The Bookends of the Christian Life 1

 節選自“The Bookends of the Christian Life", 

Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, The Bookends of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2009).

Chapter 1

In this context, faith involves both a renunciation and a reliance. First, we must renounce any trust in our own performance as the basis of our acceptance before God. We trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve earned God’s acceptance by our good works. But we also trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve lost God’s acceptance by our bad works—by our sin. So we must renounce any consideration of either our bad works or our good works as the means of relating to God. 

Second, we must place our reliance entirely on the perfect obedience and sin-bearing death of Christ as the sole basis of our standing before God—on our best days as well as our worst.

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For Paul, justification was not only a past event; it was also a daily, present reality. So every day of his life, by faith in Christ, Paul realized he stood righteous in the sight of God—he was counted righteous and accepted by God as righteous—because of the perfectly obedient life and death Christ provided for him. He stood solely on the rock-solid righteousness of Christ alone, which is our first bookend.

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Every day we must re-acknowledge the fact that there’s nothing we can do to make ourselves either more acceptable to God or less acceptable. Regardless of how much we grow in our Christian lives, we’re accepted for Christ’s sake or not accepted at all.

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Because we have a natural tendency to look within ourselves for the basis of God’s approval or disapproval, we must make a conscious daily effort to look outside ourselves to the righteousness of Christ, then to stand in the present reality of our justification. Only then will we experience the stability that the first bookend is meant to provide.

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Chapter 2

We can trace three steps in the woman’s experience. She’d become deeply convicted of her many sins through her initial encounter with Jesus. She then received from him the assurance that her sins were forgiven. These two steps—deep conviction of sin and assurance of forgiveness—prompted the third: love and gratitude on her part. The dinner at Simon’s house provided an occasion for her to publicly display these feelings. She displayed much love because she’d been forgiven so much. There’s an important lesson here for all of us. Genuine love for Christ comes through (1) an ever-growing consciousness of our own sinfulness and unworthiness, coupled with (2) the assurance that our sins, however great, have been forgiven through his death on the cross. Only love that’s founded on both of these foundations can be authentic and permanent. If we find we lack love for the Savior, one or both of these prerequisites are deficient.

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The ointment was merely an outward symbol of a life now dedicated to Jesus. She was forgiven much, and she loved much; she gave not only her ointment but her heart as well. When we’ve truly experienced the gospel, far from producing a “why bother to grow?” attitude, it has just the opposite effect. It motivates us to lay down our lives in humble and loving service out of gratitude for grace.

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In this good news, Isaiah heard the gospel. Like the sinful woman, Isaiah also experienced both the deep conviction of his sin and the assurance of God’s gracious forgiveness. Isaiah’s response was also similar. When he heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” he responded, “Here am I! Send me” (verse 8). Isaiah gave his life in service to God. He essentially offered himself as a blank check, to be filled in as God saw fit.

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In his own words: “In order that I may . . . be found in [Christ], not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” Paul utterly renounced his own righteousness as a means of attaining a right standing with God; instead, he relied solely on the shed blood and righteousness of Christ.

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Remember, we need the gospel not only as a door into an initial saving relationship with Christ, but also as the first bookend to keep our daily lives from becoming a performance treadmill. 

Chapter 3: Enemy #1, self-righteousness

When we respond by resting in the assurance that we’re successful enough, we harbor self-righteousness, which is Gospel Enemy #1. And when we respond with anxiety over the inadequacy of our performance, we harbor persistent guilt, Gospel Enemy #2.

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The self-righteousness we refer to in this book goes deeper; it’s a self-righteousness toward God. It’s as if we tell him, “I’m doing so well; surely I deserve your blessing. You owe it to me.”

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But we essentially make this very statement whenever we depend on our own performance to merit any or all of the following six “A”-mazing blessings of God: 

Approval by God—his favor; 

Access to his holy presence—his fellowship; 

Acceptance into his family—his community; 

Admittance into heaven—his eternal life; 

Appropriation of our daily provisions—his earthly sustenance; 

Ability to live the Christian life—his strength.

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“If you died today and God asked you why he should let you into his heaven, what would you say?”

Suppose you have an urgent prayer request and God were to ask, “Why should I answer your prayer?” How would you answer?

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there’s no difference between trusting God for salvation and trusting him for answers to prayer; in both cases we’re dependent on Christ’s righteousness alone.

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Even longstanding believers can fall into a similar trap—not with regard to our salvation but with regard to our perception of our standing with God. 

So every time we approach God in prayer, worship, or any other spiritual discipline, we must see our résumé only as he sees it—overlaid by Christ’s perfect résumé.

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There are two categories of self-righteous believers. The first is the self-disciplined moralistic believer who partially embraces the gospel but feels deserving of one or more of those six “A”-mazing blessings on the basis of his or her religious performance

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Making God’s love contingent on our action is a sad but common misunderstanding in the church. Remember, a believer’s union is never in jeopardy. For God’s love is an eternal love that had no beginning, that shall have no ending; that cannot be heightened by any act of ours; that cannot be lessened by anything in us. While our sense of communion with God may fluctuate, his love does not grow and diminish. The wrath of God against the sin of saints was completely exhausted on the cross.

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There’s a second category of self-righteous believers. They also partially embrace the gospel, but they constantly live under a sense of guilt due to an acute awareness that the expectations they set for themselves are considerably under-fulfilled. They’re displeased with themselves and assume God is also displeased. Their attitude can be deceptive: outwardly it may look like humility. But persistent guilt is a child of self-righteousness toward God. It’s the belief that we should find our source of righteousness within ourselves, though we’re painfully aware of our shortfall, as if to say, “I can do better, and I should do better”— emphasis on I. Like moralistic believers, these also border on unbelief. Only God knows their heart and whether they truly place their faith in the righteousness of Christ.

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We must continually battle these two gospel enemies, self-righteousness and persistent guilt. They represent a form of unbelief that may not send us to hell but will rob us of fruitfulness, joy, and the assurance that God is for us and not against us, both now and forevermore.

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Chapter 4 Enemy #2 Persistent Guilt

Our conscience serves two important purposes for our good, just as pain does for our body. First, it sends off warning signals when we’re about to go astray. This should remind us to renew our dependence on God’s enabling strength, the second bookend (as we’ll explore later). Second, when we sin, our conscience declares us guilty. This should remind us to renew our dependence on the cure for our sin-sickness, the righteousness of Christ crucified, the first bookend.

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Don’t avoid the voice of your conscience; instead deliberately and regularly remember your past sin and acknowledge your present sin. Then return to the cross, the epicenter of the unfathomable greatness of Christ’s merit. Don’t be reluctant to feel thirst; it points you to living water where you can cherish every drop of it he gives for what it really is—precious beyond comparison. And when those old guilt pangs stab at you, thank them for doing you a great service by reminding you afresh that there’s a Deliverer who has already delivered you, a Healer whose stripes have already healed you (Colossians 1:13–14; Isaiah 53:5). And because of this, Christ is your all-surpassing treasure.

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In the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18:9–14, the tax collector took a far different approach from the self-righteous Pharisee. Trembling because of his guilt, he stood far off, eyes to the ground. He beat his breast and acknowledged his sinfulness. And he begged for God’s mercy. Remarkably, Jesus declared him justified! And as if that good news were not astonishing enough, there’s more. Jesus declared that in the future this tax collector would be exalted! And for what? Begging for mercy? Yes! Because his begging was a heartfelt acknowledgment of his sinfulness in the light of God’s holiness; it was a burning expression of his desperate need of mercy—the very thing the gospel provides. His begging did not nullify the grace of God but exalted it.

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Chapter 5

In this chapter, we offer three focal points for dependence-shifting: (1) seeing ourselves as desperately lost sinners; (2) seeing the righteousness of Christ as all-sufficient for us daily; and (3) seeing and rejecting our functional saviors

As God turns up the dimmer switch and pours more and more light on your life, you’ll be shocked to see you’re far more sinful than you ever dared to imagine

As we’ve seen, there’s a righteousness that does deserve God’s blessing. It’s a righteousness whose source is outside of us, not dependent on us.

These “functional saviors” can be any object of dependence we embrace that isn’t God. They become the source of our identity, security, and significance because we hold an idolatrous affection for them in our hearts. They preoccupy our minds and consume our time and our resources

And functional saviors take many forms. For some, it takes the form of a self-destructive addiction. For others it could be something that otherwise would be good or harmless if they weren’t dependent on it—activities or things. It could be television, family, friends, sleep, caffeine, partying, not partying, eating, not eating. It could be career, fashion, investment accounts, approval of others, material possessions, peer status, good looks, recreation, spectator sports, having a clean house, or working out at the gym. It could be just about anything, including moderate living, asceticism, philanthropic giving, or even ministry.