By grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone - Period.

Sunday night wasn’t the greatest for me. Have I shared yet that I’m the Queen of Backsliding? (No, that’s not a county in Ireland.) I fell into some old sin Sunday night. I’m good at that it seems. Not proud of it, but certainly good at it.

Yesterday as I was walking down the stairs at work, I thought about praying for all the people I want to see saved in my life. But soon as I did another thought followed: “You can’t approach God, not now – not after how you behaved last night.”

I think I physically cringed. Shame and guilt swarmed around me like gnats. My heart got heavy in my chest. When I remembered my sin of the past evening, I certainly didn’t feel like I could be asking any favors of God. I didn’t even feel like I could approach his presence at all.

But then another voice had its say: “…by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone…”

Enter the Holy Spirit! Boy, God’s kind. That was all it took – I quickly but genuinely repented of the sin I committed the prior evening and prayed with confidence for the people I wanted to see come to Christ.

So what had happened? What instigated such a dramatic turn around? What vanquished the guilt and shame I was feeling? What gave me confidence, as a sinner, to approach a holy God and make requests of him? The most powerful thing in the world: the gospel.

This simple sentence was put together by the ex-senior pastor of my church, C.J. Mahaney. It’s short, but says all the mind blowing things I needed to hear in that moment: by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

Grace is God giving me his forgiveness and acceptance without me ever having deserved or earned it (because indeed, I never deserved and could ever earn either).

Faith is belief without seeing.

Christ is the only sinless human who ever lived, who died the death I should have died, was punished for my sin in my place, and satisfied God’s wrath against my sin. All I have to do now is believe in Christ and his atoning death and my sin is wiped away. Christ took all my sin that day on Calvary – and if I believe, I can take all the perfection of his sinless life.

I’ve done this, and because of Christ’s sacrifice, God looks at me and sees his perfection – not my sin.

Pretty amazing huh? That’s the gospel. Kind of makes you wonder how a person who’s received this great gift could ever forget it.

Well, I forgot it. In the stairwell I started to believe something different: that my acceptance before God was based on my actions, not on Christ’s sacrifice. Functionally, what I was saying with my actions was “Christ’s death wasn’t sufficient. He didn’t secure forgiveness for all my sins when he died, for example, the ones I committed last night.” I was beginning to believe that I could earn God’s acceptance – why else would I have thought that bad behavior would equal God’s rejection? Isn’t the flip side of that good behavior would equal God’s acceptance? I was believing I’d be accepted or rejected based on my merit.

This couldn’t be further from the truth. Scripture is clear that we are accepted by God based on our acceptance or rejection of Christ’s death on our behalf. If we’ve accepted it in faith, we’re accepted before God. If we reject it in pride, we’re rejected by God. It is only by God’s grace, through faith in Christ’s atoning death that we’re accepted by God. By grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone – period.