May Christians never forget where they came from, lest they lose sight of the glorious reality of the new creation in Christ. In this brief clip, Sinclair Ferguson reminds us of the privileges that are richly bestowed on all who are united to the Lord Jesus.
Transcript:
You ever sing that great hymn, “Rock of Ages, cleft for me?” Remember that very moving line in it, “Not the labors of my hands can fulfill Your law’s demands.” Then, this line, “Could my tears forever flow, all for sin could not atone.” If you wept for your sins for all eternity, that could not atone for them. Why could it not atone for them? Because it couldn’t remove them. All your tears throughout eternity would be no compensation for the fact that you were living in rebellion against God. And so, what he wants us to understand is the distortion of the original creation and therefore the distortion of our own lives, and it’s against that background that this restoration, this new creation in Christ, is such a glorious reality. Friends, we must never forget where we came from. If we forget where we came from, we begin to take the grace of God very lightly. There is still enough of the old family atmosphere in us to end up congratulating ourselves because we were worthy of the grace of God, and of course God would choose people like us. So, we must never lose sight of the back-cloth of the distortion of our lives through the fall, but by the same token, and for some of us this is an even more important word, we must never lose sight of the glory of the new creation in Christ. And some of us fall off one side, some of us fall off the other. Pastors often have to spend a great deal of time dragging people out of the overwhelming sense they have of their failure, the overwhelming sense they have of the damage that has been done to them because of their past life and need to say to them again and again, “But now you are in Christ.” And by the same token, some of us take it for granted, and we need to be told, “Remember the pit from which you were dug in order that you may catch a fresh sense of the privileges that are yours in your restoration in Jesus Christ.” And the word he uses here is this, what does it mean to be united to Christ? It means that in Jesus Christ we are reconciled to God. In Jesus Christ, we are reconciled to God.
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