We are a group of Christians with a God-given passion to prize and proclaim the excellencies of our crucified and risen Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One through whom the God of all grace chose us, sought us, saved us, and called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).
We certainly weren't born with this passion. Nor did it appear out of nowhere, or because we decided it was time to settle down and become religious, churchgoing people. Like every son and daughter of Adam, we were born in sin. Prior to being sought and rescued by the God of all grace, we loved the darkness of our sin and wanted to continue wallowing in our filth and rebellion. We hated God. We loved and idolized His gifts, but wanted nothing to do with Him.
Although this hatred wasn't expressed in verbal utterances like, "I hate God," it was expressed by the way we lived our lives. Although we, with the rest of mankind, had a real and inescapable sense of His existence, we refused to honor and give thanks to Him as the gracious Giver of life and breath and everything. The glory of this immortal God, which was meant to be our joy and treasure, we sinfully exchanged for lesser, trivial, worthless things. Instead of drinking from Him as the fountain of living waters, we drank down sin as if it were water. Instead of seeking the God from whom every blessing flows, we sought to satisfy ourselves with everything but God, and proved - by our own experience - that what He had long ago spoken concerning the human race was true:
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.(Romans 3:10-12)
Our attitude towards our Creator was identical to that which the citizens in Christ's parable had towards their nobleman: "We do not want this man to reign over us!" (Luke 19:14). Seeking to be our own gods, we despised His glory, ignored His laws, disdained His sovereignty, and had no desire to submit to His truth. Though some of us were religious, churchgoing people, we were like those of whom God spoke when He said,
This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. (Isaiah 29:13)
Like whitewashed tombs, some of us appeared beautiful and clean on the outside, but inwardly were fully hypocrisy, dead people's bones, and all uncleanness. On the other hand, some of us could say with Thomas Terry,
There used to be a time when we were fine living life with no particular religious bend, pretending to be our own gods [and] inventing our own systems of belief so as to not depend on anything other than our own self-governing consent.
Regardless of how different our pasts were, we had one thing in common: we were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked (Eph. 2:1). We followed the course of this godless world as blind captives of the devil. We all once lived in the passions of our sinful natures, carrying out the base desires of the body and the mind, and like the rest of mankind, we deserved God's wrath and curse for the many ways we belittled His glory. Our iniquities had risen higher than our heads and our guilt had mounted up to the heavens.
Blinded by sin (1 John 2:11),
polluted with sin (Job 14:4),
enslaved to sin (Romans 6:17),
ruined in sin (Isaiah 6:5),
dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1),
and in love with sin (John 3:19),
we were hopelessly separated from Christ,
and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12).
It's only by the sheer kindness and tender mercy of God that our story didn't end here, even though it would've been perfectly just and fair for God to leave us wrecked and ruined and destined to die in our sin and be plunged into a hopeless, Christless eternity.
But what unspeakable glory it is that God Most High is also God Most Merciful! In our helpless, hopeless, and hostile state, God pitied us! Moved by a passion for His glory and a love for our souls, He opened our blind eyes to see the enormity of our sin and the awful reality of our guilt. He caused us to see that we were undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving rebels who had only ever lived for sin and self in a theater of a world that exists to display the life-giving glory of God. The goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared and came to us powerfully through the message of the gospel. His Spirit so moved in us that the message that some of us had long ignored and considered to be irrelevant and foolish was suddenly the greatest news and most important message we had ever heard (1 Thess. 1:4-5).
Our blind eyes were opened to see the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Savior that He is, able and willing to save to the uttermost all who draw near to God through Him. Our deaf ears were unstopped and we heard the voice of the Good Shepherd calling us out of the sheepfold of sin and into His green pastures of life and liberty. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ became sweet to our souls and sin became bitter. We were granted the unspeakable privilege of seeing and savoring Jesus as the one pearl of greatest value (Matt. 13:45-46), the One worth losing everything for.
Our hard and calloused hearts were melted by the reality of our Saviour's dying love. Our pride and arrogance were shattered when we were made to realize that it was our sin that led to Christ's agony in Gethsemane and His abandonment upon Calvary. We were gripped by the fact that God's sinless Son was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities (Isa. 53:5). What wonder of wonders that God would lay our iniquities upon His precious Son and crushing Him in our place as our Substitute. On the cross, the ever-blessed Son became a curse for us so that we who were cursed might stand forever blessed in God's presence.
Our hearts were even more ecstatic when we learned that Jesus not only died in our place and for our sin, but that after three days He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father for our justification (Rom. 4:25). The resurrection of Jesus gives us the greatest possible assurance that the sins of all of God's people have been forgiven, paid for, and put away once and for all! As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.
Some of us had heard the gospel several times, but when it pleased God to bring it to us in power, in the Holy Spirit, and with full conviction, He caused us to be born again. It was God's abundant mercy that caused us to be born again to a living hope (1 Pet. 1:3). We who once loved our sin found ourselves repenting and turning from our idols, and we who formerly wanted nothing to do with Christ found ourselves placing all our hope, trust, and confidence in Him, convinced that He alone was able to save us, cleanse us, and present us faultless before the throne of God above.
Upon believing in Christ, God not only forgave our sins and purified our souls, but He declared us to be righteous in His sight, clothing us with the very righteousness of His Son (2 Cor. 5:21)! Now adopted into His family and assured of eternal glory, we rejoice and find great comfort in the promise that He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion (Phil. 1:6). Our risen Savior has given us eternal life, and because He died for us and continues to intercede for us, we will never perish, and no one will ever be able to snatch us out of His hand. We press on, knowing that His infinite power will sustain us to the end. By no means have we or will we obtain perfection in this life, but we press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Though we're not what we ought to be, not what we want to be, and not what we hope to be in another world, we thank God that we are not what we used to be, and this is all owing to the tender mercy and sovereign grace of Almighty God. The only thing we contributed to our salvation is the sin that made it necessary, nothing more.
For reasons entirely outside of us, we are a people chosen by God the Father, redeemed by God the Son, and regenerated by God the Holy Spirit. We are not our own, but belong to the triune God. Once we were not a people, but now we are God's people (1 Pet. 2:10). Our identity as individual believers, and our identity as a church, is bound up in who God is for us in Jesus and what He's accomplished for us through the work of Jesus. He spoke His life-giving gospel to us and we were made alive, and it's His Word that continues to sanctify, satisfy, strengthen, and safeguard our souls.
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with [us] all. (2 Cor. 13:14)