What are you living?

We continue on our jaunt through The Rest of the Gospel: When the partial Gospel has worn you out with a selection of quotations:

Everyone of us who has believed into Christ is complete in Christ (Colossians 2:10). We are already holy (Colossians 3:12). We are already perfect (Hebrews 10:14). We are His righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21). There's nothing else to be done. As we see that, we will live that, and God will make what is already true in the unseen and eternal a seen and temporal experience.—page 34.

The vast majority of believers only know one half of the gospel. The first twelve years that I pastored, I only knew one half of the gospel. I preached a steady diet of Christ died for the forgiveness of your sins. Week after week I gave the same basic message. The problem was that my audience had already been saved; their sins had already been forgiven.

The only other message I had to offer them was telling them what they ought to be doing; external compliance with commandments. I was handing out my own version of legalism.—pages 35-36

It is easier being lost than to be saved and try to live only off “I'm forgiven,” striving your utmost to be a good Christian. Because that isn't the whole gospel. That isn't the whole gospel! It is only a partial, fragmentary view of our salvation. So we have fifty percent of the gospel, then we go back into the flesh, into our independent self-effort, trying to make the rest of it happen on our own.

We can't make it happen, however, which is according to the program. We are programmed for failure when we try to make the Christian life work on our own. This kind of living will bring you to despair. It produces nothing but an inner sense of condemnation.

Many people finally conclude that's how the Christian life is supposed to be. I've actually heard ministers tell their congregations that truly victorious living is impossible and that the Christian life is nothing but a struggle in which you are going to experience defeat after defeat. That's a far cry from the “abundant life” that Jesus promised.—pages 38-39

<idle musing>
This last paragraph breaks my heart, but I've seen it many times over the years. The basic question is, "do you believe what you read as a promise of God? Or, do you believe what you are experiencing?" Most of us, especially in our materialistic (in the philosophical sense of the word) world, opt for the experience instead of the promise. How sad; we miss out on so much of God.
</idle musing>