Yield your members servants to righteousness unto
     holiness.

     — Romans 6:13-22

I cannot save and sanctify myself; I cannot atone for sin; I cannot
redeem the world; I can not make right what is wrong, pure what is
impure, holy what is unholy. That is all the sovereign work of God.
Have I faith in what Jesus Christ has done? He has made a perfect
Atonement, am I in the habit of constantly realizing it? The great
need is not to do things, but to believe things. The Redemption of
Christ is not an experience, it is the great act of God which He has
performed through Christ, and I have to build my faith upon it. If I
construct my faith on my experience, I produce that most unscriptural
type, an isolated life, my eyes fixed on my own whiteness. Beware of
the piety that has no pre-supposition in the Atonement of the Lord.
It is of no use for anything but a sequestered life; it is useless to
God and a nuisance to man. Measure every type of experience by our
Lord Himself. We cannot do anything pleasing to God unless we
deliberately build on the pre-supposition of the Atonement.

The Atonement of Jesus has to work out in practical, unobtrusive ways
in my life. Every time I obey, absolute Deity is on my side, so that
the grace of God and natural obedience coincide. Obedience means that
I have banked everything on the Atonement, and my obedience is met
immediately by the delight of the supernatural grace of God.

Beware of the piety that denies the natural life, it is a fraud.
Continually bring yourself to the bar of the Atonement – where is the
discernment of the Atonement in this thing, and in that?

On this day...

• Hosea 4 - 2023
• Hosea 3 - 2023
• J. I. Packer - Theologian - 2009
• Beginning, means and end - 2009
• Stop Comparing - 2009
• Song of Solomon 5:4 - 2008