The Gospel Isn't Something You Earn. It's Something You Receive.

Notice what Jesus doesn't say.

He doesn't say, get yourself together and then come. He doesn't say, clean yourself up first. He says, come. Just come. In all of your brokenness, just come.

Receiving comes before changing. We are not trying to fix you. We are trying to help you receive something. Something that has already been done. Something so magnificent that if your whole system could truly take it in, everything else would begin to shift.

That's what gospel resourcing is.

What Actually Happened on the Cross

We sometimes think of the cross like this — as if Jesus put on something stinky and dirty while he himself remained radiant and clean underneath. Like he was temporarily wearing our mess.

But that's not what scripture teaches.

He didn't just wear our sin. He became it. The Holy One became our sin, and the full wrath of God was poured out upon him. He so completely identified with every broken, shameful, destructive thing in us that God's fury against all of it was absorbed entirely by Christ. Not partially. Completely.

There's been a transfusion. That's the word that comes to me. A transfusion of sin from me into Christ. The old sinful nature — transferred into Christ on the cross. The full wrath of God endured. And by faith in Christ, we have been completely made clean.

And it was all for a purpose.

He cleansed the temple so that he could come and live inside of it. He created a place in us — like a holy of holies on the inside — where he could dwell. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?

He was willing to have people drive stakes through his hands and feet for this. That is God's way of saying — I want you.

The Groundhog Day

Here's an image I keep coming back to.

You've seen the movie — where the same day keeps repeating, over and over, no matter what happened before. Every morning, the reset. Everything fresh. Yesterday doesn't carry over.

The gospel is a kind of Groundhog Day. And Satan probably hates it.

No matter what happened yesterday — no matter what you did, what you failed at, what you fell into — we're back. Clean. Righteous. In deep, intimate connection with Jesus. Midnight, everything resets. The reset is real.

But here's the catch. If you never actually receive it — if you never let the gospel get down into your body, never let your system truly believe it — you just never access it. You keep living in the old day. You never get to the moment where you go — oh. I'm back. I'm clean. I did nothing to put myself here. But I believe it. And it's in my body. And it's real.

That's what we're building toward.

Learning to Receive

Could anybody convince you that you can't drive a car?

Probably not. Because you've driven one. You have a felt sense — a substance inside you — connected to driving. You don't have to argue yourself into believing it. You just know. It's in your body.

That's what faith is supposed to feel like. And the reason most of us don't experience it that way around the gospel is simply this — we haven't rehearsed it.

Gospel resourcing is rehearsal. We take a part of you that is somewhat familiar with the gospel and strengthen it. We cultivate a deep, living understanding of what God has actually done for you — not as theology you agree with upstairs, but as something your body knows.

Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is what that actually looks like in practice.

Chew on It

Jesus said something that puzzled people deeply. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no part in me.

I think it's a riddle. And the answer isn't complicated. Just chew on this every single day. Choose to chew on and swallow and digest that you are righteous. That you are clean. That he became your sin so that you could become his dwelling place.

Keep applying it — over and over — until, like driving a car, your body simply knows it's true.

Don't try to earn your way in. Just come in all of your brokenness. Begin to open up to the possibility that you have already been made righteous.

There will come a point where your whole system gets it. And when it does, you'll find you don't need the old coping strategies the way you once did. Not because you tried harder. But because you found something so much better.

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ. — Romans 7:25