“We are not saved by our holiness. We are saved by Jesus!”
That’s been in my head last couple days. Perhaps because I realize how unholy I am.

I’ve been listening to John Piper’s messages on biographies of great Christians such as John G. Paton and John Bunyan who suffered so much for the Lord – imprisonment, death of wife and children, diseases, persecution, abandonment, eventually dying alone… I can’t tell you how they utterly destroy any misgivings I have about my own sacrifices to the Lord. I do not know a thing about serving the Lord compared to these men!

From there, I go into despair: “What have I done for the Lord? What have I sacrificed to the Lord? Am I even a Christian? How can I live in such luxury if I am one?” But as I do this, I realize that I’m going to my flesh and my own sense of achievement. I’m not leaning on Jesus but rather on my own works. These men were great not because they sacrificed so much for the Lord. They were great because they so utterly believed the same gospel I’m believing in and that enabled them to suffer so much. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jer. 17:9

So, I’m not saved by my holiness. I’m saved by Jesus alone. Now I can breathe a sigh of relief…

But that makes me want to be holy. That makes me want to do more for the Lord. That makes me want to get to the point where I could so utterly give myself to the Lord as those men did. He is worth it!

PH

p.s. If you want to listen to the messages on these great men, go here: http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/biographies/by-title