SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/30/2022 8:42 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Principle”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
Matthew 16:24
Message of the verse: “Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”
In order for me to make sense of this section, and to
make those who read it make sense I think that once again that I should just
quote from MacArthur’s commentary.
“The believer is made acceptable before God when he trust
in Jesus Christ and he stands before the Lord in perfect righteousness, clothed
in ‘the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in
righteousness and holiness of the truth’ (Eph. 4:24). But as Paul also declared, even after
salvation a believer has no more goodness in himself, ‘that is in [his] flesh,’
than he had before salvation. To deny
self is to ‘make no provision for the flesh’ (Rom. 13:14) and to ‘put no
confidence in [it]’ Phil 3:3). To deny
self is to subject oneself entirely to the lordship and resources of Jesus
Christ, in utter rejection of self-will and self-sufficiency.
Jesus proclaimed that the first requirement for entering
the kingdom is to be ‘poor in spirit’ (Matt 5:3), to have the spirit of utter
poverty in regard to one’s own goodness, righteousness, worth, and merit. It is to humbly recognize one’s spiritual
destitution. It is only the person who
realizes how poor he is who will ever know the riches of Christ. It is only the person who realizes how sinful
and damned he is who will ever come to know how precious the forgiveness of God
is. ‘The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves those who are crushed in spirit’ (Ps. 34:18). It is the broken and contrite heart that God
loves and will never despise (Ps. 51:17).
It is not the self-righteous and self-satisfied but the penitent and
humble whom God saves. It was not the
proud Pharisee who had such a high image of himself, but the brokenhearted tax
collector who asked God for mercy, who Jesus said ‘went down to his house
justified’ (Luke 18:14).
The whole purpose of the Old Testament, reflected
pointedly in the law of Moses, was to show man how spiritually and morally
destitute and powerless he is in himself.
The law was not meant to show men how they could work their way into God’s
favor but to show them how impossible it is to live up to God’s holy standards
by their own resources.
Arthur Pink wrote, ‘Growth in grace is growth downward;
it is the forming of a lower estimate of ourselves; it is a deepening
realization of our nothingness; it is a heartful recognition that we are not
worthy of the least of God’s mercies.’
To be saved calls for a sinner to deny self so as to ‘consider
the members of [his] earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion,
evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry (Col. 3:15). It is
to ‘lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with
the lusts of deceit, and…be renewed in the spirit of [one’s] mind’ (Eph.
4:22-23).” 9/30/2022 9:03 AM
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