Word of Encouragement (10/6/2020)

Here is another:

“18.    When you fall into gross sin and feel you have distanced yourself from God, you must honestly censure [rebuke, criticize severely] yourself for it. If you do not, you will never fully recover from it. An honest censure of gross sin and backsliding includes the following:

          a.   Acknowledge that your sin merits death (Rom. 6:23), even though the grace of pardon prevents it from being inflicted upon you. Peter wept bitterly over his sin because he knew it deserved no less than death (Luke 22:62). [By death, of course, we are not just speaking of physical death but also of spiritual death and eternal death in hell. We have to keep in mind that Jesus did not lessen the gravity of sin by His death; His death actually showed how weighty our sin really is since it required the life of God’s only Son for its atonement. God offers His free and ready forgiveness to us because of Jesus’ costly sacrifice, not because sin is no longer as bad as it used to be because Jesus paid for it.]

          b.   Acknowledge your unworthiness to receive God’s unconditional covenant love. The Prodigal Son thus returned to his father, confessing that he was no longer worthy to be considered a son (Luke 15:21). [God’s redeeming love for us is unconditional precisely because it is for unworthy sinners like us. We cannot deserve God’s unconditional love. The fact that we now enjoy God's generous love doesn’t change the fact that we are still unworthy of such love.]

          c.   Not laying hold on God’s promise of forgiveness before you renew your repentance and are thoroughly ashamed of your sin.... ‘To be guilty of great sins and at the same time without remorse and grief of heart to lay hold on the promises of mercy is not the acting of faith, but of presumption. [We spoke of this yesterday in terms of what “godly sorrow” is.]

          d.   Acknowledging that the temporal afflictions and chastisements God lays upon you for your sin are justly deserved and righteously inflicted (Isa. 57:17; 63:10; Heb. 12:5-6). Your comfort under such rods is that they do not come from God as your enemy, but from God as your provoked Father. Therefore, they are not destructive but medicinal; not a menace but a friend. Both a judge and a physician may cut off a man’s hand, but the former will do it to satisfy justice while the latter will cut off a diseased limb to save the rest of the body.” (The last part of this section is so powerful, isn’t it? God is no longer our Judge but our heavenly Father because we are united with Christ by faith. But when we sin gravely, He is a provoked Father—provoked, not because He hates us but because He loves us and cares about us. His love doesn’t turn into hatred when He is provoked with anger; His love is stronger than anger; His love remains love forever. So, even what He does out of provocation is ultimately out of love. Because it flows out of love, it is intended to heal and restore us. If we understand this simple truth, we can endure God’s discipline with patience and hope and gratitude.)

Tomorrow, we will see why we should be careful not to censure ourselves too much. Have a blessed day!