You may say, “I don’t think I can come to Christ with faith”. If you can’t come to Christ with faith, come to Christ FOR faith, but come to Christ.

Pastor Greg Elmquist

THE STORY OF YOU

While driving down the road recently, my wife read a “church” advertisement which read, “Come hear the story of you”. I don’t know what their message is, but I know well the story of you and me. Our story is a story of ruin in Adam. There is no good news nor hope of improvement in our story. Our story is a story of sin, rebellion and death because of sin in Adam. This is a story that must be told and I hope that is the story told by the owner of the billboard. But the story cannot end there if we are to preach the gospel. The good news of the gospel is found in the story of our Lord Jesus Christ. His story is a story of a life of perfection: perfect righteousness, perfect holiness, and perfect obedience to God’s law. The story of Christ is a story of the death He died as the substitute for the sin of His elect. The good news is that the Lord Jesus Christ traded stories with His people. He took His people’s sad story of sin and death and He gave His people His story of perfection. Now, the story of every believer is a story of a life of perfection: perfect righteousness, perfect holiness, and perfect obedience to God’s law, because as He is, so are we in this world. (I John 4:17)

Remember We Were a Reproach

Ephesians 2:11: Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;

Before God quickened the Ephesian believers and called them to faith in Christ they were a reproach in the judgmental eyes of the self-righteous Jews.

Every believer resides for now in an unregenerate broken fragment of a shattered clay pot called “flesh”. Our fleshly man sometimes judges others, even by accusing them of judging us. One thing that silences that judgmental Pharisee within the child of God is the Light of Christ reminding us that we were once the reproach of self-righteous men, just as the Gentiles were the reproach of the Jews. God could have left us to ourselves and we would have went on being the object of those, “Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou”, to which we retaliated with the same fleshly sword of vain judgment. But by God’s grace He took us from being “a smoke in His nose, a fire that burneth all the day” and made us a sweet-smelling savor in Christ Jesus our Righteousness. (Is 65: 5; Eph 5: 1-2)

Therefore, brethren, let us not reproach others. We are yet the same sinner in our flesh. It is only by God’s grace that we are no longer in the flesh but in the Spirit because the Spirit of God dwells in us.

Pastor Clay Curtis

Well Done (Matthew 25:23)

We who can do nothing to merit, earn or deserve God’s grace in redemption, according to the parable Christ told in Matthew chapter 25, are told by the Father, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” How can this be? It is by God’s sovereign grace in Divine substitution, so infused with Christ, that when God looks and talks to me, He is looking and talking to His beloved Son. It is in Christ only that we have done well and have been faithful to God.