Today’s Scripture: Romans 5:19

“By the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

How can Jesus take our place both in obeying God’s law and in suffering the consequences of our disobeying it? How can the innocent suffer for the guilty?

Because God appointed Adam as the federal head or legal representative of the entire human race (except for Jesus, of course), we all suffered the consequences of Adam’s disobedience. In the same manner, Jesus was appointed as the legal representative of all who would ever trust in him.

This legal representation is the basis on which Christ’s life and death become effective for us. There would be absolutely no benefit to us if Jesus lived and died merely as a private person. His work brings us benefit only because he lived and died as our representative.

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Today’s Scripture: Romans 5:2

“Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand.”

When you set yourself to seriously pursue holiness, you’ll begin realizing what an awful sinner you are. If you aren’t firmly rooted in the Gospel and haven’t learned to preach it to yourself every day, you’ll soon become discouraged and will slack off. In the pursuit of holiness, nothing’s more important than learning to preach the Gospel to yourself every day.

In doing so, we must be careful not to preach a Gospel without a cross. All the wonderful promises of forgiveness in Scripture are based upon Christ’s atoning death. Through it he satisfied God’s justice and averted from us God’s wrath. We must be careful not to rely on the so-called unconditional love of God without realizing his love can flow to us only as a result of Christ’s atoning death.

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Today’s Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:1

“I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel.”

To preach the Gospel to yourself means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in his shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God. In both its precepts and penalty, he fulfilled the law of God in its most exacting requirements. And he did this in our place as our representative and our substitute. He is your propitiation, so that God’s holy wrath is no longer directed toward you.

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Today’s Scripture: 1 Peter 2:22

“He committed no sin.”

There are times when our inward desires do not match our outward conduct. We act very proper on the outside, but sin in our hearts. This was never the case with Jesus. Through one of the messianic psalms he could say, “I delight to do your will, o my God; your law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:8). He not only perfectly obeyed the law of God; he always desired to do so and, in fact, delighted in doing it. Once he even said, “My food . . . is to do the will of him who sent me” (John 4:34, NIV).

If we think about it, we realize that obedience that isn’t delighted in is not perfect obedience. Yet that was the quality of obedience Jesus rendered throughout his life.

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Today’s Scripture: Luke 18:13

“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”

Sin is more than actions; it’s an attitude that ignores God’s law. It’s more than a rebellious attitude; sin is a state of corruption in our inmost being, of vileness, even of filthiness in God’s sight. For this reason the Bible never speaks of God’s grace as simply making up our deficiencies—as if salvation consists in so much good works plus so much of God’s grace. Rather the Bible speaks of a God “who justifies the ungodly” (Romans 4:5), who is found by those who do not seek him, who reveals himself to those who do not ask for him (Romans 10:20).

In Jesus’ parable in Luke 18:9-14, the tax collector did not ask God to simply make up his deficiencies. Rather, he beat his breast—a sign of his deep anguish—and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (verse 13). He declared total spiritual bankruptcy, and on that basis, he experienced the grace of God. Jesus said the man went home justified—declared righteous by God.

Like the tax collector, we don’t just need God’s grace to make up for our deficiencies; we need his grace to provide a remedy for our guilt, a cleansing for our pollution. We need his grace to provide a satisfaction of his justice, to cancel a debt we cannot pay.

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Today’s Scripture: Leviticus 20:7

“Consecrate yourselves, therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God.”

Another reason that we do not experience more holiness in daily living is that we have misunderstood “living by faith” (Galatians 2:20) to mean no effort at holiness is required on our part. In fact, sometimes we’ve even suggested that any effort on our part is “of the flesh.”

The words of J. C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool from 1880 to 1900, are instructive to us on this point: “Is it wise to proclaim in so bald, naked, and unqualified a way as many do, that the holiness of converted people is by faith only, and not at all by personal exertion? Is it according to the proportion of God’s Word? I doubt it. That faith in Christ is the root of all holiness . . . no well-instructed Christian will ever think of denying. But surely the Scriptures teach us that in following holiness the true Christian needs personal exertion and work as well as faith.”

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Today’s Scripture: Nahum 1:6

“His wrath is poured out like fire.”

Many people think that God can just forgive our sins because he’s loving. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cross speaks to us not only about our sin but about God’s holiness.

We usually think of God’s holiness as his infinite moral purity, but there’s more to it than that. The basic meaning of the word holy is “separate,” and when used of God it means, among other things, that he’s eternally separate from any degree of sin. He does not sin himself, and he cannot abide or condone sin in his moral creatures.

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