Gratitude for the Life of Jerry Bridges and the Full Gospel

Jerry Bridges has passed away. His remarkable life deserves a great deal of praise to God. He was a lifelong servant of the Gospel who served for over 50 years with The Navigators and wrote books that have influenced several generations in understanding both grace and holiness. There is an endless amount of encouragement to be gained from listening to and reading Bridges.

John Piper's tribute to him is here. Justin Taylor has put together at The Gospel Coalition a thorough collection of highlights and links to books and articles from Bridges' ministry. You can see what a tremendous contribution Bridges made to the understanding of the Gospel. And Tim Challies has humbly offered "My Too-Weak Tribute to Jerry Bridges" which, as usual, is excellent. Challies wrote: "Very few authors have shaped me more than he did; very few books have played so important a role in my life and faith." Bridges modeled grace, gentleness, and tenderness.

There is little I can add to such wonderful summaries and tributes. I will simply say that his book The Discipline of Grace has helped me and encouraged me as much as any other book in learning to be free from shame and legalism. If you feel like your efforts as a Christian are never enough, or fear that your shortcomings make your prayers go unanswered, Bridges proves this isn't how God relates to Christians. This is one of the best books you could pick up for encouragement. And if you struggle with understanding what makes it so crucial for us to pursue righteous behavior and purity if God already accepts us because of Christ, this is your book. Once you find confidence in how completely and freely God loves and accepts you because of the Gospel, it will free you up for more effectiveness and productivity than you could imagine.

I summarized some of the main points of the book here last summer. In addition to his books on the free grace of God in the Gospel, Bridges also wrote the classic The Pursuit of Holiness. Some misunderstood that book to be preaching a form of legalism, implying we have to strive hard to keep God's rules in order to be accepted. So he wrote The Discipline of Grace to explain that there was no inconsistency between them, and to demonstrate that our acceptance by God is not based on how successful we are in keeping His rules. It is based instead on God's faithfulness to fully accept all those who trust in Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins. Keeping God's commands does not improve or increase our acceptance; it is something we do by faith out of love and respect for God, who already accepts us. You obey your parents because of respect and love for them, not because they become more your parents if you perform better in obedience. The same is true of our Father in Heaven.

Thank you, Lord, for your servant Jerry. May he enjoy the richness of your glory, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of fellow believers who have embraced the Gospel because of his work.

Performance vs. Grace: Is Your Best Good Enough?

The cure of all shame and insecurity is believing God fully accepts you in the Gospel - just as you are right now - and realizing He will never change His mind.

I mean to deal more broadly and deeply here with the problem I raised in the previous post. Let me start by making it clear that I do not believe obedience/works of faith are actually at odds with grace in Christian theology. What I mean by "performance vs. grace" is that this is how many Christians sometimes see their experience of faith. Sometimes they feel that they can never measure up to a standard of holiness and perfection, and therefore get depressed and discouraged by shame, or they feel that all the teachings of grace and forgiveness don't fit with the commands to do good works and to be holy. This leads to a creeping insecurity that we really aren't fully accepted by God unless we 'complete' our faith by getting really good at obedience. That's what Jerry Bridges calls "the performance trap." 

I know of no better or more encouraging antidote to this trap than The Discipline of Grace, which Bridges wrote to help Christians who want to accept the free grace of God, but feel burdened by their inability to meet our expectations of Christian behavior and holiness. If you've been weighed down by this burden as I have, I hope a very short unpacking of his solution will convince you to get this book and savor it. It is endlessly encouraging.

First, Bridges identifies the problem with the performance trap: Christians accept that we are saved and forgiven only by faith in Christ, and "readily acknowledge that we can never through our own obedience attain a righteousness that is sufficient for salvation. But then as believers we act as if we can live lives acceptable to God." In short, "we know God's blessings come to us through Christ, but we also have this vague but very real notion that they are also conditioned on our behavior." The trap is that we have separated 'salvation in Christ' from 'acceptance by God.' We have fallen into a misguided feeling that, although Christ fully and finally saved us from our sins and purchased our eternal life, we aren't completely acceptable to God or approved by God unless we perform well.

We have all felt this. Bridges proves it brilliantly by posing two scenarios that he calls the 'good day' and the 'bad day.' On the good day, you really keep the commandments visibly and you make a lot of time for the spiritual disciplines, and you feel good about your performance as a Christian. On the bad day, you neglect the spiritual disciplines, you don't do good things you think you should have done, and you feel inadequate as a Christian. Then a situation comes up where you need to rely on God's favor and help. Do you feel more confident that God will help you when you've had a good day? And on the bad day, are you hesitant and doubtful about whether God will help you?

Most Christians have to admit that, in daily life, their honest answers are yes and yes. Bridges found after asking this to numerous audiences that: "Invariably, about 80 percent indicate that they ... would be less confident of God's blessing ... at the end of a bad day than they would after a good one."

That is not how the Gospel works. The Gospel proclaims that we are not only saved from sin and death by the sacrifice Christ made, but we are also fully and absolutely accepted and loved by God through being clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ. That's what the term 'justification' means. Salvation refers to our deliverance from sin and judgment, but justification refers to our receiving the acceptance before God that Christ Himself enjoys. "Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand[.]" (Romans 5:1-2). What we receive by faith is not just the removal of the negative consequences of sin, but the gift of the positive benefits of full acceptance by God. When you see "justification" in Scripture, that's the glorious and joyful news it should bring to mind.

This is the reason that the author of Hebrews exhorts us in Hebrews 4:14-16 and 10:19-22 to draw near to God's throne with complete confidence. We have nothing to be ashamed of in His presence, because He accepts us not on the basis of our own performance or 'goodness' but on the basis of Christ's holiness and perfection. Our problem is not whether we have favor or acceptance with God; the problem is in our perception of how God feels about us. Bridges declares: "This standing in Christ's righteousness is never affected to any degree by our good-day or bad-day performance. ... however, our perception of our standing before God will vary" based on how we feel about our own performance. But it shouldn't.

Bridges counters this perception by daily reminders of the Gospel. The Gospel is not just how we come to faith in Christ, but it is how we are sustained and kept in Christ (and in God's favor) each and every day. Bridges explains that many Christians stop thinking about the Gospel once they become believers, and start getting caught up with spiritual disciplines (which are essential) and the error that these disciplines improve our acceptance by God. But they don't. They improve our enjoyment of God, and they improve our fruitfulness for God in doing good, but our acceptance is never for one second dependent on how we perform or obey. In fact, Paul spells this out firmly to the Galatian church that had begun to believe their works made them more complete as Christians: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" No. Even miracles, Paul says, are works of the Spirit brought on by faith, not by performance. (Gal. 3:1-6).

The cure of all shame and insecurity is believing God fully accepts you in the Gospel - just as you are right now - and realizing He will never change His mind. The Discipline of Grace is one way to learn to believe this and to apply it every day. Don't approach your spiritual growth with uncertainty about how your Father feels about you. Pursue godliness with the security and assurance that your Father loves you completely and accepts you no matter how each day works out.

The Paradox of Winning by Failing - How Sinful Christians Persevere and Thrive

If you know that there is a devil who seeks to trap and outwit you every day (see the last post), one life-changing lesson from this is that none of your struggles with temptation are isolated incidents. They are all part of an ongoing war where the devil is either gaining ground on you or losing it. If you don't fight back, you will get overrun. Practically, the pursuit of holiness in the Christian life is not in being perfect but in continuing the fight against all sin and disobedience. C.S. Lewis describes it this way: "Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible." Mere Christianity, Part 48 (p. 132).

But we have a problem: we keep failing in this fight. One of the biggest sources of confusion and discouragement for Christians is how we can enjoy our relationship with God and feel His favor and approval when we keep 'letting Him down.' Paul agonizes over this in Romans 7. The solution is realizing that we have the wrong idea about what God expects from us in this relationship. He doesn't expect our part to be that we never fail. In fact, He expects that we will fail. (1 John 2:1-2; 1 John 1:7-10). An essential part of our relationship with God is that we are dependent on Him for grace. We cannot stand by our own efforts or merit. He must supply the perfection, which He did by uniting us to Christ as a Savior who both perfectly kept the law and bore all our punishment for failing to keep it. Our part is to trust in that work of substitution and believe that we are accepted by God because of what Christ has done.

Astonishingly, the more we are willing to admit our weakness and put all our hope in what Christ has done, the more honor and glory we bring to God. Even when we have sinned, we can still be victorious in the fight against the devil by showing faith in God and proclaiming His work of salvation. That is the fight that we are really involved in against sin: the fight to keep trusting God by faith and proclaiming in every way possible that He is good and right and just. If you repent of your sin and cry out in faith to God for mercy, your trust in God's faithfulness frustrates the devil's design in trapping you in sin. You cannot sin enough to exceed the sufficiency and perfection of Christ's payment for your sins or God's grace in forgiving you; the only way you can fail is to stop believing in the greatness of this Savior or the grace of this God.

"When we fail, if we respond to it rightly, we honor God and bring glory to Him."

In short, when we fail, if we respond to it rightly, we honor God and bring glory to Him by the act of trusting in the forgiveness of our sins through Jesus Christ. There is victory even in our failure. It is, of course, much better not to do wrong in the first place. We also bring glory to Him by obeying Him in trust and faith, and we don't deliberately sin just to give an occasion for grace. But there is no getting away from the fact that we are imperfect and pulled in different directions by various passions and temptations. We are going to fail. We will always be dependent on God to cover our failures with His grace and forgiveness, which we have because Christ bore our sins. There is a vast difference, however, between striving with all our might not to fail, even though we stumble, and simply resigning ourselves to failure and not making any effort to resist it. To do the second is to simply take sides with sin and the enemy. To do the first is taking sides with God and declaring Him righteous.

If you fall short of the standards, yet affirm the standards as right and true, then you still honor them for what they are. But giving up on trying is the same as saying the standards don't matter. It's the same as saying God is so unimportant and His commandments are so unnecessary that they aren't worth bothering much about. It is also true that if you don't try, you will sin much more and become much more lawless and reckless than if you try with all your might to resist at every turn. Yet I think this is not the most important point. Although it is evil to sin more rather than less, I am convinced that the more destructive thing, and the thing that dishonors God more, is to treat Him as if He doesn't matter. To resist the lure of evil is good because it limits the evil that you commit, but it is even more important that resisting the lure of evil is an act of declaring God to be right and trustworthy. When you resist sin, you pledge allegiance to God. In effect, you worship Him and honor Him as Lord. It is an act of faith.

One practical effect this should have on your faith is this: to not look at your failures and your sins as failing grades in the test of being a Christian. Look instead at who you gave glory to in the fight. A Christian who falls into sin, yet resists bravely and stubbornly for some time, is not conspiring with the enemy. He or she is fighting against the enemy, yet coming to the end of their strength and being overrun. If you fall defending a hill, you still honor the Lord for whom you fight. There is a crucial difference between laying down your weapons and welcoming the enemy, or resisting the enemy until your strength is spent. The worship and devotion that you ought to give to God is first to avoid sin and remain faithful, but second to honor Him in any of your failings by declaring Him right and confessing your need for forgiveness. God does not expect perfect soldiers; He expects soldiers who continue to return again and again to His banner. The only godly and righteous thing you can do when you have fallen in your fight against the devil is to pick up your weapons and get back in the fight of faith.

"The only godly and righteous thing you can do when you have fallen in your fight against the devil is to pick up your weapons and get back in the fight of faith."

Finally, there is a very important reason why I don't say that your response to sin should be to commit to NEVER DO IT AGAIN. Many well-meaning Christians can get very uncomfortable with the kind of things I have just said, because they are on guard against lies such as antinomian teaching (literally, "lawlessness," the error of thinking obedience to God doesn't matter because sin is all forgiven). If you lived your entire Christian life of faith wrapped only in the principles I just laid out, you might go very far from Jesus indeed - just as you would if you spent your entire Christian life focused on avoiding antinomianism at all costs. There is much more to it. All the pieces need to function in cooperation. For instance, to balance what I am saying, see this reflection on why "You Just Might Be an Antinomian" - and why you'd rather not be one. Don't stop reading and thinking about how to attack this problem from all angles. Don't stop reading the whole Bible. Surround yourself with the Gospel.

But the reason I reject the "NEVER DO IT AGAIN" school of commitment is that it is a lie. If your response to falling into sin is to grit your teeth and swear that you will make yourself stronger and never make the same mistake again, you have just put your trust in yourself instead of in God. The shortest route the devil can take to destroy you is to get you to stop depending on a Savior. This takes the focus off of faith in Christ and puts it on you. Your 'will' becomes the hero of the story. It is exactly the opposite of the victory of honoring God in your failures. This detour can only lead to two places: legalism, in which you become convinced of your own holiness as you carefully track how strong your performance in keeping the commandments has been, all the while being blind to the depth of your sins (especially the pride and self-righteousness); or despair, as you realize how impossible it is for you to keep the commandments and you crumble under the weight of shame over your failures. Both of these errors are destroyed by the Gospel. The Gospel proclaims at once that you are sinful and cannot make yourself holy, yet also declares that if you trust in God and honor Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

This is how an imperfect Christian can have victory in Christ. To understand this more deeply and helpfully, get Jerry Bridges' book The Discipline of Grace, which confronts both these errors and charts the Gospel path between them. It is the kind of book that may change your life.