You Need a Well-Oiled Gospel Memory
Remember the Gospel
It is important to have a well-oiled, activated gospel memory. It’s important to require yourself never to forget. Few things are more spiritually benefiting than rehearsing the story of God’s rescuing, forgiving, and restoring grace in your life. It’s vital to remember that we not only experienced his forgiving grace at the moment of our conversion, but continually experience his grace as a lovingly patient process of restoration. God has forgiven you again and again, he has restored you to himself again and again, and he will continue to do so again and again.
God knows that between the “already” and the “not yet,” living in a fallen world and with sin still inside of us, we will mess up. There will be times when we think, desire, and do wrong things. There will be times when we willingly step outside of God’s holy boundaries. This side of eternity we will sin. This is why God’s commitment to forgive us and restore us is so beautiful and hopeinspiring. If you are at all humble, then you know you’re not perfect. You know no day in your life is totally sin-free. You know you are a person in need of daily forgiveness.
Everyday Gospel
Paul David Tripp
In the Everyday Gospel devotional, Paul David Tripp leads readers through the entire Bible in a year, helping you connect the transforming power of Scripture to your everyday life.
God’s forgiving and restoring mercies didn’t begin with the birth of Jesus but were baked into his law.
If they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me, and also in walking contrary to me, so that I walked contrary to them and brought them into the land of their enemies—if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob, and I will remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. (Lev. 26:40–42)
How does a person enter into the blessing of God’s forgiving and restoring grace? The answer, which is the same in the old covenant and the new, is clear: by humble, heartfelt confession. God will not turn his back on a sinner who comes to him with confession that is free from excuse or blame-shifting. He always greets the humble in heart with the fullness of his forgiving and restoring mercies. God has always been a God of grace, his people have always been in need of grace, and he has always reminded them of his willingness to respond to them with grace when grace is needed.
God is in us and we are in him forever, and nothing can separate us from his love.
Leviticus 26 is yet another Old Testament passage that foreshadows the person and work of Jesus. These verses cry out for an ultimate and once-for-all purchase of forgiveness, for a sacrifice to be made that will forever restore us to God. Jesus has come to be that final sacrificial Lamb. In him our sins—past, present, and future—are fully forgiven. As a result of Jesus’s work on our behalf, God is in us and we are in him forever, and nothing can separate us from his love. For sinners like you and me, there is no better, more beautiful gift than the gift of forgiving and restoring grace.
This article is adapted from Everyday Gospel: A Daily Devotional Connecting Scripture to All of Life.
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