Trading excuses for grace

Ray Ortlund, as usual, goes right to the heart of things:

The world is a mess, and it’s always someone else’s fault. Every rational person on the face of the earth knows something is wrong, and every single one is pointing at the next guy saying, “He’s to blame.” Everyone is an exception. This is our natural moral psychology.

This is why we need to hear the Law of God, because it renders this self-deception impossible and forces us to see our own guilt and our own responsibility; it drives us to admit and reckon with the real problem, so that we can hear the gospel of Jesus Christ as the good news that it truly is—and so that we’re ready to accept the only true healing available to us, which comes only by his grace. We need to come to the point where we realize that we have no excuses for this mess, so that we can receive as a gift his answer for it.

All need a new heart, created by the Holy Spirit. All need a grace from beyond themselves that flies in under their radar with humbling self-awareness that bows low and says, “I fall short of the glory of God. In fact, there is no justification for my life at all. God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” This is the one who is justified by God’s grace, as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.