New Morning Mercies #352

Every time you desire to do and choose to do what is right in God’s eyes, you celebrate the grace that is yours in Christ Jesus.

It’s hard to admit, but doing what is right isn’t natural for us. Sin turns us all into self-appointed sovereigns over our own little kingdoms. Sin makes us all self-absorbed and self-focused. Sin causes us all to name ourselves righteous. Sin seduces us into thinking we are somehow, some way smarter than God. Sin causes us all to trust in our own wisdom. Sin makes us all want to write our own rules. Sin makes us resistant to criticism and change. Sin makes our eyes and our hearts wander. Sin causes us to crave material things more than spiritual provision. Sin causes us to want and esteem pleasure more than character. In our quest to be God, sin causes us to forget God. It reduces us all to glory thieves, taking for ourselves the glory that belongs to him. All of this means that sin causes us to step over God’s wise boundaries in thought, desire, word, and action again and again. This is what’s natural for a sinner.

So when you have a hunger to know what is right in God’s eyes, when you care about his glory, when you willingly submit to his will, when you forsake your plan for his plan, and when you find joy in surrendering to his lordship, you know that you have been visited by rescuing grace. Notice how Paul talks about our submission to the will of the Father: “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12–13).

Here is a call to a faith-filled life of submission and obedience. It is a call to be serious about the life that grace has made possible for you. The passage is a call to follow the example of the Lord Jesus Christ. But then Paul reminds you that if you follow, if you obey, and if you do what is right in the eyes of your Savior, you can take no credit whatsoever. This is because your right desires and your right actions exist only because of his indwelling presence and ever-active grace. Paul is saying that we do the right that we do because grace is at that moment rescuing us from ourselves. Grace is protecting us from the self-righteousness and self-sovereignty that would make us all too independent and all too rebellious.

Every moment of our obedience is an evidence of and a celebration of the grace that not only forgives but rescues, and not only rescues but transforms. We live in God’s sight not in our own strength, but only by grace.

For further study and encouragement: Romans 6