I am not sure if you have ever read anything from Elyse Fitzpatick but she is easily becoming one of my favorite authors. I truly love her insight on counseling and gospel centrality. She does a wonderful job isolating counseling principles and coupling them with gospel truths. Her latest article on The Gospel Coalition site is a great addition and can be read in full here. These three parts of the article stood out the most to me:
“How do we grow in holiness?” Further, most of us would answer the “How?” question in this way, “We grow in holiness through the gospel.” And while that’s the right answer, the possibility exists that it’s not specific enough to be of real help.It is this entire gospel message that Paul says is “of first importance.” The gospel is more than just the cross. When we fail to appreciate all the other facets of the good news about His work, we’ll be tempted to use Jesus’ suffering on the cross to motivate obedience. In other words, we’ll be tempted to feel sorry for the victim Jesus and try to guilt ourselves (and others) into submission, rather than seeing the victor, Jesus, who acted purposefully throughout His existence and acts powerfully upon us to transform us.
Because of the incarnation, Jesus Christ knows exactly what it is to live in a sin-cursed world with people who break the rules…like me. I am a rule-breaker but He’s loved me and he’s experienced every trial I face. He’s with me. He sympathizes with my weakness (Hebrews 4:15).
I am hoping these three quotes will help you choose to read the whole article so I am posting a link to it at the end, right here, again.
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