UNTIL HE BRINGS ME HOME

You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. Psalm 73:24-26

Piper on the extent to which introspection is valuable, but the ultimately necessary return to the gospel.

What he says about repentance hits home, and serves as a welcome reminder and encouragement for me. Here is an excerpt of a Puritan prayer I came across a while ago (to my delight), which further expresses the biblical realization that our best repentance is stained:

O God of Grace,

You have imputed my sin to my substitute, and have imputed his righteousness to my soul, clothing me with a bridegroom’s rob, decking me with jewels of holiness. But in my Christian walk I am still in rags; my best prayers are stained with sin; my penitential tears are so much impurity; my confessions of wrong are so many aggravations of sin; my receiving of the Spirit is tinctured with selfishness.

I need to repent of my repentance; I need my tears to be washed; I have no robe to bring to cover my sins, no loom to weave my own righteousness; I am always standing clothed in filthy garments, and by grace am always receiving change of raiment, for you always justify the ungodly; I am always going into the far country, and always returning home as a prodigal, always saying, “Father, forgive me,” and you are always bringing forth the best robe…

The Valley of Vision, 136-137 (link)

But as Piper explains so graciously from the Word, we need to look to Christ. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:7-25)

And after all, what is the basis of salvation?

What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy. Romans 9:14-16

God’s choice to redeem is not contingent on the performance of the rescued. His love for the saved is unconditional. Our faith, therefore, should not be in the things that saved people do. It should be in the one who can save people.

Of course, having been saved, go and sin no more—all by the grace of God.

  1. changwinston posted this