As believers in the Son of God, who purchased us with His own precious blood on the cross, who are we to become proud or boastful in anything we ever do? “All things are from Him and to Him and for Him,” to His glory. “What have you that you did not receive?” The point of the Christian life is not so much that we merely get blessed by God and then move on with our lives, that we just store up and receive blessings. No, the point of the Christian life is that we are so caught up in God, who He is, what He’s done in Christ, and giving glory to Him for all of it, that our lives are radically changed to love Him more, in word and deed, to the point of selflessly pouring ourselves out for others to bring them into the kingdom of God.

The Christian life is forgetting about yourself, being so caught up in and awestruck by the power, might, love, justice, and mercy of God toward you and I, wicked sinners, and by the power of the Spirit in the regeneration of our souls, living a life that reflects the work He’s done in us to give us the knowledge of Himself and His worth. The Christian life is about finding your ultimate joy, ultimate satisfaction, finding your reason for being, in the person and work of Jesus Christ, every single day. And in finding all of these things in Christ, we can’t help but want others to know of His value, telling them about what we’ve “seen and heard,” so much to the point that we should be willing to give our lives to that end!

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” This is the Christian life. It is by God’s power through the cross that we come to Him, are changed by Him; then we see that we are nothing, that even the best of us (like Isaiah 6) are morally bankrupt compared to Him; and that He is everything, gave up everything on our behalf in order that He should be our portion forever. It is about getting out of the way of God’s glory, participating in giving it to Him, and spreading the knowledge of His glory to all people, by preaching the Gospel loud and clear, without fear. The Christian life is about loving God, not just in theory, but in reality, because we’ve been so radically changed by the work of Christ.

How can we not love Him with our lives, self-sacrificially, and fall on our faces with tears of joy at the work Christ did on our behalf on the cross? What kind of mercy is this, that God Himself would take upon flesh and purchase people for Himself from every tribe, tongue, and nation? It’s simply astonishing. The Christians’ delight is not in the blessings He gives to His people, or merely the fact that He’s rescued from His fury against sinners, but our delight is in God Himself, the ultimate blessing. There is no joy or blessing greater, because He’s the highest of all, the one from which all joys and satisfactions were thought up!