by Dane Ortlund
Just as we are tempted to strengthen our justified state through internal contribution, so we are tempted to strengthen our sanctification through external rules.
You can't crowbar your way into change. You can only be melted.
One of the great mistakes generation after generation through church history is to slather rules onto behavior and think that external behavior is what fosters, or even accurately reflects, vital spiritual growth.
Fullness can be had only through emptiness.
Your life doesn't disprove Christ's love; his life proves it.
The gospel isn't a hotel to pass through but a home to live in. Not jumper cables to get the Christian life started but an engine to keep the Christian life going.
We intuitively think that the way to grow is to hear exhortation. That is normal and natural to the human mind. And exhortation has an important place. We need it. We are not mature Christians if we can never bear to hear the challenges and commands of Scripture. But the Bible teaches that healthy spiritual growth takes place only when such commands land on those who know they are accepted and safe irrespective of the degree to which they successfully keep those commands.
There is a strange though consistent message throughout the Bible. We are told time and again that the way forward will feel like we're going backward.
1. Justification is outside-in, and we lose it if we make it inside-out. 2. Sanctification is inside-out, and we lose it if we make it outside-in.
Growth in godliness is not generated by conformity to any external code—whether the Ten Commandments or the commands of Jesus or self-imposed rules or your own conscience. This does not mean the commands of Scripture are worthless. On the contrary, they are "holy and righteous and good" (Rom. 7:12). But the commands of the Bible are the steering wheel, not the engine, to your growth. They are vitally instructive, but they do not themselves give you the power you need to obey the instruction.
The defining hallmark of your life is not your cleanness but his embrace.
If a group of people have always lived in the dark and are told a light is going to be turned on so that they will all be able to see each other, they may very well object, believing that since a single lamp will be shining the same light on everyone, they will all look identical to each other. But, of course, we know that the light would bring out their individual distinctiveness. Union with a single Christ is like that. You are given back you true self. You become the you that you were meant to be. (Analogy originally from C.S. Lewis)
Repentance that does not turn to Jesus is not real repentance; faith that has not first turned from Self is not real faith.
This book is written by a fellow patient, not a doctor.
