My dear Tracy

 

I have good news for you!

 

You are doing what Paul called "working out your own salvation with fear and trembling" that is you are doing the very thing that leads to true salvation. This is a good thing. You remind me of the "pilgrim" in Pilgrim's Progress, who was afraid and could not be comforted while others were content to play church or live lives of "civility" without fear and thinking that they were saved by their good deeds. You at least know that you are not good enough and that is the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Now you are ready for the GOOD NEWS! The first thing that I would have you know is that you cannot make yourself righteous. Even if you were to succeed in your attempts to "overcome" your besetting sin, whatever it is, still you have fallen and are fallen and nothing you do can fix it. Might as well accept that, okay? Join the human race! We are all sinners. God gave us the law so that we could understand where His standard is, which is way above where man usually thinks it is. If someone thinks that he is living up to that standard, he lies and the truth is not in him. But if we confess our sins to God, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1: 8-9) Once you have understood that you cannot keep the law and you arrive at that place where you seem to now be which is characterized by Paul's cry, "Oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?!" It is then that you are ready for the gospel, which is "good news" that Jesus paid for you to come into God's kingdom at His expense. Believe it and STOP trying to be good enough! You cannot. But what you can do is fall at Jesus feet like the sinner woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears of gratefulness and dried them with her hair all the while kissing his feet, and say "Thank You Lord! Thank You Lord! This is the gospel that many have fallen short of because they think that they can keep the goodness standard through their own efforts. As long as anyone thinks that he is good by his own efforts he is deceived and not saved. God has no choice but to judge him according to his performance. This is what you have been doing. You can stop that right now and admit to God that you are not good enough and that you want what Jesus did on your behalf to stand in your place. When you take God at His word and believe with your heart and confess with your mouth (Romans 10) that Jesus is your Lord, and you mean it and are willing to let Jesus rule over your life from now on, then you are in that moment saved. You will stay saved the same way as long as you hold on to this confidence, that is your confidence in Him and what He has done for you and do not turn back to the bondage of the law that cannot save you. Whoso hath this HOPE in themselves has purified themselves by that hope. We are saved by hope (Romans 8:24). The law was our "schoolmaster" or teacher with but one purpose: to prove to each of us that we cannot be righteous in our own power. Do you now believe that you cannot be righteous in your own power? GOOD! Then the law has done its job for you and you can now proceed to the next step in God's plan of salvation: Receive the gift of righteousness for free at Christ expense. You cannot earn it; it is a GIFT! But you must receive it and no one can receive it on your behalf. You must receive it yourself between you and God. If you say, But I already have received that gift, then I would ask you: Why then once you graduated have you returned to the subjecting of yourself to the schoolmaster? Once you have seen that you cannot keep the law and have been driven by that realization to Christ, then you are no longer under the schoolmaster! You have graduated and are now free in Christ from the law. Do not return to the bondage of trying to keep the law.

 

Galatians 3:

24.  Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
 25.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.
 26.  For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.
 27.  For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

 

Satan will try to get you to go back under the schoolmaster of the law and if you fall for it you have fallen from grace and are back under the law and must keep it perfectly to be right with God but alas you cannot and therefore will remain in this world to face the tribulation. All of this is portrayed in the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt and then dying in the wilderness because God promised them a land flowing with milk and honey but they would not BELIEVE that He really meant it. Therefore it was as if He never promised it in the first place. They still died in their unbelief.

DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE THEY MADE AT THIS CRITICAL POINT IN OUR WILDERNESS JOURNEY!

 

God gives you as a gift, perfect righteousness by which you are able to stand and that you cannot produce yourself. Just as God promised to bring the Israelites safely into the land in spite of giants. Joshua and Caleb believed God and the rest did not. It had nothing to do with their own worthiness. But everything to do with whether they believed God or not. That is why it says in Ephesians to PUT ON the whole armor of God including PUT ON the breastplate of righteousness. That is JESUS' righteousness, not your own righteousness which is filthy rags. You receive this righteousness as a gift because God promised it and you take it by faith. Stop trying to be good and accept that God gives you sufficient covering to make you as righteousness as He is. Then you are Holy (set apart for God) as your Father in heaven is Holy. Then your righteousness will exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees because it is perfect righteousness OF God!

 

Luke 18:

 

9.  And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
 10.  Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican.
 11.  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.
 12.  I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.
 13.  And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
 14.  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

 

Barry Amundsen