always relevant

“Because [as Christians] we are united to Jesus the Messiah through faith, we are accepted by God each day as whole and complete. We are received as those who are filled with all His graces, even though our lives are still shot through with inconsistencies. And we have a new inheritance from the Messiah. Instead of inheriting guilt, bondage to sin, estrangement from God and subjection to the devil, we share in Jesus’ victory over human sin and alienation and over the powers of darkness. By faith we can claim justification (freedom from guilt because Jesus’ righteous acts and sacrificial death have been credited to our account), sanctification (freedom from bondage to sin through the inpouring of the life of Christ in our experience, leading to progress in actual holiness), the Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts (so that we have personal fellowship with God), and authority over the powers of darkness (the ability to resist sin).

“I call these four benefits of redemption primary elements of renewal. Building on the preconditions of renewal—awareness of the holiness of God and of the depth of sin—they provide the answers needed by the heart wounded by conviction of sin. Like three primary colors, they are the source of all the multicolored splendor of new life in the Messiah. When we shine the light of the gospel on our analytic prism, the good news divides into a rainbow with these four elements: justification, sanctification, the Holy Spirit’s indwelling and authority in spiritual conflict.

“I am uncertain about the value of ‘Christian mantras,’ which attempt to build up spirituality by the repetition of phrases like the Jesus Prayer (‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner’). But I do think we can benefit from deeply fixing in our hearts this fourfold description of what we inherit through faith in the Messiah. At the outset of each day, we should hear God saying, ‘You are accepted, because the guilt of sin is covered by the righteousness of Christ; You are free from bondage to sin through the power of Jesus in your life; You are not alone, but indwelt by the Counselor, the Spirit of the Messiah; You are in command, with freedom to resist and expel the powers of darkness… ‘I am accepted’—as though my life displayed the spiritual perfection of the Messiah himself—ought to be the automatic response of our hearts whenever we wake, like the compass needle that always points north. This is a response which is always relevant to our current spiritual condition” (Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life, pp. 136-137, 142).