Is Sin Haunting You?

To live every day trying to validate oneself, you are in essence denying your identity. You're denying the gift that was given to you, and you're saying it's not sufficient. I need to add to it.

Justin Perdue. Agree.

And what we end up doing, I'm at least reflecting on my own heart and mind. I think one of the struggles that I still have, John, is that I am so prone, and I know I'm not alone, when I read many, many passages in the Bible, in particular where God is giving commands, and in particular where he's clear about the judgment and the punishment that we deserve for breaking said commands, I am still so prone to try to turn the law into a covenant of works that needs to be kept for righteousness.

And I'm haunted by the fact that I haven't done well enough. And what are we doing in those moments? We are all in ways, consciously and subconsciously, that we're collapsing the law in the gospel, and we're forgetting that everything that God demands in his law, he gives in his gospel through the work of God the Son who took on flesh, whose name is Jesus.

And so what that ends up doing, to your point, it affects the way that I live, and it affects the way that I think about my heavenly Father. It causes me to question his love for me sometimes, because I am so disappointed in me.

I trust he must be too. Or, we were talking about this analogy, and every analogy, every illustration falls apart at some point, so don't nail this to the wall, but just hear us say this, and we might talk about it.

For a second.

It's like if you as a loving parent were to give your child a very valuable, very expensive gift that will change the rest of your child's life. And upon receiving this gift of such tremendous value and such tremendous impact for the rest of his life, your young child goes to his piggy bank and scrapes together a few quarters and brings them to you, and then spends the rest of his life trying to earn that gift you gave him.

There are two huge things that he doesn't understand, your child. One, he doesn't understand that he could never come close to earning or paying for this gift, because he cannot understand its cost or its value.

But then secondly, the other thing he doesn't understand is that you as a loving parent don't want him to pay for it anyway. You want him to live his life from it, in it, enjoying it, in the freedom of it, not live his life chasing after it to earn it somehow.

I know I am so prone to think that I have got to do something to make myself worthy of the salvation that I've been given. And the fear, of course, is that you're not going to do enough. Then in the end, especially in the Calvinistic world, you're just going to prove yourself to be an unbeliever.

Where the rubber meets the road, I think that's the fear of many people. Sadly, that's what's motivating so many people to do things, when in reality the motivation is something entirely different. We're going to get there in a minute.

Jon Moffitt. Have I done enough? I can't help but go back to Galatians 3 when he says, Are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit? Are you now being perfected by the flesh? This is what we're talking about, where you're looking to this validation of your actions, you, your actions, saying, I am righteous because of what I have done.

Paul says, no, you are righteous because of what Christ has done. Multiple times in Scripture, we are drawn back to our positional righteousness. What's so hard for us is to think...

Jon Moffitt. Positional righteousness. Jon, define that briefly.

Paul. It means that when God looks at me, He sees me standing behind Christ, and I receive all of the love, affections, and rewards because of who Christ is. So think of it literally as my position is, I'm standing behind Jesus.

Jon Moffitt. You're in Him.

Paul I'm in Him, and we're one. We're one. And when God looks at me, He looks and sees all of the perfection of Jesus.