Sunday, August 12, 2012

Nothing Else Needed

In Christ alone my hope is found
He is my light, my strength, my song
This Cornerstone, this solid ground
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease
My Comforter, my All in All
Here in the love of Christ I stand

In Christ alone, who took on flesh
Fullness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
‘Til on that cross as Jesus died
The wrath of God was satisfied
For every sin on Him was laid
Here in the death of Christ I live

There in the ground His body lay
Light of the world by darkness slain
Then bursting forth in glorious Day
Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ

No guilt of life, no fear in death
This is the power of Christ in me
From life’s first cry to final breath
Jesus commands my destiny
No power of hell, no scheme of man
Can ever pluck me from His hand
‘til He returns or calls me home
Here in the power of Christ I’ll stand
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;

We sang this song in church today.  And it is the 6th time and source of late that God is bringing home to me the GOSPEL ("Good News" lit.) ...the beauty and marvelous freedom in the fact that I need do nothing to add to how Christ has saved me, qualified me, freed me, accepted me, and forgiven me completely and solely by his work on the Cross.  My whole life I've struggled with the sense of not being good enough....of failing God.  And indeed I did fail him.  Daily.  Hourly.  But the marvelous, amazing, astounding truth is that God does not see those failures.  He sees rather the blood of Christ....paying for them before they were even committed.  He looks at me and he sees me, Cynthia, as complete and wholly righteous--he sees Christ in me.  And you know what?  The fullness of God dwelt in Christ...When we see the love of Christ, the passion of Christ on behalf of those sinners he came to free: we see God's love, God's passion.  And when we hear or read of the wonderful virtues of God listed for example in the Psalms....those are all describing Christ.  And that is what God sees reflected in, and covering me.

I've committed some horrific sins in my life.  Things that when I think of them could make me want to die in shame.  Tears are in my eyes now as I reflect on those and realize those sins are no longer mine.  Christ took them on to himself and paid for them with his own precious blood.  I need never cower before an angry God. I need never avoid talking to him because of my shame and failures.  All I need to do to put these things under that eradicating power of the blood, is to confess them and turn my back on them.  Corrie Ten Boom said once, that we bury those sins in the sea of God's forgetting and there is NO FISHING ALLOWED.  I do not have to keep wallowing in those sins.  I am not doomed to repeat them.  The shame of them is no longer mine.  It too, is Christ's.

I need to preach this Gospel to myself everyday because the power and freedom it gives me is what will allow God's purposes and work to be completed in me.  I will begin to look more and more like him.  And now, it is no longer with the intent of impressing him with my goodness....but merely reflecting and rejoicing in him and in the freedom I have in him...in the JOY I have in that freedom.  In that forgiveness; in that perfection; in that righteousness.  All this I own.  In Christ Alone.

 Sources: "Jesus+Nothing=Everything" by Tullian Tchividjian
"When I don't Desire God"- John Piper
"The Explicit Gospel"  Matt Chandler

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