As a follow up to my last post on the finished work of Christ, CJ Mahaney has been posting excerpts of an interview with Sinclair Ferguson this week on the Sovereign Grace blog and its brilliant stuff. Mahaney has been quoting Ferguson and asking him to comment and this ties in so well with my last post.Ferguson's quote:
The glory of the gospel is that God has declared Christians to be rightly related to him in spite of their sin. But our greatest temptation and mistake is to try to smuggle character into his work of grace. How easily we fall into the trap of assuming that we can only remain justified so long as there are grounds in our character for justification. But Paul’s teaching is that nothing we do ever contributes to our justification.
How often we feel that if we had only done this or that then such and such would not have happened or if I had just not been thinking this way or if I was just a better Christian then.... This line of thought is biblically false and I am so glad it is. Our character will never earn us God's grace and we need to be thankful for that for it never could.
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of
yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest
any man should boast. Eph 2:8-9
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