Last week on Vision Sunday we released our updated ‘Vision’ for Earlwood Anglican, which is ‘Bringing glory to God by calling all to delight in Him as our ultimate treasure’. This Vision is shaped by seven core values, the first of which is ‘Grace: Resting in God’s Work’.
During the Vision Sunday sermon I explained how this first means ‘resting’ in how as sinful humans, we are incapable of ever fulfilling God’s laws or commands this side of heaven. While hearing ‘we CANNOT do it’ might frustrate some ears, we must understand that we can only get upset by such a comment from a framework of works. And that’s where Satan wants us; either being upset at being told ‘we cannot do it’, because our pride secretly thinks we can, or despairing over being told ‘we cannot do it’, because we think we must measure up to God’s standards to please him.
The only remedy to this pride or despair is to ‘own’ the fact that we are completely incapable. This is what true repentance is; not that we’ve sinned a little, or even a lot; but that we are incapable of NOT sinning. If you don’t believe me, try not sinning for an hour, and see how you go.
Yet the reason we can REST in our inability to fulfil God’s decrees is because Jesus was able to do it perfectly for us. Jesus has fulfilled every requirement of the law in the cross, which means that when God looks at Christians, he sees perfection; he sees Jesus. The degree to which we understand this, and rest in these two things, is the degree to which we are freed up to actually start obeying God’s laws like never before; which is what we were made for (Eph 2:10).
Brendan McLaughlin
