Can you help me?

Let us hear the Lord Jesus speak to each one of us:

‘I will help you.  It is but a small thing for me, your God, to help you. Consider what I have done already.  What! not help you?  Why, I bought you with my blood.  What! not help you?  I have died for you; and if I have done the greater, will I not do the less?  Help you!  It is the least thing I will ever do for you.  I have done more, and will do more.

Before the world began I chose you.  I made the covenant for you.  I laid aside my glory and became a man for you, I gave up my life for you; and if I did all this, I will surely help you now.  In helping you, I am giving you what I have bought for you already.  If you had need of a thousand times as much help, I would give it to you; you require little compared with what I am ready to give.  ‘Tis much for you to need, but it is nothing for me to bestow.  Help you?  Fear not!  If there were an ant at the door of your granary asking for help, it would not ruin you to give him a handful of your wheat; and you are nothing but a tiny insect at the door of my all-sufficiency.  I will help you.’

--Charles Haddon Spurgeon

A fire I cannot escape

I’m a little like the duck hunter who was hunting with his friend when far away on the horizon he noticed a cloud of smoke. A wind came up and he realized the terrible truth: a brush-fire was advancing his way.

... The hunter began to empty all the contents of his knapsack. He soon found what he was looking for ... a book of matches.

He lit a small fire around the two of them. Soon they were standing in a circle of blackened earth, waiting for the brush fire to come. The fire came near-and swept over them, but they were completely unhurt. They weren’t even touched. Fire would not burn the place where fire had already burned.

The law is like the brush-fire. I cannot escape it. But if I stand in the burned-over place, where law has already burned its way through, then I will not get hurt. Not a hair of my head will be singed. The death of Christ is the burned-over place. There I huddle, hardly believing yet relieved. Christ’s death has disarmed the law. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

--Dr. Paul Zahl
Who Will Deliver Us? The Present Power of the Death of Christ (pg. 42-43)

Allow Jesus to arrive on the scene

However much we may pay tribute to grace with our lips, our hearts are so thoroughly marinated in law that the Christian life must be, at core, one of continually bathing our hearts and minds in gospel grace. We are addicted to law. Conforming our lives to a moral framework, playing by the rules, meeting a minimum standard – this feels normal. And it is how we naturally seek to cure that deep sense of inadequacy within...

...Law feels safe; grace feels risky. Rule-keeping breeds a sense of manageability; grace feels like moral vertigo… The Jesus of the Gospels defies our domesticated, play-by-the-rules morality. It was the most extravagant sinners of Jesus’ day who received his most compassionate welcome; it was the most scrupulously law-abiding people who were the objects of his most searing denunciation. The point is not that we should therefore take up sin. It is that we should lay down the silly insistence on leveraging our sense of self-worth with an ongoing moral record. Better a life of sin with penitence than a life of obedience without it...

...The Jesus of the Gospels defies our safe, law-saturated, reward-conscious existence. He is many things. But predictable is not on the list. ... No sooner have we convinced ourselves that God is real and the Bible meaningful than Jesus arrives on the scene and turns all our intuitive expectations on their heads. The deeper into grace we go, the deeper will be our wonder. But though Jesus’ intuition-defying grace surprises us, our confusion does not surprise him. He knows all about it. And he is a patient teacher, more patient than we have yet dared to believe.

--Dane Ortlund, Defiant Grace, pages 12-15.

Consider that the blood was enough

Sinner:
I see. I see for the first time. It’s clear to me. You died for me and for my sin. You took my verdict.

God:
I did.

Sinner:
So tell me what I can do to show you how grateful I am.

God:
You’re not ready for that.  You have forgotten what Anselm said: "You have not yet considered the depth of your sin."

Sinner:
But I want to show you I have. I really have. I know it is really deep. Talk to me. Teach me sanctification.

God:
I told you. You aren’t ready for sanctification yet. You just imagine that you are ready. You are arrogant and you don’t know it.

Sinner:
Well, what then?

God:
Just sit there. Sit there for a long while.

Sinner:
And do what?

God:
Consider the shed blood. Consider that the blood was enough. Think about the fact that it isn’t your repenting that has saved you. Think about the fact that it isn’t your faith that is saving you.

Sinner:
Can’t I just, as you said, just think about my sin and the depth of it?

God:
That is a start. But you like doing that. You like it too much.

Sinner:
This makes no sense. What are you saying?

God:
I am saying that you like atoning for yourself by feeling guilty. And you like atoning for yourself by thinking about your faith.

Sinner:
Well, what else is there?

God:
There is Jesus Christ – but you don’t consider Him. You are not used to gifts. You don’t think much about them. Gifts make you nervous and tense. You don't know what to do, so you jump to trying to impress Me. I am not impressible.

Sinner:
I’m confused.

God:
You are.

Sinner:
Are you saying that I find a thousand ways to avoid your graciousness to me in the cross of Jesus, the shed blood of Jesus?

God:
I am.

Sinner:
Are you saying that I try to buy your gifts, try to pay you for them so I don't think about them being gifts? Because I’m afraid that if they are gifts, it is really too good to be true?

God:
That is what I am saying.

Sinner:
You mean I don’t like letting you freely justify me? I resist what is really a free justification?

God:
Yes. You like what is inside of you. You like your commitment, your Christian life. My gifts make you nervous. You want to think about you. You like thinking about you. You would walk a thousand miles barefoot over glass shards to avoid My gifts to you.

Sinner:
Why haven’t I seen this?

God:
Because you are a child of Adam.

Sinner:
I know. But I’m not stupid. I have two master’s degrees. I’m a child of Adam with two master’s degrees.

God:
It is not a matter of intelligence. It is a matter of sin.

Sinner:
Well, what’s the answer?

God:
I’ve been telling you the answer all along. The answer is the gift, the blood.  The answer is you looking for once in your life to something other than yourself. Your religiousness is your enemy! You don’t hate it. And you should.  I do.

Sinner:
You mean I worship me?

God:
That is what I mean. Your sanctification is your golden calf. You love thinking about your lack of it. And you love thinking of how full you are of it. Either way, you are your own favorite idol.

Sinner:
That’s not true. I just want to play my part.

God:
You have no part.

Sinner:
Well, a fine kettle of fish this is! A salvation without me as even a part of it.

God:
That’s the only kind of salvation there is.

Sinner:
Well, if You’re not impressed by my thoughts or my feelings, what does impress you, anyway?

God:
Nothing in you impresses Me.

Sinner:
Well, does anything impress You?

God:
My Son’s shed blood impresses Me. And His shed blood is yours. It is reckoned to you.

Sinner:
Oh, Father, I’m sorry.

God:
You are. And I gave you that, too.

Sinner:
You gave me, “I’m sorry?”

God:
Yes.

Sinner:
Is there anything good or true that I don’t get from your generosity?

God:
No.

--Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, excerpts from a conversational sermon
source: here

We've been told so much

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:11)

We are told to realize something that is already true of our position or status. It is not an exhortation to us to do anything with regard to sin, but to realize what has already been done for us with respect to our relationship to sin.  It is an exhortation to us to remember what is already true of us... And what is true of us is that we are already in an entirely new position and standing with respect to sin.

This is something which we have to believe solely because the Word of God teaches it. You do not 'experience' your position, you are told about it and you believe it. That is what justification by faith alone means.

...We have all got to do what Abraham did. We must just take the bare Word of God, believe it, submit to it, and act upon it. That is what we have to do with this statement.

--Martyn Lloyd-Jones
(Romans 6: The New Man, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2008), 120.

A kingdom hidden from willpower

John Dink is reminded (by a quote from Louis Berkhof) that God, and not man, is the author of sanctification:

"… it’s a sobering reminder, aimed at the ways we tend equate our Father’s house with bigger-faster-stronger living.  Instead, Jesus makes his home with those who mourn. He waits for the weak. He conquers by laying down his life. God’s kingdom is a gift for any receiver — yet, it is hidden from those armed with willpower instead of faith."

--John Dink
source: here