"The finished work of Christ is the forgiveness of all that is past, the strength to complete all that is prepared for us ahead, and the reality of daily grace and restoration in the present."
As the things of earth go, two of my great interests are history and science fiction.
In any given history class, no matter how long ago an event happened, there is a moment where the thing being talked about shows it’s connection to the present day. We see a figure that appears to be perfectly modern but happens to live in the middle ages. Someone who sticks out among the crowd and seems to reach across time into the future, or who is responsible for setting our world on a course toward the current year.
This phenomenon is also prevalent in science fiction. No matter how many advanced technologies have been discovered in the fictional future, no matter how many miles have been traveled across the universe to a new world full of new opportunities, relics of the modern world still hold the keys to the future state. The present is inescapable even in the future.
Each of these situations reveal a truth that ought to propel us through the seemingly meaningless, the sometimes hum-drum, the often unnoticed fact that what we do in the day to day rhythms of our lives actually matters a great deal because of what has been done in the past and what we will do in the future.
Make no mistake: this is not a call to live for the moment. This is not an appeal for us to treat each new day as it might be our last or to embrace some kind of “seize the day” humanism that fails to reflect that we are begotten of God through the new birth, and that we are “His workmanship, created in Jesus Christ to do good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10). What this is, is a recognition that something that has happened in the past changes our present, and that what happens in the present changes the future.
This thing that has happened in history past is, of course, the death, burial and resurrection of the sinless Son of God in the place of those sinful ones who come to Him by faith. This is the gospel encapsulated. It is the “power of God unto salvation.” It is the event in which we place all of our hope. But ‘hope’ carries the connotation of the future. It is what we have looked forward to with the rest of the Church since Jesus’ ascension. We “wait in hope” for that which we have been promised. But there is more than the future. There is something in the gospel for us today.
It can be easy to forget, to miss out on the aspect of Christ’s atoning work that revolutionizes our present. The theologian, pastor, and philosopher, Francis Schaeffer said that Christ’s work on the cross hasn’t just changed our future outcomes, it changes our present outcomes too.
"There is a difference between being saved once-and-for-all and applying daily, through faith, the finished work of Christ. I must look to the finished work of Christ in the now of my life."
The reality of the work Christ accomplished in the completion of His earthly ministry is not just relevant to our future hope. It is, certainly, but it is alive and actively working in the day to day. We ought not be just awaiting the day that God calls us home to take us out of this world. The finished work of Christ sustains us now. We should not only lament our besetting sin as a remnant of our fallen nature and look to the day when those temptations no longer appeal to us. The finished work of Christ is all powerful to cleanse us of that sin and conform us to the image of Jesus now. We need not fear the spirit of the age and the cultural winds that blow to and fro. The finished work of Christ is mighty to save, even now.
This should add to our understanding of what our Lord means when He teaches us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” When we pray for our meals we are recognizing that it is God who provides and sustains us physically. But He also sustains us spiritually. Each time we approach the Lord’s table we recite the words of Christ at the Last Supper, that this bread is His body. We acknowledge His sustenance for our daily lives in that we don’t go to the table once. “As often as you do this” reminds us that we need Him regularly.
We must find the balance between longing for heaven and realizing that while we are here, Christ sustains us daily, and He will continue to do so until that day when He returns or calls us home. The Apostle Paul strikes this balance well when he proclaimed that though he longed to be free of his body, he knew well that as long as the Lord sustained him, he had work to do “for your progress and joy in the faith” (Philippians 1:25).
This is the attitude that we ought to adopt: the daily application of the finished work of Christ is why we press on toward the mark of the high calling of God, and why we are called to live lives worthy of the gospel.
This life enriching truth is what motivates us to witness. It is what should send us forth each Lord’s day from our place of worship into a world desperate for good news in the present. The gospel message is based on an event that really did happen in the past, but it is not like the rest of history, where we see the thread from a moment in time that shows us where we are now. The gospel does affect our future, but not like the science fiction stories which always leave behind some lingering remnant of the time of their creation. The gospel is a kind of ageless truth, a truth that never gets old. A truth that is always new. A truth that is always now. “Now is the day of salvation” (II Corinthians 6:2).
The finished work of Christ is the forgiveness of all that is past, the strength to complete all that is prepared for us ahead, and the reality of daily grace and restoration in the present.
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Micah Lovell is the editor of the Songtime Newsletter: Worthy of the Gospel and has contributed to many publications over the years.