Preach The Gospel Everyday – by Jim Nelson

A few months ago, I finished reading a book written by Jerry Bridges, “The Transforming Power of the Gospel” In this book he recommends that we daily preach the gospel to ourselves. One of the many Bible verses he referenced was Galatians 2:15-16, “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentiles sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified.”

Paul’s warning to the Galatians is this: We all, having trusted in Christ alone for our salvation, have a tendency to revert to a performance-based relationship with God. These two verses drive home the point that we are not saved by any work of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ alone. As we say at New Life; “it’s only about Jesus”. The Galatian believers were in danger of adding circumcision and law keeping to faith in Jesus Christ for their salvation. Adding any human achievement to the cross is a big mistake.

That is why Paul was so emphatic that justification is entirely by faith in Christ alone. Dr. Wayne Grudem in his book Systematic Theology has a good definition for justification. Justification is an instantaneous legal act of God in which he (1) thinks of our sins as forgiven and Christ’s righteousness as belonging to us, and (2) declares us to be righteous in his sight. The doctrine of justification was a major issue in the Reformation as well, now 500 years ago. Actually, the Reformation recaptured the historical Biblical Gospel for us. Thank You Reformers! We are saved by grace though faith in Christ alone, Ephesians 2:8-9. In fact, faith involves a total renunciation of dependence on one’s good works and instead total reliance on Jesus Christ and His righteousness.

As we preach this saving gospel to ourselves, a wonderful verse to look at is 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”.

What a powerful verse describing in the simplest terms the saving gospel of Jesus Christ. Other verses to look at are Romans 5:19, Romans 10:3-4, 1 Corinthians 1:30, and Philippians 3:9. We must memorize a few of these verses and begin to use them every day to strengthen our faith in God’s Great Exchange, our sins to the cross and His perfect righteousness to us. WOW, what a gift! Then, every time you find yourself lapsing into a performance-based relationship with God, go back to those verses and ask God to make them real to you and remember the beautiful gospel. A daily appropriation of the gospel in which we see that our sins are forgiven and that we stand before God clothed in spotless righteousness of Christ, is the key to the diligence pursuit of holiness. And, we are to pursue holiness (1 Peter 1: 14-15).