Self-Made Salvation and the Gospel

I came across another good piece in the Leadership Journal written by Bob Hyatt. It reminds me the importance of feeding our sanctification on our justification, a concept which I learned not long ago. The solution to our un-Christlikeness is not trying harder but to rest more and delight more on Christ' finished work who lived the life I should have lived and died the death I should have died.

Here is an excerpt from Hyatt's article:

A confession: Since becoming a pastor, I find that I struggle with very different things now than I did before. For instance, I don't look at porn. But I don't look at it for all the wrong reasons.

The truth is, every time I'm tempted to, I begin to think about how much it would cost me if I were to get caught. First, the damage it would do in my marriage is huge in my mind. Second, even though I know my elders and I could probably work through something like that, I'm still conditioned to respond how I was taught in the churches of my youth, where pastors were assumed to be "above reproach" (read: "inhumanly perfect"). When issues such as sexual immorality arose, pastors would disappear—they resigned or were fired.

What I mean to say is that a huge part of why I don't look at porn is that I don't want to lose my job. Right choice, wrong motive. Sometime I wonder, who would I be if I weren't a pastor?

My idol is what my people think of me. That's my real struggle. It is so important, in fact, that when I have an off Sunday, and I think everyone went home grumbling about how badly I preached, I'm devastated. I can't sleep. When someone leaves our community or criticizes my pastoring? More sleepless nights.

Why? Because the truth is that, in many ways, Jesus isn't my Savior. My congregation is. Or, more precisely, their approval is. I want it. I need it. I'd even say that a big part of my identity is based on the results I am getting as a pastor and what people think of me. That idol occasionally, coincidentally, pushes me toward doing the right thing or keeps me from doing the wrong thing.

But the problem is, whenever I come up against a struggle or a temptation and I choose to do the right thing because I need to protect that idol of others' approval—even if I'm ostensibly doing the right thing—in reality, through nurturing that idolatry, I've nurtured serious evil in my heart.

Twisted. Even worse, I've realized that by pursuing my idol of people's approval I'm countering the message I proclaim week after week.

...God began to speak to me about my striving, about my sorry attempts at self-justification and my desire to prove my worth and value—to save myself through my performance as a pastor. Rest is what I needed, but not just the rest of my body in sleep. Not even the rest of my mind from the cares and worries of ministry. All the way down, deeper than both of those things, what I needed was the rest of my soul in the finished work of Jesus.