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March 11, 2007
How can we know if we have done enough to merit God’s grace? Thankfully, Jesus Christ’s death has rendered that question obsolete. Alistair Begg explains the difference between man’s effort to gain acceptance with God through external rules and regulations and God’s work to reconcile man to Himself through His Son. When we accept that Jesus paid the penalty for our sin and His righteousness becomes ours, we are freed from our endless efforts to earn God’s approval.
1qAre we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, ras some do, sletters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2tYou yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our1 hearts, to be known and read by all. 3And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of uthe living God, not on vtablets of stone but on wtablets of xhuman hearts.2
4ySuch is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5zNot that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but aour sufficiency is from God, 6who has made us sufficient to be bministers of ca new covenant, not of dthe letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but ethe Spirit gives life.
7Now if fthe ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory gthat the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, 8will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? 9For if there was glory in hthe ministry of condemnation, ithe ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. 10Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.
Copyright © 2024, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
