Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Good News doesn't tell you what to do in order to be happy; it tells you what to believe your Savior has already done that makes you happy. And what has He done? He has saved you from hell itself. And what is hell? Yes, it's terrible fire in the last day; but there's also a hell on earth. Revelation 16:15 gives a glimpse of it: "Blessed [happy] is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame."
Do you want some hell right here and now? Let the natural you that you are, with all your natural-born lust and selfishness, be exposed publicly so that your reputation for honesty, decency, and fidelity is "shattered," so that even your family, friends, supporters, and fellow workers feel betrayed. And no, you can't mercifully go to sleep or go off to some desert island alone--you have to stand naked before the world and endure the excruciating shame.
The Good News? Your Savior has saved you from having to endure that. Why do I say this?
Honestly, "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Rom. 3:10). The real test of our character is how could we handle temptation if we were fully exposed to it without a Savior. The little shrub in the calm valley shouldn't snicker when the giant oak on the mountain top goes down in the crushing fury of an awful storm; he should say thankfully, "There but for the grace of God go I."
The "garments" that cover your natural nakedness of soul are not your righteousness, but Christ's righteousness imputed and imparted to you as a gift given solely by grace and received solely by faith (Rev. 19:8).
Isaiah 54:17 tells us that we have no righteousness of our own: "'their righteousness is of Me,' says the Lord."
If you receive the gift of Christ's righteousness by faith, that means that your natural sinful heart is melted by a realization of the love that has saved you, the love that led the Son of God to endure the hell that would have been yours. Not only was He "made to be a curse" for you when He died on His cross; He was exposed there naked, so that today you might be "clothed." Reason enough to sing Hallelujah! And be humble from now on.
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: August 21, 1998.
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