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