Three ways to live

Here is the second part of the gospel presentation taken from the book “Spiritual Depression” by famous British preacher Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. While the first part dealt with the necessity of being convicted of sin, the second part talks about how to become right with God (after you become convicted of your wrong).

God has said that He will punish sin, and that the punishment of sin is death and banishment from the face of God. Before man can be reconciled to God, before man can know God, this sin of his must be removed. God, because He is righteous and holy and eternal, could not forgive the sin of man without punishing it. He said He would punish it, so He must punish it, and, blessed be His name, He has punished it. God has punished our sins in Christ, in His body on the cross, so he can now forgive us.

This works like this: If we have seen our need and go to God and confess it, God will give us his own Son’s righteousness. He imputes Christ’s righteousness to us who believe in Him, and regards us as righteous. This is the justification by faith. We look to Christ and to Christ alone, we rest exclusively upon the Lord Jesus and His perfect work.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones had a very simple way of testing others to see if they understood this. He would explain the whole concept to them and then ask “Well, then, are you now ready to say that you are a Christian?”. And often they would hesitate, saying “I do not feel that I am good enough”. At once he knew that in a sense he has been wasting his breath. They are still thinking in terms of themselves; their idea is still that they have to make themselves good enough to be Christian. It sounds very modest, but it is the lie of the devil. You will never be good enough; nobody has ever been good enough. The essence of Christian salvation is that He is good enough and that I am in Him.

Until you understand this, you will never be happy. You will think you are better at times and then again you will find you are not as good as you thought you were. Forget yourself, forget all about yourself. It doesn’t matter if you have almost entered the depths of hell, if you are guilty of murder as well as any other vile sin. Look at nothing and nobody but look entirely to Christ and say:

My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
all other ground is sinking sand