The Look That Justifies – The Gaze That Sanctifies.
WE are nearing the end of our study in Positional Truth – probably one last installment after this.
THERE is an interesting last comment I’m looking forward to sharing, but that needs to wait. However, we ended last week with this reading:
As we grow, we learn to stand in our standing of grace, abiding in the risen Lord Jesus, and walking in the light of the Father’s presence and fellowship.
I HOPE these weekly considerations are leading you in that direction, growing in your standing of grace, abiding more in the risen Lord (your Position), enjoying more of the Father’s presence and fellowship (your Condition) with each new day. It is a process, and the experience of such does ebb and flow to lesser and greater degrees. But hopefully you are persevering with a forward trajectory, pressing on in Christ (Phil 3:12-14).
I ONCE attended a rather marvelous stage play presentation of C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, reminding me that all that we have been reviewing is part of the normal Christian life, meaning prayerfully going through “undulations” in a forward direction. There are seasons “of dullness or dryness” when we find ourselves in a “trough,” a low point when we might find reason(s) to despair. But we know, or are learning if we do not already know, that these low times can be seasons of drawing nearer to our Lord.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. Psa. 23:4
WE need to know that our Lord is preparing us for a higher ground.
You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Psa. 23:5
THERE is a wonderful phrase coming up in today’s consideration – don’t miss it, it is near the end: “It is the look that justifies, but it is the gaze that sanctifies.” That’s worth chewing on in our desire to grow in Christ. So, let us get to our consideration for today in this final chapter, Sins and Confession – Part 3.
IN the joy of the Lord,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa. 30:15 & Job 2:10
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Chapter 27—Sins and Confession – Part 3
As we grow, we learn to stand in our standing of grace, abiding in the risen Lord Jesus, and walking in the light of the Father’s presence and fellowship. We appreciate the fact of our position as we experience failures in fighting against sin. We express our growing hatred of self by freely confessing our sins, which amounts to judging ourselves for submitting to indwelling sin. We admit our responsibility for walking (or drifting) beyond the realm of light, into the shadows of sin and self. “For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. 11:31, 32).
Standing in the light, we are not only aware that our sins have been cleared away by the blood, but we realize that we as sinners have also been put away by the death of the cross. We count ourselves to have died unto sin, and now to be alive as new creations in Christ Jesus. As such, we confess our sins as they are revealed in the light, and are thereby freed from self-occupation—free to be fully occupied in fellowship with the Father and the Son.
To turn from the darkness and death of self to the light and life of Christ is not to give up the fight and give in to sin. Not at all! It is fighting “the good fight of faith” (1 Tim. 6:12), it is entering into the benefits of the fact that the fight has already been fought and won for us by Another. This transition from bondage and defeat to freedom and victory is the faith-move from condition to position. “For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his” (Heb. 4:10).
The Holy Spirit brings us through this transition by a very simple process. He allows us to struggle with sin and self until we learn the futility of it. Then it is that He shows us that the Lord Jesus has already done for us what we can never do. It is from “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” to, “I thank God [He has already accomplished it] through Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Rom. 7:24, 25). It is from the bondage of the “law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members,” to the liberty of “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus [which] hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 7:23; 8:2).
Fellowship
“God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (1 Cor. 1:9). The root word for fellowship and communion is common. Our communion with the Father and the Son, having fellowship one with another, is to have common thoughts, affections, and purposes. It is a oneness of heart and mind. It is to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart … and with all thy mind…” (Luke 10:27). As we study His Word in dependence upon His Spirit, we are in communion with His thoughts. As we love the Lord Jesus, we are loving the One whom the Father loves with all His heart.
Free from self-condemnation, free from a guilty conscience, free in the faithful advocacy of the Lord Jesus, free in the confession of our sins and cleansing from all unrighteousness, we are in the light of His presence to worship Him, commune with Him, and grow in Him. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). It is the look that justifies, but it is the gaze that sanctifies.
Having died in Christ to sin, Satan, law, and the world, we are freed and born anew, made new creations in the Lord Jesus. Abiding in Him in the light of the Father, we are at liberty to gaze upon Him in the full love of hearts and minds that are free from the palling darkness of unconfessed sins and a defiled conscience. No nervous, anxious or restless self-effort; just quiet rest in Him, knowing that our “life is hid with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). By the ministry of the Spirit of Christ within, the life of the Lord Jesus is manifested increasingly in our everyday walk.
Our Father’s purpose for us is that we become conformed to the image (character) of His Son. To that end, all things are being “worked together” (Rom. 8:28, 29). …….to be continued
