Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

• Galatians 2:20

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.

• Ephesians 2:8-9

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
    he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
    and by his wounds we are healed.

• Isaiah 53:5

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

• 1 Peter 1:3-5

I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

• Philippians 3:10-11

“ ‘Just what is saving faith?’ is a good question for us to ask in today’s culture, where everything is a subjective choice. ‘Making a decision for Christ’ may be an unhelpfully vague description of what faith entails. Were we really repentant? Did we intend to cooperate with God in His work and our transformation? God alone knows the heart and whether our surrender at the cross and our commitment to the Lordship of Christ is genuine.
“In a sincere conversion, however, we will soon experience changing affections and habits. Things that used to seem appealing no longer do; things that weren’t appealing now are. If your faith is alive, you will experience increasing discontent and conviction over sins of the past and will respond with a genuine desire to turn away, to be changed. If you do not experience ‘hatred of sin and love of holiness,’ Charles Spurgeon said, God has ‘done nothing in you of a saving character.‘ ”

• Charles Colson (with Harold Fickett), The Faith

Chuck Colson covers a lot in the chapter on becoming a new creation.  Salvation is free, in that we cannot purchase it or work for it.  God even gives us the strength to do things like repentance.  We do not do those things on our own steam.

But then, he gets mired down in the mess of the modern evangelism jargon.  Do we invite Jesus into our hearts?  Do we make a choice for Jesus?  Do we surrender to Him?  Each phrase is one that I have heard and probably used, but are any of them adequate?  So, we get to the question of what is saving faith.

That is when the quote above comes in and Rev. Spurgeon describes it quite well in that we will love holiness and hate sin.  This does not mean that we become perfect, but we hate the sin in our lives and we struggle to eliminate that sin, just to find the sin is like an onion and once a layer is removed, a new layer is visible.  It is a lifetime of struggle.

And struggle we must.  Chuck Colson spends half the chapter on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s concept of costly grace.

Odd, I have had Isaiah 53:5 thrown in my face that Christians should never suffer due to Christ’s suffering has paid the price, but Chuck Colson uses it as an identifying mark.  We share in the suffering of Christ.  All Christians must suffer.  And he concludes the chapter that all true Christians can be identified by the nail prints in their hands.

Those nail prints might be metaphorical or spiritual, but the point is that Grace is costly, and we will suffer.  And when we learn to take the suffering in stride because it means we are that much closer to the finish line, then we are getting that much closer to sharing in the suffering of Christ.

Lord, show me what are the foundations of “the Faith.” Faith is a gift from You.  All we can do is willingly receive it.  And in so doing, Your Holy Spirit comes into us and starts to clean house.  As that happens, we see sin in our lives that must be removed, and You give us the motivation and the strength to resist that sin.  And how do we know that our conversion is genuine?  You put that fire within us that causes us to hate the sin in our lives.  And the Holy Spirit does so much more than that.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.