Our Ongoing Need of Redemption as Christians By John Hendryx

Ichabod S. Spencer once said, "To cut off the sinner from all reliance upon himself, his merits and his powers; and throw him, naked and helpless, into the hands of the Holy Spirit to lead him to Christ in faith; should be the one great aim of the ministry.” So the way God works in us through the gospel is that as the Holy Spirit broods over us prior to redeeming us, and works repentance and faith in us by confronting our self-righteousness and spiritual blindness such that our heart recognizes that we have no hope unless we throw ourselves entirely on Christ’s mercy alone. With a heart renewed by the Holy Spirit we then repent of known evil and, just as important, of trusting in any and all good works. When the Lord opens our heart to the gospel and unites us to Christ through faith, the Spirit of God is said to seal us for the day or redemption, thus guaranteeing our inheritance (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13, 4:30). To many Christians the gospel ends there as a one time event. It is often seen as some past experience having happened at the time of conversion before we graduate on to “higher” truths. But, may I suggest that this most foundational understanding of the gospel is also the basis of our ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ? While our ultimate redemption is as certain as Christ is risen, he still reminds us as Christians that apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). I intend to show this to scripturally be the case in the next few paragraphs.

Its like this: Just as when the gospel saved us, as Christians the Word of God still comes to us in divine power so that our self-complacency is shattered and our self-righteousness renounced … the Holy Spirit still reminds us of our woeful, guilty, and lost condition without Christ and when, as our Father, He lovingly confronts the idols in our heart, so the Spirit again reveals to us our only hope to be the sufficiency of Christ to meet our desperate case … and a divinely given faith still causes us to lay hold of and rest upon Christ as our only hope for every situation we face. No amount of my own good works will make me more accepted with God. Christ is still all in all so I do good works not in order to be redeemed but because I am redeemed in Christ and must hold that ever before me, by God’s grace.

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