The Glory of His Grace

For those who consider themselves as nothing, renouncing every form of selfishness and pride, who mourn for their sin, who consider others of more importance, and for those who feel the hunger pains of yearning to be made into the image of the holy God and unlike the character of our indwelling sin (Matt. 5:3-6), this is the best news in the world. It is, as Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes, the heart of the gospel:

“To hunger and thirst really means to be desperate, to be starving, to feel life is ebbing out, to realize my urgent need of help… Let us look briefly at what is promised to those who are like that… ‘They shall be filled’, they shall be given what they desire. The whole gospel is there. That is where the gospel of grace comes in; it is entirely the gift of God. You will never fill yourself with righteousness, you will never find blessedness apart from Him. To obtain this, ‘all the fitness He requireth, is to see your need of Him’, nothing more” (Sermon on the Mount, p. 68).

ML-J goes on about the reality of justification in the life of one such believer:

“If you believe on that cross He was dying for you and for your sin, you have been forgiven; you have no need to ask for forgiveness, you have been forgiven… the righteousness of Christ is imputed to you. God looks at you in the righteousness of Christ and He no longer sees the sin. He sees you as a sinner whom He has forgiven… The Christian, therefore, should always be a man who knows that his sins are forgiven. He should not be seeking it, he should know that he has it, that he is justified in Christ freely by the grace of God, that he stands righteous at this moment in the presence of the Father” (Sermon on the Mount, p. 69). 

This blessed truth—that we are justified in Christ apart from anything we do—is the freedom of the Christian to pursue holiness, knowing that it is freely given to him. He pursues it not as a wage, but as a gift. 

“The Christian is one who at one and the same time is hungering and thirsting, and yet he is filled. And the more he is filled the more he hungers and thirsts. That is the blessedness of this Christian life” (Ibid, p. 70).