We should look upon our trials and weaknesses as causes for joy. Yes, the world thinks that such an attitude is perfectly mad. However, trials and weaknesses are what makes the divine grace so incomparably sweet to our taste. We are like the man castaway at sea who, after being rescued, is treated to well-chilled water to cool his parched throat. Such a person says that they have never drunk anything better tasting or more memorable. So it is that when we face suffering, then the Lord's grace becomes all the more sweet and more strongly planted in our hearts. I don't mean that all the weakness and hurts are taken away. No, we learn to connect them with Christ. We grow into putting them under the cross to adorn them with Christ's blood. Our thirst and sore throat only makes the comforting drafts of God's Word all the more pleasant to us.

I am shocked by how many clergy do not know this thirst for the gospel. Paul's doctrine of justification is incomprehensible to them. They can speak of "Christianity" only in the terms dictated by the culture. For example, they can only speak of good choices, "We can make good choices with Jesus." One of the problems here is that the doers of the action remain those who are being addressed. Jesus is merely a helper or an incidental add-on. You could substitute almost anything for Jesus in this statement, such as wisdom, good instruction, or parental involvement. This is not really the biblical gospel, but the world's order (as valid as it might be), with a little Jesus thrown in to sound religious. It is also a confusion of the two kingdoms. We would be better to speak to young people about their choices with the help of human wisdom, good instruction, or parental involvement. This is exactly where they need to get their ability to make "good choices."

When we become the doers of the action, we are using law talk, and not gospel and salvation talk. We are heaping the burdens of the law onto the backs of those who cannot bear them. Paul chided Peter for exactly this: "'If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you force the Gentiles to live like Jews?' We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified" (Gal 2:14-16). The doer of the action must be Christ. Christ justifies, not us. Faith receives what Christ has done. Christ is not our partner but our rescuer. We do not collaborate with Him. He substitutes for us.