Growing in Grace

The whole of the Christian life is a process of discovering: a. the glory and simplicity of the grace of God in the gospel; and b. the extraordinary intricacy and complexity of myself as an individual whom that grace of God in the gospel has touched. If you have not discovered how complex the resistance of your being is to the grace of God in the gospel, you haven’t really begun to discover the grace of God in the gospel; so long as the grace of God in the gospel has not begun to unravel layers and layers and layers and layers of the intricate complexity of the perversity of sin in your heart, you are still very much in the shallows of the discovery of the gospel. Because the old adage that “the nearer you get to an understanding of grace, the more likely you are to cry out ‘wretched man that I am, who can deliver me?'” really is not just a quick adage that sounds good in preaching; it is a deep pastoral reality in our lives.