Present Tense

God gives grace through Christ for past sin, But what about your (and my) present sin? Check out Sin in the Present Tense by Darryl Dash

When we talk about God’s grace, we often talk about grace for past sin. But what about sin in the present tense? Is there grace for that as well?


It’s an important question, because we need grace for present sin. “There do not seem to be any convincing verses in Scripture that teach that it is possible for anyone to be completely free of sin in this life,” writes Wayne Grudem inSystematic Theology. We need present grace for present sin, or else we’re in trouble.

However, we're often unprepared for how to deal with present-tense sin. We hide in shame and try to self-atone by feeling bad and beating ourselves up, rather than trusting in the finished work of Christ.

How do we deal with present-tense sin? Seven ideas:

One: We shouldn’t be surprised by present sin. As James notes, “We all stumble in many ways” (James 3:2). John writes that nobody should claim to be sinless (1 John 1:18). Sin will be part of our ongoing reality until our glorification.

Two: We shouldn’t accept present sin. Countless Scriptures tell us to strive for holiness and avoid evil (e.g. 2 Corinthians 7:1, Colossians 3:5). We can never make a truce with sin, despite the first point.

Three: We shouldn't get overly discouraged when we sin. While we shouldn't accept sin, neither should we wallow in guilt and shame. Instead, we should run to God's grace. Millard Erickson captures this well:

On the one hand…there need not be great feelings of discouragement, defeat, even despair and guilt, when we do sin. But on the other hand, it also means that we will not be overly pleased with ourselves nor indifferent to the presence of sin. (Christian Theology)

Four: We can be open about our sins and struggles with God. This is hard, because we're usually ashamed. I love what Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel write in Beloved Dust:
Everything that comes out of our hearts in the presence of the Lord is an invitation to be known by him. Whether it is fear, shame, pride, anxiety, or even lust, our call is to open those things before him and receive redemption as those who desperately need it.

Five: Confess sins (appropriately) in community. As Kent Hughes points out in his commentary on James 5:16, sin brings isolation. Confession destroys this autonomy, promotes humility, allows the free flow of grace in community, and allows us to bear each other’s burdens (Galatians 6:1).

Six: Confess sins corporately. As William Dyrness says, this is just confessing reality. It's why I love including corporate confession in our public worship. This can be one of the most beautiful parts of the service. Mike Cosper writes, “As Christians acknowledge their failures together, they testify to the world that the plausibility of the gospel is rooted not in their performance, but in the faithful mercy of God.”

Seven: Pray for daily forgiveness. It’s interesting that Jesus taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread" and then "forgive us our debts…” (Matthew 6:11-12). Just as we need to pray for daily bread, we also need to pray for daily forgiveness. It's our daily prayer this side of the fullness of the Kingdom.

We sin in the present tense. We need God’s grace in the present tense. Believing the gospel means that we are free to acknowledge this reality, free to run to grace, and free to be real rather than posing and pretending.

Good News, Bad News

HT: Tullian Tchividjian @PastorTullian

More

From NotAFan.com

Seeing More

"Growing in the gospel means seeing more of God’s holiness and more of my sin. And because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, we need not fear seeing God as he really is or admitting how broken we really are. Our hope is not in our own goodness, nor in the vain expectation that God will compromise his standards and ‘grade on a curve.’ Rather, we rest in Jesus as our perfect Redeemer — the One who is ‘our righteousness, holiness and redemption’ (1 Cor. 1:30). "

— Bob Thune and Will Walker, The Gospel-Centered Life (World Harvest Mission, 2009), page 6

HT: Of First Importance

Only One Source

From @DailyKeller

Are You Satisfied?

HT: Challies.com

The Biggest Scandal

"Grace is the biggest scandal in church history. It is something none of us deserve; something we’re given when we’re hiding in our sin and we meet our Saviour at the well. He offers us life, love, and hope: not condemnation. What will help someone who’s fallen “Go and sin no more?” Our gossip? Our assumptions? Our self-righteousness? Or our love, our encouragement, and our prayers?"

              -Anne Marie Miller

All Blemished in Your Eyes

                           With Empty Hands

After earth's  exile, I hope to go and enjoy you in the fatherland,
but I do not want to lay up merits for heaven.
I want to work for your love alone.....In the evening of this life,
I shall appear before you with empty hands, for I do not ask you,
Lord, to count my works. All our justice is blemished in your
eyes. I wish, then, to be clothed in your own jusice and to receive
from your love the eternal possession of yourself.

         -St Therese of Lisieux, from The Story of a Soul

Out of Wrath, Peace

“Redeeming love and retributive justice joined hands, so to speak, at Calvary, for there God showed Himself to be ‘just, and the justifer of him who hath faith in Jesus’.

Do you understand this? If you do, you are now seeing to the very heart of the Christian gospel. No version of that message goes deeper than that which declares man’s root problem before God to be his sin, which evokes wrath, and God’s basic provision for man to be propitiation, which out of wrath brings peace.”

— J. I. PackerIn My Place Condemned He Stood (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008), 41




Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Amazing Achievement of Justice and Mercy

God, I ponder Your achievement.
You don’t condone my sin,
nor do You compromise Your standard.
You don’t ignore my rebellion,
nor do You relax Your demands.
Rather than dismiss my sin,
You assume my sin,
and incredibly sentence Yourself.
Your holiness is honored.
My sin is punished…
and I am redeemed.
You have done what I cannot do -
so I can be what I dare not dream -
Perfect before You.

- Max Lucado

Hat Tip: Trevin Wax

Pursuit of Fleeting Pleasures

Psalm 51 is King David's confession of his sin after his affair with Bathsheba. In verse 4 he says "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight."   The following comments on this passage come from Tony Reinke, quoting Rick Gamache's sermon “Whiter Than Snow”

I believe what David is saying in verse 4 [Psalm 51:4] is that all sin is a preference for the fleeting pleasures of the world and the flesh over the everlasting joy of God’s fellowship. This is why the Christian life is a life of repentance (like Martin Luther said), not because every time we sin we lose our status as God’s children and have to get saved all over again. Our status never changes. We are always God’s children, we are still declared to be holy even when we sin, we are still the heirs of his Kingdom.

But our sin affects our relationship with God. Our sin breaks our fellowship with God. David realizes that before he ever committed adultery with Bathsheba, he committed spiritual adultery against God. Why did he need her? Why was he willing to murder his own friend for her? It is because before David ever sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah, he lost the joy of his salvation. That is why he asks for the joy to be restored [Psalm 51:12].

We sin because we forget God’s steadfast love and abundant mercy. When we are not ravished by him, we forget the superior pleasures that there are in God and give ourselves to the inferior pleasures of sin. And this is why David says, “Against you God, you only have I sinned.” He goes deep with his confession because he knows repentance is the way back to fellowship with God.

I think it is absolutely amazing and very telling, given what we know about the situation, that David never mentions sexual sin in Psalm 51. He’s not mainly praying that the Lord would provide him with good accountability. He’s not mainly praying that God would give him self-control and protect his eyes and his mind. Those are all good things. But David does not mention them here because his sexual sin — and every sexual sin — is the symptom of the disease not the disease. Sexual sin is a symptom of lack of fullness of joy and gladness in Jesus. It’s a symptom of a lack of being ravished by the love and kindness and mercy and goodness and beauty and excellence and majesty and glory and honor and power of God.

Pre-Existing Condition

Aren't you glad Jesus doesn't really take that attitude.  Sin is a "pre-existing" condition that we all have, and He removes it by His grace.

Deceptive DNA

"You'll never understand sin's sleight of hand until you acknowledge that a significant part of the DNA of sin is deception. As sinners we are all very committed and gifted self-swindlers. No one is more influential in your life than you, because you talk to yourself more than anyone else does. What you say to yourself is profoundly important. Your words either aid God's work of conviction and confession or they assist sin's system of deception. So it's important to humbly admit that we're all too skilled at looking at our own wrong and seeing good. We're all much better at seeing the sin, weakness, and failure of others than we are our own. We're all very good at being intolerant in others the very things that we willingly tolerate in ourselves. The bottom line is that sin causes us not to hear or see ourselves with accuracy. And we not only tend to be blind, but, to compound matters, we also tend to be blind to our blindness."

From Paul Tripp at As You Are – The Gospel Coalition Blog. Much more at the link

For Helpless People

“If you read the Scriptures carefully, you will never get the idea that the work of Christ is for well adjusted people who just need a little redemptive boost. It never presents any human condition or dilemma as outside the scope of the gospel. Redemption is nothing less than the rescue of helpless people facing an eternity of torment apart from God’s love.”

— Paul David Tripp  Instruments in The Redeemer's Hands
(Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R Publishing, 2002), 195

Hat Tip: Not a little redemptive boost | Of First Importance

The Power of Beholding

"When we see the size and beauty of the God who speaks to us, the power of sin and idolatry over our hearts is broken.

The way that we will stop sinning is not by being told over and over, 'Stop sinning!' but by seeing the majesty and glory of God in our hearts.

'But wait!' you might say. 'The Bible is full of directives and prohibitions.  Isn't the point of the Bible to stop sinning?'

Yes. But ceasing to sin is the by-product of seeing God. As we see the beauty of God and feel His weightiness in our hearts, our hearts begin to desire Him more than we desire sin. Before the Bible says, 'Stop sinning,' it says, 'Behold your God!'"

- J.D. Greear, The Gospel: Recovering the Power that Made Christianity Revolutionary, page 97

I'm finding gems like this on almost every page of this powerful book!

You Hven't Really Said No Until You Say Yes

I like (and agree with) this discussion of repentance by Michael Kelley at Forward Progress

"The Bible calls us to repent of sin and all that it entails. Most of the time when we see that word, “repent,” we think it means “stop.” Stop doing, believing, or thinking whatever it is you are doing, believing, or thinking. But repent doesn’t mean to stop; it means to turn.

True repentance is not just stopping; it involves a shift in focus where you actively choose something different and better than what you used to involved yourself in. Or, to put it in terms of the rebound relationship, you’re not turning away from someone as much as you’re turning toward someone.

Make no mistake – following Jesus involves leaving things behind. Habits, relationships, tendencies, thought patterns – these all fall by the wayside. There is much, much loss in following Jesus. But loss is only the pathway that must be trod to gain.

We’re not just leaving something behind – we are pursuing something better. Think about the parable of the priceless pearl or the treasure hidden in the field. Was there loss? Certainly. The merchant in the story and the man in the field sold everything they had. But did they lament their loss? Absolutely not – for they knew that the loss was only the pathway to gain.

In the gospel, we gain something of universal value. It’s something that makes whatever is lost fade away into oblivion. By God’s grace, true repentance is not fueled by looking back; it’s driven by looking forward. It’s not just saying no, it’s saying yes to something better."

In other words, you haven't really said no to sin (or a specific sin) until you really say YES to Jesus!

Where the Noxious Weeds Shrivel & Die

In memory of John Stott, who passed away this week, here is a great quote from one of his classic great books.

Our sin must be extremely horrible. Nothing reveals the gravity of sin like the cross. For ultimately what sent Christ there was neither the greed of Judas, nor the envy of the priests, not the vacillating cowardice of Pilate, but our own greed, envy, cowardice, and other sins, and Christ’s resolve in love and mercy to bear their judgment and so put them away.

It is impossible for us to face Christ’s cross with integrity and not feel ashamed of ourselves. Apathy, selfishness, and complacency blossom everywhere in the world except at the cross. There these noxious weeds shrivel and die. There they are seen for the tatty, poisonous things they are. For if there was no way by which the righteous God could righteously forgive our unrighteousness, except that he should bear it himself in Christ, it must be serious indeed…

     --from The Cross of Christ

Instead of "passed away," I should say "was promoted to glory." Thank God for this brother's life and legacy!

Hat Tip: John Stott, the Cross, and the Gravity of Our Sin | 9Marks:

Sin Boldly: Believe More Boldly Still

"Sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ more boldly still."  - Martin Luther

"...Luther's point then, was when we sin we need not despair. Jesus covers all of our sins.  He died for the sins you've already committed and he died for the sins you will commit tomorrow. Luther means we can stop being afraid of ourselves; stop being afraid that we may make mistakes.  Just love God and live your life - and when you stumble, fall into the grace of Jesus Christ.

By trusting the grace of God, we can be courageous in following Jesus an equally courageous in confessing our sins before hi.  There is no need to hide our sins or to posture as if we have not sinned. We can just admit it and keep on following Jesus, even if we have to confess sins to Jesus every day."

              - Jon Walker, Costly Grace, Page 27

Radical, But Not Pessimistic

The Christian view of sin is radical but not pessimistic because to see sin in Christian terms is to see that sin can be forgiven. That really is freedom. That really is amazing grace.

— Rebecca Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons, (San Francisco, Ca.: Harper & Row, 1989), 106

Hat Tip: Of First Importance

Overcoming The Sin Underneath All Sins

In the midst of an on-going friendly disagreement and discussion with Keven DeYoung over grace and Christian growth (click here, here, and here for the details), Tullian Tchividjian dropped this wonderful little bon mot worth much attention:

"What is indisputable is the fact that unbelief is the force that gives birth to all of our bad behavior and every moral failure. It is the root. “The sin underneath all sins”, said Martin Luther, “is the lie that we cannot trust the love and grace of Jesus and that we must take matters into our own hands.” Therefore, since justification is where the guillotine for unbelief and self-salvation is located, we dare not assume it, brush over it, or move past it. It must never become the backdrop. It must remain front and center–getting the most attention."

From: First Things First – Tullian Tchividjian