How We Must Fight for Holiness

Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord. (Hebrews 12:14)

There is a practical holiness without which we will not see the Lord. Many live as if this were not so.

There are professing Christians who live such unholy lives that they will hear Jesus’s dreadful words, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). Paul says to professing believers, “If you live according to the flesh you will die” (Romans 8:13).

So, there is a holiness without which no one will see the Lord. And learning to fight for holiness by faith in future grace is supremely important.

There is another way to pursue holiness that backfires and leads to death. Paul warns us against serving God any other way than by faith in his enabling grace. God is not “served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). Any effort to serve God that does not, in that very act, depend on him as the reward of our hearts and the power of our service, will dishonor him as a needy pagan god.

Peter describes the alternative to such self-reliant service of God, “Whoever serves, [let him do so] as one who serves by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 4:11). And Paul says, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me” (Romans 15:18; see also 1 Corinthians 15:10).

Moment by moment, grace arrives to enable us to do “every good work” that God appoints for us. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8).

The fight for good works is a fight to believe the promises of future grace.

John Piper 

Are you a friend you’d want to have?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous. 1 Peter 3:8

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A recent study just revealed that the average adult has not made a new friend—not even one—in the last five years. Why is it so hard to make a new friend or to find one? Maybe because we’re too busy. Maybe because we lack the five qualities of friendship. Take this quiz. Give yourself 20 points for each quality manifested in your life:

Harmony. We are to be of one mind, not necessarily singing the same note, but complementing one another.

Sympathy. We hurt when friends hurt. The world is looking for friends like this.

Fraternity. We are to love one another like brothers. There is no brotherhood like the brotherhood in Jesus Christ.

Empathy. If you want to be a real friend, you’re going to have to feel deeply. You’ll need to put yourself in the place of the other person.

Humility. Genuine courtesy is thinking of the other person’s needs before your own. You are less concerned with your rights, and more concerned about the relationship.

ACTION POINT:

How did you score? Four out of five give you 80%--that’s just barely a “B.” Begin to develop these characteristics of friendship in your life and watch God change your world!

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Satisfaction That Defeats Sin

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)

What we need to see here is that the essence of faith is being satisfied with all that God is for us in Christ.

Defining faith this way emphasizes two things. One is the God-centeredness of faith. It is not merely the promises of God that satisfy us. It is all that God himself is for us in Jesus. Faith embraces God in Christ as our treasure — not just God’s promised gifts.

Faith banks its hope not just on the real estate of the age to come, but on the fact that God will be there (Revelation 21:3). “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’”

And even now what faith embraces most earnestly is not just the reality of sins forgiven (as precious as that is), but the presence of the living Christ in our hearts and the fullness of God himself. In Ephesians 3:17–19 Paul prays “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith . . . that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

The other thing emphasized in defining faith as being satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus is the term “satisfaction.” Faith is the quenching of the soul’s thirst at the fountain of God. In John 6:35 we see that “believing” means “coming” to Jesus to eat and drink the “bread of life” and the “living water” (John 4:10, 14), which are nothing other than Jesus himself.

Here is the secret of the power of faith to break the enslaving force of sinful attractions. If the heart is satisfied with all that God is for us in Jesus, the power of sin to lure us away from the wisdom of Christ is broken.

John Piper 

Don’t drop that priceless heirloom

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Now also when I am old and gray-headed, O God, forsake me not; until I have shown Thy strength unto this generation, and Thy power to every one that is to come. Psalm 71:18

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The early Christians turned the world upside down. Their charge and ours today is the same—it is to rescue the perishing and care for the dying, to go to the helpless ones and tell them Jesus saves.

I heard about a little girl who said to her mother, “Do you remember that priceless vase we all love so much that’s been handed down to our family from one generation to another?” The mother said, “Yes.” The little girl sheepishly said, “Well, this generation just dropped it.”

Now friend, our generation cannot drop it.

ACTION POINT:

The faith we received, the faith we enjoy, and the faith that gives us eternal life, must be handed down from generation to generation. We must not drop this priceless heirloom that God has placed into our hands.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Grace Is Pardon — and Power!

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. (1 Corinthians 15:10)

Grace is not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift and power of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon.

This is plain, for example, in 1 Corinthians 15:10. Paul describes grace as the enabling power of his work. It is not simply the pardon of his sins; it is the power to press on in obedience. “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

Therefore, the effort we make to obey God is not an effort done in our own strength, but “by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified” (1 Peter 4:11). It is the obedience of faith. Faith in God’s ever-arriving gracious power to enable us to do what we should.

Paul confirms this in 2 Thessalonians 1:11–12 by calling each of our acts of goodness a “work of faith,” and by saying that the glory this brings to Jesus is “according to the grace of our God” because it happens “by his power.” Listen for all those phrases:

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The obedience that gives God pleasure is produced by the power of God’s grace through faith. The same dynamic is at work at every stage of the Christian life. The power of God’s grace that saves through faith (Ephesians 2:8) is the same power of God’s grace that sanctifies through faith.

John Piper 

You cannot grow without this

BIBLE MEDITATION:

For after that, in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. 1 Corinthians 1:21

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Before God created man, He already knew we could never know Him just by our own wisdom. However smart we think we are, our intellect can never fully reveal God to us. He must reveal to us who He is. And the way He has chosen to do this is through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and through His Word.

Therefore, the Word of God is indispensable.

    It’s indispensable for salvation. We are conceived by it. We’re “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.” 1 Peter 1:23

    The Word of God is indispensable for sanctification. We are cleansed by it. “Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren.” 1 Peter 1:22

    The Word of God is indispensable for sustenance. We are completed by it. “And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst” John 6:35

How important is the Word?

For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

The Word of God is living, dynamic, and cuts through the noise and clamor to reveal the truth in our hearts. It’s crucial for your salvation, sanctification and sustenance.

ACTION POINT:

Do you want to grow? Do you want to be a person of strength, steadfast in your faith? Then you must get into the Word of God.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

The Offense of Fearing Man

Saul said to Samuel, “I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice.” (1 Samuel 15:24)

Why did Saul obey the people instead of God? Because he feared the people instead of God. He feared the human consequences of obedience more than he feared the divine consequences of disobedience. He feared the displeasure of the people more than the displeasure of God. And that is a great insult to God.

In fact, Isaiah says it is a kind of pride to be afraid of what man can do while we disregard the promises of God. He quotes God with this piercing question: “I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker?” (Isaiah 51:12–13).

Fear of man may not feel like pride, but that’s what God says it is, “Who do you think you are to fear man and forget me your Maker!”

The point is this: If you fear man, you have begun to deny the holiness, the worth of God and his Son, Jesus. God is infinitely stronger than man. He is infinitely wiser and infinitely more full of reward and joy.

To turn from him out of fear of what man can do is to discount all that God promises to be for those who fear him. It is a great insult. And in such an insult God can take no pleasure.

On the other hand, when we hear God’s promises and trust him with courage, fearing the reproach brought upon God by our unbelief, then he is greatly honored. And in that he has much pleasure.

John Piper