April Hymn of the Month:

Not What My Hands Have Done
By: Horatius Bonar

“Justification is still the article of a standing or falling church” -John Murray

This fundamental, essential and Biblical truth, 'justification through faith alone' became the keynote of the Reformation and has been a central tenet of God's true church till the present day and will continue 'until he comes'. It is unfortunate that many of God's devoted children are not familiar with this doctrine. Horatious Bonar understood clearly what it meant to be justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and these themes run richly through the lines of this beautiful and engaging hymn.

All true songs of worship and adoration to God must be songs that start with Biblical truth and are held together by Biblical themes. I cannot imagine a more telling example than this great hymn, and for our enrichment, let’s walk together through it to learn afresh the glorious Gospel of God's amazing grace.

Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;
not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.
Not what I fell or do can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load

Titus 3:5
He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy.

It is important to understand that our works don't earn our favor and right standing with God. This by no means negates our requirement to live righteous lives, but instead becomes the driving force behind our newly revived hearts. When God sets the sinner free through faith in Jesus Christ, we then respond in thankfulness and love to the God who freed us, and willingly give ourselves over to Him. The reverse of this statement however cannot be found in scripture. We cannot be righteous enough on our own to earn approval from God, we are sinful human beings, and from the start we have no righteousness of our own with which to stand before a holy and righteous God.

To emphasize this point, lets look back toward the beginning of the great story of redemption, where we see one of the most startling statements in the Bible:

Genesis 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (emphasis added)

Now this of course takes place before the flood. Before God wiped out all those sinful people right? Certainly after Noah entered the ark and all those wretched sinners were drowned things would change, right? Wrong, listen to Gods words as Noah comes off of the ark:

Genesis 8:18-21 So Noah went out, and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him. Every beast, every creeping thing, and every bird, everything that moves on the earth, went out by their families from the ark. Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. The LORD smelled the soothing aroma; and the LORD said to Himself, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done. (emphasis added)

We find so many other passages that reflect this same truth, but I think none more profoundly speak about our inability to please God, or seek for Him on our own as Romans 3:10-12 does;

as it is written, " THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME WORTHLESS;
 THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD,
THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE." (emphasis added)

We learn that this sinful nature corrupts us from the start, and this corruption penetrates into the deepest part of our being. We don’t have the ability to please God with righteous actions, because there isn't any righteousness within our sinful hearts to start with. In fact, we lack the moral ability to choose God and His righteousness without His sovereign and divine intervention in our lives.

Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin;
Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.
Thy love to me, O God, not Mine, O Lord to Thee,
Can rid me of this dark unrest, and set my spirit free.

After we see our helplessness through the first verse, and even more so from the scriptures, we see our only hope, Christ, and Him crucified. This was the theme of the apostle Paul's life, and he proclaimed it everywhere he went until his death. Infact, this theme is so central, and this truth is so powerful, that when he went to the city of Corinth, he didn't waste his words, or his time on anything else.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,

Without this understanding, everything else falls flat. We have seen that we are sinful, and even our best attempts to please God on our own are guaranteed to fail. Now we see the only way to have a right standing with God; through Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son.

There is a defining word for the preaching of the Gospel. Substitution. We have to understand what took place on the cross to get the Gospel right.

Lets turn our Bibles together to 2 Corinthians 5:21:

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

To make sure you understand this, I would like to paraphrase:

God the Father made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Jesus Christ.

Now, what does it mean that God made Jesus to be sin on our behalf? Does it mean that Jesus became a sinner on the cross? Not at all. Jesus was a spotless lamb, holy and undefiled. Then in what sense did God make Him sin?
In this sense, and I hope you get this: When Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross, God treated Him as though He had lived out our sinful, selfish lives, as though He had done all of the terrible things that we have ever done and will ever do.

Now, that is the first half of substitution, Jesus, sacrificing Himself in our place to satisfy God’s terrible wrath, but are you ready for the most wonderful part, look at the rest of the verse,

So that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Do you see it, Jesus took God’s wrath for us, He stood in our place, He became the substitution, but look, we become the substitution in His place. God looks at the believer, and doesn’t see our sin, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ, so that we can stand before Him, on the basis of what Christ has done, not our works, nothing that we have, all from Christ, to the praise of His glory. Our sins have cost God a great price, because the price of sin is substitution.

Thy grace alone O God, to me can pardon speak;
Thy power alone, O Son of God, can this sore bondage break.
No other work, save Thine, no other blood will do;
no strength, save that which is divine, can bear me safely through

We are sinful, we are helpless, but God didn't leave us alone. He made a provision for forgiveness through Jesus Christ His son, through His perfect life, His suffering and death, and through the power of the resurrection. Now that in it and of itself is amazing, but the story doesn't end there. God takes it one step further and graciously reaches out to break our bondage of sin, that only He could break. This bondage runs to our core, it prevents us from desiring the righteousness of God, as we have seen. so through the work of God alone, He draws the sinner, into the state of regeneration, through the process of repentance on the road to redemption. This truth is hard to grasp, it alludes us if we attempt to casually rationalize it, however, if we are honest with the scriptures, we cannot get past it.

Jesus taught about the necessity of God's call for our salvation, and when He could have said or done anything to attract and keep a crowd, instead, He taught hard truth, where as John 6:66 tells us, that "from that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more." What explanation is there for Jesus teaching in this manner. Well, I would say that no chapter in the Bible so strongly teaches about divine election and irresistible grace more than John chapter 6 does (which I urge you to read yourself), and He makes it clear that it isn't all the miracles and amazing things that He did that would bring someone to salvation. It isn't the monetary blessings from God, and fulfillment of lifelong dreams that keeps us in Christ. Instead, listen to how Jesus teaches that this bondage of sin is broken, to bring us to Christ.

John 6:44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.

No I won't bore you with the grammatical details of the Greek behind this powerful text, but I will point out, that the words "no one" are an all inclusive statement. That means that not one person comes to Jesus "unless" God does something first. Now this truth is so important that in just 21 short verses, Jesus will repeat the same statement.

John 6:60-65
Therefore many of His discipler, when they heard this, said, "Thsi is a hard saying; who can understand it?" When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, "Does this offend you? What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, "Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted by My Father."

Now the remainder of the song is powerful, and talks of our confidence that we have in Christ, not ourselves, but His righteousness, His works, His grace, and I fear that time will escape us in this short study, so I close with the final words of this song,

I love because He loveth me, I live because He lives

Remember, that God set His love on you before the foundation of the earth, and eternal life is only available to us, through the life, death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who now lives interceding on our behalf before God the Father almighty.

I pray that this study has enriched your life, as it has mine.

In His Service,
Brian Bivens

-Pride-

There is nothing that could more adversely affect our ability to worship God, then when our pride gets in the way. Constantly as worshipers of the one true God, we must evaluate our own lives, our own hearts, and really examine ourselves for this very serious, seductive and perilous sin.

We all battle pride, and at a time when the world is offering so many "self help books" to make us feel even better about ourselves, C.J. Mahaney brings an honest examination of what really lurks in the depths of our hearts.

I pray that this article will bless you as you pursue God with the intent of pure worship, unhindered by the sin of placing yourself above Him in your heart.

The Perils of Pride

By C.J. Mahaney

Winston Churchill, who perfected the art of the clever put-down, once described a political opponent as “a modest little man who has a good deal to be modest about.” The last part of his remark is an accurate description of me — though I can’t say I’m humble, I certainly have much to be humble about! My general ineptness is well known to all who have even a casual acquaintance with me, and that’s no exaggeration.

If you were to speak to any of my friends, they would confirm how I continually surprise them with fresh discoveries of my inadequacies. I even provide them a certain degree of entertainment, especially when it comes to the hands-on and the mechanical.

Needing Help

A while back, someone informed me that my car’s rear left tire — or was it the rear right? — was low on air. Now, in fact, I had no idea how to put air in a car tire. (Really). So I turned to a friend — a close friend, I’ll have you know — and asked for his help.

In such a moment, the godly and servant-hearted response from a friend would be to cheerfully answer, “Yes, let me help you.” Instead, my good friend exclaimed, “I cannot believe it. I cannot believe it! You don’t know how to put air in your tire?”

On and on like this he went, until he faced me squarely and added, “You, my friend, are a moron.”

My friend was merely having fun at my expense, but the truth of the matter is that on a previous occasion I had actually tried, on my own, to put air in my car’s tire. As I knelt to place the air hose on the stem — or whatever that little dealy’s called where you attach the hose to the tire — the extremely loud noise that erupted was an intimidating PHHHHT! PHHHHHHT!

Then a loud ringing started: DING DING DING DING! I was suddenly consumed by an intense fear that my tire was only seconds from blowing up. It’s going to explode, I told myself, and you’re going to die. And at your funeral, all your friends — while wiping away tears in the midst of their mourning — will be shaking their heads and saying to themselves, “What an idiot!”

I’m convinced that the sum effect of my attempt that day was only to let out more air than I put in. And as I drove away from the station with a badly underinflated tire, I could almost hear the faint sound of the station attendant’s laughter following me home.

Against All Logic

Now you might assume that in a normal human being, such ineptness couldn’t possibly coexist with any significant measure of pride. Someone as unskilled as I am would, naturally, be humble, right? However, let me assure you beyond doubt that both incompetence and pride are very evident in my life. Let me illustrate with another story.

One day my daughter informed me that our car was making a strange noise, so I went out to investigate. She tried to prepare me, but in no way did I anticipate the violent shrieking that assaulted my ears upon starting the car. I immediately turned off the engine.

In such a moment, wisdom demands one course of action only: Get out of the car, walk back into the house, and call a trustworthy auto-repair service.

That would have been the appropriate and prudent response. Instead, I followed the arrogant male instinct, which requires at bare minimum that the male lift the hood and stare intently at the engine. After all, neighbors might be watching, and we want to at least give the appearance that we have some mechanical knowledge.

But given my personal history, what groundless self-assurance could possibly motivate me to lift the hood to examine my engine? The only thing I actually know how to do is check whether the container for window-washer fluid needs refilling! So I checked that — with great authority. (It was more than half full).

Then I shut the hood (also with great authority) and, proud fool that I am, got back into the car and turned the ignition once more — as if my having merely stared at the engine was sufficient to repair it; as if the broken parts were now calling to one another, “He’s seen us! Get back together, quick!”

Yet as I turned the key again, the same violent shriek issued forth.

Only at this point did I finally go back in the house to do what I should have done earlier: I telephoned the repair shop to notify them of my car’s condition — fully ready to pass along to them my firm conviction that the problem was not the window-washer fluid container.

Doesn’t pride have a strange way of ignoring reason altogether? The sad fact is that none of us are immune to the logic-defying, blinding effects of pride. Though it shows up in different forms and to differing degrees, it infects us all. The real issue here is not if pride exists in your heart; it’s where pride exists and how pride is being expressed in your life. Scripture shows us that pride is strongly and dangerously rooted in all our lives, far more than most of us care to admit or even think about.

In his essay, “Pride, Humility & God,” John Stott wrote the following: “At every stage of our Christian development and in every sphere of our Christian discipleship, pride is the greatest enemy and humility our greatest friend.”

In the previous column, we saw the promise of humility — the gracious support of God. But we must also be aware of the great perils of pride — not just occasionally or under certain circumstances, but at every stage and in every sphere. Throughout our time on this earth, and in every arena of our lives, you and I share a common greatest enemy: pride.

The First Sin

Pride has quite the history, one that precedes Adam and Eve.

Pride, it seems, was the very first sin. Isaiah 14 records the downfall of a king, but not a mere earthly ruler. This king is the embodiment of God-defying arrogance, but the language used here apparently references the rebellion and fall of Satan himself.

In Isaiah 14:13, the motivation behind Satan’s rebellion is exposed: “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high.’” Led by the prideful Lucifer, powerful angelic creatures possessing beauty and glory far beyond our comprehension arrogantly desired recognition and status equal to God Himself. In response, God swiftly and severely judged them.

Pride not only appears to be the earliest sin, but it is at the core of all sin. “Pride,” John Stott writes again, “is more than the first of the seven deadly sins; it is itself the essence of all sin.”

Indeed, from God’s perspective, pride seems to be the most serious sin. From my study, I’m convinced there’s nothing God hates more than this. God righteously hates all sin, of course, but biblical evidence abounds for the conclusion that there’s no sin more offensive to Him than pride.

When His Word reveals those things “that the LORD hates” and “that are an abomination to him,” it’s the proud man’s “haughty eyes” that head up the list (Proverbs 6:16–17).

When the personified wisdom of God speaks out, these clear words are emphasized: “I hate pride and arrogance” (Proverbs 8:13, NIV).

And consider the divine perspective on pride revealed in Proverbs 16:5: “Everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the LORD; be assured, he will not go unpunished.”

Stronger language for sin simply cannot be found in Scripture.

Contending with God

Why does God hate pride so passionately?

Here’s why: Pride is when sinful human beings aspire to the status and position of God and refuse to acknowledge their dependence upon Him.

Charles Bridges once noted how pride lifts up one’s heart against God and “contends for supremacy” with Him. That’s a keenly insightful and biblical definition of pride’s essence: contending for supremacy with God, and lifting up our hearts against Him.

For purposes of personal confession, I began adopting this definition of pride a few years ago after I came to realize that, to some degree, I’d grown unaffected by pride in my life. Though I was still confessing pride, I knew I wasn’t sufficiently convicted of it. So rather than just confessing to God that “I was proud in that situation” and appealing for His forgiveness, I learned to say instead, “Lord, in that moment, with that attitude and that action, I was contending for supremacy with You. That’s what it was all about. Forgive me.”

And rather than confessing to another person, “That statement was prideful on my part; will you please forgive me?” I began saying, “What I just did was contending for supremacy with God,” and only then asking for the person’s forgiveness. This practice increased a weight of conviction in my heart about the seriousness of this sin.

Pride takes innumerable forms but has only one end: self-glorification. That’s the motive and ultimate purpose of pride — to rob God of legitimate glory and to pursue self-glorification, contending for supremacy with Him. The proud person seeks to glorify himself and not God, thereby attempting in effect to deprive God of something only He is worthy to receive.

No wonder God opposes pride. No wonder He hates pride. Let that truth sink into your thinking.

God’s Active Opposition to Pride

Now let me ask you: What do you hate?

I’ll tell you what I hate. I’ve got two lists. One is a silly list that begins with foods that I sometimes think must be products of the Fall. I detest meat loaf. I loathe sauerkraut. And I hate cottage cheese. I even hate it when anyone eats cottage cheese in my presence; it ruins my appetite.

I also despise any and all professional sports teams from New York City — that’s simply part of my heritage, being born and raised in the Washington DC area.

But that’s just the beginning, a little sampling of my silly list of things I hate. I also have a serious list of things I hate. I’m sure you have one, too.

I hate abortion.

I hate child abuse.

I hate racism.

What do you hate?

You and I hate nothing to the degree that God hates pride. His hatred for pride is pure, and His hatred is holy.

In his Commentary on the Book of Psalms, John Calvin wrote, “God cannot bear with seeing his glory appropriated by the creature in even the smallest degree, so intolerable to him is the sacrilegious arrogance of those who, by praising themselves, obscure his glory as far as they can.”

And because God cannot bear with this arrogance, He reveals Himself in Scripture as actively opposed to pride.

Actively.

“God opposes the proud, ” says James 4:6 and 1 Peter 5:5. “Opposes” in this statement is an active, present-tense verb, showing us that God’s opposition to pride is an immediate and constant activity. The proud will not indefinitely escape discipline.

Pride’s Potency

We would do well to note pride’s peculiarly destructive power. In his Advice to Young Converts, Jonathan Edwards called pride “the worst viper that is in the heart” and “the greatest disturber of the soul’s peace and sweet communion with Christ.” He ranked pride as the most difficult sin to root out, and “the most hidden, secret and deceitful of all lusts.”

Despite this thorough understanding of its ugliness, Edwards himself constantly battled his own pride (a fact which gives me hope, knowing I’m not alone in this struggle). “What a foolish, silly, miserable, blind, deceived poor worm am I, when pride works,” Edwards once wrote in his diary. In his sermons and in his vast writings he constantly warned against pride, especially spiritual pride, which he viewed as the greatest cause of the premature ending of the Great Awakening, the revival that had brought so much spiritual vitality to the church in Edwards’s day.

Pride also undermines unity and can ultimately divide a church. Show me a church where there’s division, where there’s quarreling, and I’ll show you a church where there’s pride.

Pride also brings down leaders. “Pride ruins pastors and churches more than any other thing,” Mike Renihan writes in his essay “A Pastor’s Pride and Joy” from Tabletalk. “It is more insidious in the church than radon in the home.” When you read about the next public figure to fall, remember Proverbs 16:18 — “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” That person’s situation might appear circumstantially complicated, but at root it’s not complicated: Pride goes before a fall.

God’s Merciful Warnings

The warnings from Scripture about pride could not be more serious and sobering. But they’re an expression of God’s mercy, intended for our good.

Don’t you think God is merciful to warn us in this way? He reveals this sin to our hearts and identifies its potential consequences. He is merciful, and He intends to protect us. So throughout His Word, God exposes pride as our greatest enemy.

By unmasking pride — as well as introducing us to humility, our greatest friend — God lays out for us the path to true greatness, a path that we see most clearly in our Savior’s life and death. We’ll begin walking that path together in the next column.

Excerpt from Humility by C.J. Mahaney. Used with permission.
C.J. Mahaney leads Sovereign Grace Ministries, a church-planting ministry with a growing international family of churches. He also is the author of several books and a contributor to the Together for the Gospel blog. This column is adapted with permission from his book, Humility: True Greatness (Multnomah Publishers, Sisters, OR).

April Hymn of the Month

The hymn of the month for April comes at a fitting time. When our country is scrambling to put together another consumer driven holiday, to blot out the significance of our Christian faith, I thought I would select a hymn, that though beautifully composed, caught my eye solely for it's rich scriptural depth and significance. I am not going to go through all the details just yet, but I did want to whet your appetite, with the hymn title, and the text:



Not What My Hands Have Done
Written by Horatius Bonar, 1861

Not what my hands have done can save my guilty soul;
Not what my toiling flesh has borne can make my spirit whole.
Not what I feel or do can give me peace with God;
Not all my prayers and sighs and tears can bear my awful load.

Your voice alone, O Lord, can speak to me of grace;
Your power alone, O Son of God, can all my sin erase.
No other work but Yours, no other blood will do;
No strength but that which is divine can bear me safely through.

Thy work alone, O Christ, can ease this weight of sin;
Thy blood alone, O Lamb of God, can give me peace within.
Thy love to me, O God, not mine, O Lord, to Thee,
Can rid me of this dark unrest, And set my spirit free.

I bless the Christ of God; I rest on love divine;
And with unfaltering lip and heart I call this Savior mine.
His cross dispels each doubt; I bury in His tomb
Each thought of unbelief and fear, each lingering shade of gloom.

I praise the God of grace; I trust His truth and might;
He calls me His, I call Him mine, My God, my joy and light.
’Tis He Who saveth me, and freely pardon gives;
I love because He loveth me, I live because He lives.

In closing, think of the wonderful words of the apostle Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9:

For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.