The past few days I've been cooking up a storm. Listening to a sermon given by Phil Johnson this morning on justification through faith, it suddenly dawned on me....faith is like "that" ingredient that makes the recipe. You cannot make roasted turkey without the turkey. There was an episode on "Everybody Loves Raymond" that brings this illustration to my mind. Doris (Raymond's mom) decided she would make a healthy Thanksgiving supper using tofu instead of turkey. She even shaped it to look like a turkey and made it look golden brown on the outside.
Raymond saved the day by ordering a real roasted turkey, and Doris had to admit that her tofu-"turkey" was a miserable failure.
Raymond saved the day by ordering a real roasted turkey, and Doris had to admit that her tofu-"turkey" was a miserable failure.
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God gives us faith. Without faith it is impossible to be saved. Just like you can't have roasted turkey without the turkey, you cannot have salvation, no matter how much work you do to try to buy it or manipulate your way there, without the gift of God's faith. You might have something that you can make look like it. I've done some amazing things with tofu cutlets....but it was never turkey, and no matter how hard I tried to make it into turkey, it just wasn't. It might be something that looks similar, and it might even taste good, but it just isn't the same thing. So it is with a relationship to God. If that relationship is based on my works, my ability, my ANYTHING, it falls short of the glory of God and is unacceptable. It has to be me stepping out of the way and admitting my horrible condition, my depravity, my works earning hellfire, and that ability is from the Lord revealing this truth to me through the gift of His substitutionary life. The "not so secret ingredient" is provided by God to us for a true relationship with Him.
If it isn't His life substituted for my sin I have no salvation, just like I couldn't have roasted turkey without the turkey.
You can hear Phil Johnson's sermon here at Sermon Audio.
That episode of Raymond was really funny.
ReplyDeleteWithout Me you can do nothing, He said. Nothing, not even muster up enough faith.
Hi Ma :) So true! Just as we could not will ourselves, or ask for ourselves, to be born the first time, so too we (who were dead in trespasses and sins) were unable to acknowledge that because of deadness UNTIL the Lord in His mercy revealed it to us, and we were unable to born again ourselves in our second birth through our efforts or desires apart from God's gift of faith.
DeleteAll the glory goes to God and His mercy, Solo Deo Gloria
Amen!
ReplyDelete