Just this simple question: “Have you ever been where the tax-collector was in his lostness before God? (Luke 18:13).

In the original language it says literally in Luke 18:13: “God, be propitious to me, the sinner!”  Not a sinner, but the sinner, that looks to the atoning sacrifice of Christ.  He wasn´t just one sinner among many, but the sinner.  Have you come to that place?

The testimony of a godly woman always impressed me when she told about her conversion at a blessed awakening in her childhood.   Her father led her to Christ as they bowed their knees on the kitchen floor in their modest cottage.  We also talked about her foster brother that happened to be my uncle, and I admired him as a great charming preacher.  I wish I could speak like that!

But she confided to me after his death, “I´m afraid he has never seen himself as a sinner.”  He was eloquent, but immoral, and the genuine conviction as a sinner he was lacking, she felt.  I hope she was not right, but on the other hand, she was a woman with spiritual discernment that I just had to listen to.

I´ve talked to many religious people in USA and Denmark about their spiritual self-deception.  Some were committed to church programs, but “the finishing touch” wasn´t there.  Some got angry, but some let me pray for them.

As a young immature student (I regret to say) at a missionary training center in the U.S. I once witnessed to my dear co-students of the freedom I´d found in the gospel of grace emphasizing our lostness and nothingness in ourselves as I tried to point to Christ and our liberty and sufficiency in Him and in Him only.  But I was opposed.

How dared I to speak of our “nothingness” to students who were such dedicated people that wanted to count for the Lord?  Some thought I went overboard, while the gospel teaching refreshed others.  I took that message with me to Denmark and Norway, and precious young souls were saved.

So what about you?  How do you stand before God?  What are you leaning to?  Is it Christ plus nothing? Then don´t be silent about it.

July 12, 2020 - jn