The New Testament letters are filled with imperatives - that is, exhortations and challenges to pursue holiness, put on Christlike character, and present our bodies as living sacrifices. But these imperatives are always based on the objective truth of what Jesus did for us in His sinless life and sin-bearing death. As a young Christian, I did not understand this. I went directly to the imperatives to learn what I was to do. And in my early years of Bible teaching, I taught from the same dutiful perspective. I would contrast the ought tos of Scripture with the sinful desires of the flesh. I taught that we should fill our minds with the ought tos of Scripture in order to fortify ourselves against the desires of the flesh. But the reality is that in the internal conflict between ought and desire, desire too often wins out. And even when ought wins, it is often a dutiful response rather than one of love and gratitude. But then in the midst of what I thought would be a fruitful and rewarding ministry, the Holy Spirit began to peel back the layers of my heart to reveal something of the corruption and depravity still there. There were no big sins, just an ugly nest of what I call respectable sins. I was driven to the gospel. Jerry Bridges
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 23:29:05 +0000
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