By Grace Alone: How the Grace of God Amazes Me by Sinclair B. Ferguson

Author:Sinclair B. Ferguson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Christian Life, Sibomana, Devotional, Religion, Emmanuel T, Grace (Theology), Christian Theology, Soteriology
ISBN: 9781567692020
Publisher: Reformation Trust Publishing
Published: 2010-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

This transformation then begins to work deep down into your life. "Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh [i.e., from a this-worldly point of view], yet now we know Him thus no longer" (2 Cor. 5:16).

That is the first and most immediate thing: we have a different view of Jesus because He is Lord and Savior. We love Him. We trust Him. We sense His presence. We know His power. We see His direction. We live for His praise. He has become our Master. The old has gone, the new has come. There has been an exchange.

But there is a further dimension to this exchange-a new attitude toward self: "He [Christ] died for all, that those who live [because He died] should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died for them and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:15). You used to live for yourself, but now you live for Christ. Your own desires and plans are secondary. Christ's will, Christ's desires, Christ's glory-these are now primary.

But there is more-a new attitude to other people: "Therefore [notice that Paul sees this as a spiritual and logical implication of the gospel], from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh [i.e., from a this-worldly point of view]," (2 Cor. 5:16). We see people as though we looked at them through the eyes of our Lord Jesus Christ. How marvelous!

Consider, for example, a young person who has come to a living faith in Jesus Christ. The exchange that Christ has made for her begins to produce a change in her. Her parents are perhaps not Christians. But now she no longer speaks of her parents in the way others do. Her disposition toward her father and mother has changed. She begins to love her parents, to care for them, to pray for them.

Isn't that something-a teenage girl who prays day by day, night by night, for her mom and her dad, because she longs to see them come to know what she has come to know in Jesus Christ? This is a new order of reality, a new world altogether.

All of this, says Paul, comes from God (2 Cor. 5:18). He gives and keeps on giving. The evidence that we have received His gifts is that this great exchange has taken place in our lives.

The Day of Salvation

This is why Paul sounds as though he is speaking in the marketplace to nonChristians. There is a great sense of urgency in his voice: "We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us [which, in reality, He is]. We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God" (2 Cor. 5:20). In other words: "Come to Christ. Trust in Christ. Give yourself to Christ. Turn away from the old by God's grace and experience new life in Christ, who makes everything new."

Those who made the original chapter divisions in our Bibles seem to have obscured the point Paul is making here. Second Corinthians 6:1-2 really

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