Not What I Do but What Jesus Has Done

After failing in his first attempt as Israel’s deliverer from Egypt, Moses spent the next forty years living the routine life of a shepherd—yet during these “silent” years, God was preparing him to shepherd His people. In his last Sunday morning message from the Parkside Church pulpit, Alistair Begg turns our gaze to Jesus, the ultimate Deliverer for God’s people, and invites us to consider what it truly means to follow Him:

The congregation that I’ve had the privilege of preaching to is not largely made up of men and women that come to me at the end of a service to say, “You know, I am such a wretched sinner that I can’t believe there’s a possibility of forgiveness”—maybe one in a thousand. No, the kind of people that talk to me afterwards, they don’t say, “I can’t believe that God would forgive me.” They say, “I can’t believe that I need to be forgiven. I come to church. I have ‘faith.’ I try and do my best. I believe in God.”

… But you and I can do all of that and still not be a Christian. Still not be a Christian! Being a Christian is not about what I do. It’s about what Jesus has done.

When a person becomes a Christian, they are accepting the fact that when Jesus died upon the cross, He wasn’t simply dealing with sin. He was dealing with my sin, my messed-up life, my super-religious life, where I’m trying to rely on all the good things I’ve done, or my sorry life, where I’ve been trying to fix everything under my own agenda. Jesus does that.

And when a person becomes a Christian, they accept that “Jesus has done that on my behalf.” “On my behalf.” It means that we turn away from our sin. We turn away from going our own direction in order to walk on the narrow way with Jesus. And when we do, He forgives our sin; He grants us eternal life, beginning now; and He gives us the Holy Spirit to live in our lives, to continually fashion us, knock the bad parts out, put the good parts in, fix us up over the long haul.

And this is what I wanted to say to you. Let me ask you this: Are you a Christian?

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