Be the choir

About preaching to yourself, Jerry Bridges wrote:

"To preach the gospel to yourself, then, means that you continually face up to your own sinfulness and then flee to Jesus through faith in His shed blood and righteous life. It means that you appropriate, again by faith, the fact that Jesus fully satisfied the law of God, that He is your propitiation, and that God's holy wrath is no longer directed toward you."

It seems there has been a great deal written of late on this topic, that is, the necessity of preaching the gospel to yourself, even daily. And I think that I would not have understood this idea a few years ago.

But now, I am fully persuaded as to my need to hear the gospel every day. I am that depraved. I am sick of me on a regular basis. And the only antidote I am aware of is to rest in the finished work of Christ for I have already failed and am not good enough, nor will I ever be, to please God in and of myself. The writer of the hymn Amazing Grace, John Newton, once said, "Although my memory's fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior." Indeed.

So I preach to myself a message, the gospel, that I already know and believe. I am, according to the old saying, preaching to the choir. And I recommend it to you.

Be the choir.