Her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little (Luke 7:47).

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This track is from Relevant Revolution.

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He believed that this righteousness was the gift of God. Verse 11: “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God,I thank you that I am not like other men.’” He gives God the credit for making him upright and devout like he is. “I thank you that I am morally upright and religiously devout.” In other words, this man is not what theologians call a Pelagian—a person who believes he can make himself righteous without God’s help. . . .

The problem is not whether the man himself has produced the righteousness he has or whether God has produced it. The problem is: He trusts in it. This is his confidence. Verse 9: “[Jesus] also told this parable to some who trusted in themselvesthat they were righteous.” Now make sure you see what this is saying. It is not saying that he is trusting in himself to make himself righteous. No. He says explicitly he is thanking God for that. He is not trusting in himself to make himself righteous. He is trusting in himself that he is righteous with the righteousness that he believes God has worked in him. That is what he is trusting.

As far as we know, this Pharisee was a total advocate of the sovereignty of God. As far as we know, he would have said, “Not I but the grace of God in me has worked this righteousness.” He says, “I thank you, God, that I have this righteousness.” That was not his mistake. His mistake was that he trusted in this apparently God-produced righteousness for justification. . . .

He is not presented as a legalist—one who tries to earn his salvation. That is not the issue. One thing is the issue: This man was morally upright. He was religiously devout. He believed God had made him so. He gave thanks for it. And that is what he looked to and trusted in for his justifying righteousness before God—for his justification. And he was dead wrong to do so. . . .

Don’t trust what God has worked in you. Trust in Christ alone (John Piper, Did Jesus Preach the Gospel of Evangelicalism?).

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If I had not felt certain that every additional trial was ordered by infinite love and mercy, I could not have survived my accumulated sufferings (Adoniram Judson).

From How Few There Are Who Die So Hard: The Cost of Bringing Christ to Burma.

“What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him (Matthew 21:28-32).

In the mind of a first century Jew, prostitutes and tax collectors were the worst sinners in the world. They were the outcasts, the rodents of society. Things haven’t changed much in our time. Prostitution, in the minds of most, ranks among the greatest of disrespectable sins. But Jesus had some shocking words for the respected individuals of his time: “The tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.” (more…)

Why do I have such a hard time trusting Christ, without whom there is no joy and in whom all joy abides? Why would I seek water from any other fountain? They are but broken cisterns, but, in him, life wells up so abundantly that it cannot help but to pour forth over everything in his presence, like a tidal wave bursting out onto a desert, bringing life to a desolate land.

Is that not enough? Will those who are thirsty say to the sea, “You are not enough”? Do those who are hungry curse the bread which has been given to them? What traveler who is weary refuses a bed on which to rest?

Why are you downcast, O my soul? Hope in God!

The bride eyes not her garment,
But her dear Bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory
But on my King of grace.

Anne Cousin, The Sands of Time are Sinking

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless (Tim Keller, The Reason for God xvii).

I have struggled with much of my own doubt. Doubt is painful. It blinds your eyes to Christ, and it robs you of your joy. It causes you to question God. It makes the small joys sin offers seem great (Genesis 3:1-6). However, as painful as it has been, and as much as I have stumbled in the midst of doubt, I am glad for much of it. When Jesus predicted Peter’s faithlessness, he commanded him, “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:32). I have learned invaluable lessons through some of my hardest nights. To doubters, from a doubter, here are some of the things I have learned. (more…)

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are precious to me not because they turn my life into a string of successes but because they keep me from collapsing under my string of failures (John Piper, Radical Effects of the Resurrection).

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Some professing Christians . . . are given to a grievous censorious and critical attitude toward everything and everybody. As one man I knew has said, “Some people are born in the objective case, the contrary gender and the bilious mood.”. . . For one to profess to know Christ and have real religion and at the same time to manifest a sour, critical, negative attitude is disgusting and ab­horrent even to the ungodly. Certainly anyone with such an unsavory nature could never hope to be a “savour of life unto life” (Bill Piper, Dead Men Made Alive).

If righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose (Galatians 2:21).

One of the things I like most about Martin Luther is that he was a sinner.  He was shockingly honest in his writing about his own sinfulness, and he needed to be for the sake of people who constantly forget that Christ died for the ungodly.  Let me give an example of what I mean:

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter, are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign (Sämmtliche Schriften, Letter 99, emphasis added).

And Luther was no imaginary sinner.  He wrote this questionable advice to a younger friend, Jerome Weller, “Whenever the devil harasses you, seek the company of men or drink more, or joke and talk nonsense, or do some other merry thing. Sometimes we must drink more, sport, recreate ourselves, and even sin a little to spite the devil, so that we leave him no place for troubling our consciences with trifles.”

That doesn’t mean Luther took sin lightly.  He often lamented over his indwelling sin.  His great sinfulness, his recognition of it, and his despair over it made him a good companion to sinful people.  And his understanding that God was the only one who could free him from his sin made him totally reliant on God and his grace, just like Augustine a millennium before him who prayed, “Command what you will, and will what you command!”  Indeed, Luther was an Augustinian monk, so he was likely quite familiar with this famous passage from the Confessions.  Luther wrote of his own struggles:

I sit here at ease, hardened and unfeeling—alas! praying little, grieving little for the Church of God, burning rather in the fierce fires of my untamed flesh. It comes to this: I should be afire in the spirit; in reality I am afire in the flesh, with lust, laziness, idleness, sleepiness. It is perhaps because you have all ceased praying for me that God has turned away from me . . . For the last eight days I have written nothing, nor prayed nor studied, partly from self-indulgence, partly from another vexatious handicap . . . I really cannot stand it any longer . . . Pray for me, I beg you, for in my seclusion here I am submerged in sins.

Perhaps Luther’s deep understanding that the gospel was solely for sinners made him so free to talk about his sinfulness.  As he himself once said, “Sin cannot tear you away from [Christ], even though you commit adultery a hundred times a day and commit as many murders.”  The church could use more sinners like Luther.

His dying words fit his life and teaching so well, “We are beggars.  This is true.”