WE SHOULD NOT TRUST IN OURSELVES



The reason we all experience so many disappointments in life is because SELF is first in all we want. We want what we want for ourselves and when we don’t get it we are disappointed. The nature of sin is one of self-glory, self-sufficiency and self-love. But this is also why we are so naturally adverse to and even offended by the gospel of God’s sovereign grace in Christ alone.

In salvation, as in all things, the glory is God’s alone. In salvation, all is of God’s grace alone. In salvation, all depends on God’s will alone. In salvation, it is all of Christ’s work alone. Thus, there is nothing to satisfy this self principle in us! God must work in us by the power of His Spirit to show us the helplessness, uselessness and emptiness of self and He does it by revealing Christ to us.

We see ourselves for what we really are when we see Christ for who He is. The Spirit of God takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. In His light we see light. In Christ we find our that He is ALL and all in salvation. There is no room for self and therefore no room for boasting. We see Him as the only One worthy, the Worthy Lamb. We find out that He is the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Finisher of faith. He not only dwarfs us but excludes all of self in salvation except that we are those saved. It is He that has made us and not we ourselves.

When we see the Lord in His glory as God and as the All of salvation, we cry as Isaiah, “Woe is me.” As Job, “Now mine eye seeth Thee and I repent in dust and ashes.” But even then, self is not dead. Sadly, it raises its ugly head again and again. It shrinks only when faith sees the glory of Christ afresh. It is subdued only by the Spirit of God’s restraining work. He gives us trials and sufferings oft times for this very reason as He did Paul: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead” [II CORINTHIANS 1:8-9]. Oh God, save us from ourselves as well as our sins.


-Gospel report by preacher Gary Shepard

Sovereign Grace Baptist church of Jacksonville, North Carolina USA

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