Faith involves both a renunciation and a reliance. First, we must renounce any trust in our own performance as the basis of our acceptance before God. We trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve earned God’s acceptance by our own good works. But we also trust in our own performance when we believe we’ve lost God’s acceptance by our bad works — by our sin. So we must renounce any consideration of either our bad works or our good works as the means of relating to God.
Second, we must place our reliance entirely on the perfect obedience of the sin-bearing death of Christ as the sole basis of our standing before God — on our best days as well as our worst.
Challies plans to post a review of the book by March 31. Read his comments about the quote on his blog.
The two bookends in "The Bookends of the Christian Life," according to the Crossway Web site, are "Christ’s righteousness as it is transferred to dependent believers, and the Holy Spirit’s power as it enables their transformation."
"One bookend is the righteousness of Christ; the other is the power of the Holy Spirit. Though they’re provided by God, it’s our responsibility to lean our books on them, relying on them to support, stabilize, and secure all our books — everything we do" ("The Bookends of the Christian Life," page 15).
Crossway is offering a PDF copy of the book with a purchase of a hard copy, and you can read a PDF copy of the introduction and Chapter 3: Gospel Enemy #1: Self-righteousness.
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