The gospel of God’s grace awakens an intense longing in the human soul, but also an equally intense resentment. We resent the revelation that we are justified freely by God’s grace, that there’s nothing we have to do to receive it. Human beings take a certain pride in giving, but receiving is a different matter. To come and accept something freely offered to us offends our pride. I’ll gladly give my life to martyrdom; I’ll gladly give myself in consecration. But don’t humiliate me by placing me on the same level as the most hell-deserving sinner and tell me that all I have to do for my salvation is to accept it as a gift through Jesus Christ.
We have to realize that we can’t earn or win anything from God. We must either receive his grace as a gift or go without. The greatest blessing spiritually is the knowledge that we are destitute. Until we arrive at this knowledge, our Lord is powerless to help us. He can do nothing for us if we think we’re sufficient without him. As long as we believe ourselves to be rich, as long as we possess anything resembling pride or independence, we won’t be able to enter his kingdom. We have to enter it by the door of destitution.
Are you knocking at the door of destitution now? Are you spiritually hungry? Only when we get spiritually hungry do we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes effectual in us the very nature of God. By the Spirit, God imparts to us the quickening life of Jesus, the life that puts the “beyond” within us. The instant the “beyond” is inside us, it rises to the “above,” lifting us into the domain where Jesus lives.
