concern is to reprove the world of the great sin of not believing on Christ. In other words, the essence of sin is not what we do; it is what we believe. Not trusting in the Lord Jesus is the root of all lawlessness.
The Holy Spirit also reproves of righteousness. He literally brings to light the uselessness of the world’s righteousness. Notice, it’s not unrighteousness that the Holy Spirit exposes (in this verse), but righteousness. The worldly religionist thinks that he is righteous, but God strongly disagrees with Him (Rom 3:10 ff). Nowhere is this more clearly seen than at the cross. It was self-righteous unbelieving, upstanding men who murdered the Lord Jesus. In their minds they were acting righteously. In their self-righteous estimation they were convinced that Jesus was wrong about both His doctrine and His identity. But when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended, the Spirit was sent to declare otherwise. In the light of the cross, self satisfied, religious, prideful man was shown to be guilty. The cross, therefore, is God’s verdict on the awful sinful mass of filth that constituted man’s righteousness (Isa 64:6). If ever the self -righteous are to be saved, the Spirit of God must show them that they need an entirely new righteousness—the righteousness of Christ Himself.
According to Jesus, the Holy Spirit also convinces the world of judgment—– not of their future judgment although of course that is coming to all Christ rejecters, but of judgment “because the prince of this world has been judged” (Jn 16:11). At the cross, Jesus bore our sins, those very sins by which Satan had held us captive. However, Satan’s grip over us was destroyed at Calvary. Satan has been judged and all who believe in Christ Jesus are now free from his bondage. This is good news
We are saved by powerful grace, yet it is only to the degree that we grasp how worthy of condemnation, bondage and ruin we were that we appreciate the wonder and marvel of the lavish grace of God (Luke 7:47). Grace means that God has loved us for no other reason than that He has loved us! He who is all purity has loved us at our worst. We were guilty, but He is just. We were morally diseased, but He is all holy, we were deserving of death, but He has life in Himself, we were under wrath yet Christ rescued, ransomed, redeemed and reconciled us. That’s grace!
And that’s the Gospel Truth
Miles
Miles McKee Ministries
To talk to Miles about this week’s Wednesday Word email him at milesmckee@comcast.net
Ministry address
In Europe, C/O James
Buckley, Longgraigue, Foulksmills, Co Wexford, Ireland
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Miles McKee Ministries is a 501(c)(3) faith ministry, dedicated to restoring the gospel to its rightful place. We are funded through the partnership of people who love to spread the gospel of Christ crucified.
To donate go to
http://www.milesmckee.com/project_ireland.html and click link at the bottom of the page.
2 Cor 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
False teachers will always try to take us away from Christ Crucified. They offer formulas for success in the Christian life but, although they tip their hats to Jesus, He is neither the center nor the circumference of their message. “If you do this” they boast, “then God will do thus and so for you. ” “Do and you’ll get” is their theme. But this is legalism ‘pure and undefiled!’ Gospel faith, however, differs from this, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Faith, real faith, will cause us to give up our exhausting and useless efforts to do or feel something good in order to coax God to love and bless us (Eph 2:8).
At times, unfortunately, we stray from the gospel and feel that we need to make an extra special effort at godliness so that we can squeeze more acceptance from the Heavenly Father. We sometimes think that, if only we could spend more time in Bible reading, prayer and witnessing then the Father would really love us and count us as special. But to think this way is the very opposite of faith in the finished work. It is actually unbelief. True faith always rests upon Christ alone to gain us full approval, acceptance and blessing before God.
Then there’s the religionist. Like the false teacher, the non-gospel, religious, self-satisfied man always tries to get away from Christ crucified. But before we condemn and judge him, we’d better take a good hard look at ourselves. Stupid as it may seem, we would often rather trust in our own performance than that of Christ’s (Gal 6:3). Furthermore, we would rather trust our own experience than that of Christ’s experience on our behalf. In doing so, we leave the gospel and fall headlong into religion and works (Gal 5:4). Remember this, the religious person doesn’t mind adding the cross to his belief system,—it becomes, as it were, one of his many collectable trinkets—- but in making the cross something additional he cancels its simplicity and reduces it to nothing. The cross, for him, is just something that he adds to, but the truth is, to add any kind of plus to the cross makes it nonplused.
The truth is this, the cross saves completely or not at all. We can never, therefore, divide the work of salvation between ourselves and Christ crucified. It is not our performance plus Christ’s doing, dying and rising from the grave which gives favor with God and saves (Gal 2:21). Faith grasps that Christ alone saves. Faith adds nothing to the cross for faith sees the fullness and sufficiency of the work done there and brings us to rest on Christ alone (2 Cor 3:4-5). We do not come to Calvary to add anything, we come by faith to see and hear something. At Calvary, faith sees the glorious truth that all things have already been sufficiently and completely accomplished and it also hears the “It is finished!” of Christ Jesus the Sin-bearer (John 19:30). Faith, having caused us to see and hear, then causes us to speak and say a hearty “Amen.”
And that’s the Gospel Truth
Miles
Miles McKee Ministries
www.milesmckee.com
To talk to Miles about this week’s Wednesday Word email him at milesmckee@comcast.net
Ministry address
In North America, Box 541, Kingston Springs, TN, 37082, USA
In Europe, C/O James Buckley, Longgraigue, Foulksmills, Co Wexford, Ireland
Spread the Word! —– Please forward the ‘Wednesday Word’ to your friends and suggest that they subscribe. Or, better yet, send in their email addresses and we will add them.
Permission is granted to republish the Wednesday Words on your Website, Blog or Church Bulletin on condition that no content is altered.
Miles McKee Ministries is a 501(c)(3) faith ministry, dedicated to restoring the gospel to its rightful place through radio, writing, proclamation, missionary activity and web ministry. We are funded through the faithful giving of people who love the gospel of Christ crucified.
Partners for Ireland urgently needed! To donate go to http://www.milesmckee.com/project_ireland.html and click link at the bottom of the page.