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Remember Peter?

Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.” - Luke 22:33-34 ESV

Why was Peter’s confession so flimsy in the ears of our Lord? Because He knew that Peter was relying on his own abandonment to followthrough. Later the Lord restores Peter and appoints him to be the main preacher at Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit comes.

The message in this becomes clear: apart from the Spirit, we can do nothing, even express our love.

Two Fundamental Ways We Don’t Rely on God

1. Wanting something that goes against God’s law. We rely on “broken cisters” to satisfy us.
2. Wanting to keep God’s law without His help. It’s those times when we resolve to forsake those cisterns, to be wholehearted after God, to give everything.

The second is deeper and more problematic. The second appeals to our fallen nature like nothing else: the ability to be good without God. This sin is especially dangerous for those who want to be abandonned to God.

The story of Peter is found in Romans 7:5-6:

For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death (Peter’s bad fruit: denying Christ). But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code (Peter’s good fruit: standing up at Pentecost and boldly proclaiming Christ).

The above passage is all about whom we trust in. How so? Well, how were we “released from the law”? Through Christ. What does that mean? Simply put, it means becoming righteous without first having to keep the law. It means righteousness as a gift, through the work of Christ. Either you do it (trust yourself), or He does it for you (trust Him).

How does this affect abandonment? If you think God wants you to prove something, or if you want to prove something, that means you are under the law, and according to the above passage, your evil desires for self-preservation will be stirred up by the law.

Let’s just be honest. You are not good. Your pastor is not good. Your favorite writer is not good. Your favorite worship leader is not good. I am not good. “None is rightoeus, no not one.” But we all are good in Christ. Yet as Christians, we don’t become increasingly good apart from Christ.

Rather, the Christian life is one continuous discovery that there is nothing in us to lean on, and all that there is to lean on is found in Christ. Thus our eyes are set on Him more and more–and on ourselves, less and less. The more our eyes are set on Him, the more He transforms us into His image. The more we gaze on ourselves, the more our corrupted desires reign over us, taking dominion.

Trusting in Christ for righteousness means…
1. freedom from evil desires
2. the presence of the Spirit to enable

Problem

I submit that most our the lack of followthrough in the church is not due to men taking grace as a license to sin, but because men are not actually receiving grace, and are therefore under the power of the law, dominated by their evil desires. Today, right now, men don’t trust in Christ’s righteousness. They see their evil desires and gasp, not imagining the fire of shameful passions could be put out in a moment with a free glass of water.

Solution

Read Galatians 3. Then read Galatians 1-6. Ask for help to live by faith in the Son of God.

The Christian life is to be by the Spirit’s power. The door into that realm is trust in the right Person.