The Gospel

Jesus Christ Looking:

Jesus Christ is not looking for people who want to add Him to their life as an insurance policy against hell. He is not looking for those who want only to be outwardly reformed by having their old nature improved. Jesus Christ calls to Himself those who are willing to be inwardly transformed by Him, who desire an entirely new nature that is created in His holy likeness. He calls to Himself those who are willing to die with Him in order to be raised with Him, who are willing to relinquish slavery to their sin for slavery to His righteousness. When people come to Him on His terms, He changes their destiny from eternal death to eternal life.

God’s Choosing:

He chooses and redeems before He requires obedience, Deuteronomy 7. Abraham believed because he was chosen. He was not chosen because he believed. Genesis 12 & 15

Grace:

In this one word we find the unmerited favor of God by which He translates a chosen soul from spiritual darkness into His glorious eternal spiritual light. It cannot be earned either in part or in full.

Grace intervenes only when God so chooses with divine power and it overcomes the will of man (JN 1:13). Grace does not wait for us to clean up our lives, pickup our messes, or control our emotions. It interrupts us, breaks through our defenses, and sometimes wrestles us to ground (Acts 9:8).

What Grace truly means to a believer is that God’s love is more powerful than our rebellion against Him. Our human heart, described by Jeremiah as “desperately wicked” (17:9), is delivered unto God when we trust (17:7); and by His Grace ever after we are measured spiritually only by the depth of our surrender to Him.

Free Will:

That gift from God through which anyone may willingly choose hell but through which none may willingly choose heaven. John 1:13

Sin:

Not yet loving enough. John 14:23

Prayer:

Revealing to God that which He already knows. Confession and submission to God as He commands. John 21:17

Faith:

The full surrender of soul, heart, and life unto God through His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.

Salvation:

The movement of the human heart from broken to not. Ephesians 2:1-2

New Birth:

The condition of the human heart and soul that arrives by faithful repentance and without which one will not enter the Kingdom. Those who are called to this condition receive it at the very moment of belief and those who do not believe in the one sent as Messiah are condemned already. John 3:3 & 18

Justification:

Justification before God is an act of God (Rom 8:33) by which He declares righteous those who, through faith in Christ, repent of their sins (Luke 13:3; Acts 2:38; Rom 2:4) and confess Him as sovereign Lord (Rom 10:9-10).

This righteousness is apart from any virtue or work of man (Rom 3:20 & Rom 4:6) and involves the imputation of our sins to Christ (Col 2:14 & 1st Peter 2:24) and the imputation of the righteousness of Christ to us (1st Cor 1:30 & 2 nd Cor 5:21).

By this means God is revealed to be both just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:26).

Sanctification:

The bending, over time, of the human will to the divine will (Rom 8:29).

Spiritual Life:

There is no spiritual life outside the love of Christ. We have a spiritual life only because we are loved by Him. The spiritual life consists in receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit and His charity, because the sacred heart of Jesus has willed it in His love, that we should live by His Spirit – the same Spirit which proceeds from the Word and from the Father, and Who is Jesus’ love for the Father.

If we know how great is the love of Jesus for us we will never be afraid to go to Him in all our poverty, all our weakness, all our spiritual wretchedness and infirmity. Indeed, when we understand the true nature of His love for us, we will prefer to come to Him poor and helpless. We will never be ashamed of our distress. Distress is to our advantage when we have nothing to seek but mercy. We can be glad of our helplessness when we really believe that His power is made perfect in our infirmity.

The surest sign that we have received a spiritual understanding of God’s love for us is the appreciation of our own poverty in the light of His infinite mercy.

We must love our own poverty as Jesus loves it. It is so valuable to Him that He died on the cross to present our poverty to His Father, and endow us with the riches of His own infinite mercy.

We must love the poverty of others as Jesus loves it. We must see them with the eyes of His own compassion. But we cannot have true compassion on others unless we are willing to accept pity and receive forgiveness for our own sins.

We do not know how to forgive until we know what it is to be forgiven. Therefore we should be glad that that we can be forgiven by others. It is our forgiveness of one another that makes the love of Jesus for us manifest in our own lives, for in forgiving one another we act towards one another as He has acted towards us.

Thomas Merton - 1956, Thoughts In Solitude