From One Degree to Another

For the past few weeks, we’ve looked at what TGINL is, and sought to seek out whether or not we are guilty of Gospel Enemy 1, Self-Righteousness, and Gospel Enemy 2, Persistent Guilt.  Today, I want to help you flee a huge Gospel enemy, Self-Reliance.  Again, I’m leaning on Jerry Bridges work:

Self-reliance toward God is a dependence on our own power, not the power of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s some questions to expose this:

How many times in the past twenty-four hours have we done anything with conscious dependence on the power of the Holy Spirit? How many of our job issues, family matters, leisure pursuits, daily routines, or even our spiritual disciplines have we conducted with an attitude of self-reliance, not God-reliance?

If this is true for you, repent of your self-reliance and choose to lean on God for everything. This will help you see the beauty of the Gospel and rest in all that God has done, freeing you from yourself.

For the past few weeks, on Fridays, I’ve posted something related to the Gospel.  2 weeks ago, I wrote on the TGINL (Thank God I’m Not Like) phenomenon that can easily sweep into our souls.  Last week, we looked at questions to see self-righteousness, since it is a Gospel-enemy.

Today, I again want to direct your attention to some questions, this time looking at what Jerry Bridges calls Persistent Guilt.  Here are the questions that help diagnose this:

1) Are you painfully preoccupied with a particular habitual sin? 2) Are you discouraged or depressed by your failure to measure up? 3) Do you frequently experience anxiety that something’s about to go wrong? 4) Does it appear God can use others but not you? 5) Is there something in your past you just can’t seem to get over? 6) Do you fear that your past will come back to haunt you? 7) Do your difficult circumstances seem like God’s judgment for your sin? 8) Do you steer clear of intimate relationships or small-group discussion? 9) When you sin, do you get a vague sense that somehow there’ll be a price to pay? 10) Do you seldom think of the cross. (from pp.56-57)

And, then, Bridges masterfully turns us to cross:

Only the life and death of Christ offers a legitimate path to freedom from a guilty conscience–legitimate because it was a real, lived-in-the-flesh, finished righteousness, applied to us, forever.

If you sense guilt may be nagging you, look to Jesus. As the song says, “When Satan tempts me to despair, and tells me of the guilt within, upward and look and see Him there, who made an end of the all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free, for God the just is satisfied, to look on Him and pardon me.” Look to Jesus and know freedom from persistent guilt.