The Bookends of the Christian Life - May 12, 2013

(Book authored by Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington – the passage contains certain phrases and sentences that the speaker duly recognizes as coming from the book) by Abraham Rosario

     As taken from the book, “Think of your life right now as a lone bookshelf.” So we know that a purpose of a bookshelf is to contain books, and we usually see these in a library. Our life as a Christian can be likened to a bookshelf in which the books that we put into represent things that we want to do or that we are doing now. According to the book, there are two kinds of books which can be put there, spiritual and temporal.
Spiritual books can represent actions of going to church, attending bible studies, sharing the gospel, serving others, having daily bread, and other related activities. Temporal books may include if working - job performance, or if studying, educational pursuit plus other activities grocery shopping, driving the car, paying bills, etc. So these bookshelves in our lives are a very active place and as we slowly fill this bookshelf with books, the more that our live become complicated. The more committed you are, the more frustration you might feel to manage all your books simultaneously. Now bookends serve to support the books so that it may stay in place and not fall which we need in our Christian life. Without adequate bookends, even if we succeed in getting all our books upright, their stability is precarious at best. On top of life complexity and demands in both spiritual and temporal aspects, it seems that also develop a sense of guilt. But for what? For things that what we should do but do not and for things that we should not do but do.  To make it more fitting, this pertains to the type of books we put inside the shelf. Guilt is actually good for us, because it is like pain. When we feel pain, it indicates that there’s something wrong. Same goes for guilt which means there’s something wrong in our lives. Let us consider the disease leprosy; leprosy can cause numbness of the senses as the disease worsens because it destroys the nerves of the affected area. As such, that person can injure himself without realizing it because he will feel no sense of pain. A person without a sense of guilt is in danger of walking the destructive path of sin. So when that happens to us, we have to prayerfully consider and think about it, being wary about the path that we’re actually taking. Not sorting out the books that you put in your bookshelf and without that feeling of guilt, you’re just going to take in and take in but the books that you take in are destroying you and you don’t even know about it. An example would be the self-righteous sins of the Pharisees. They don’t feel guilt in what they do, it is superseded by the sense of righteousness that they have in them, thinking that Jesus is a blasphemer and not believing in the truth that He speaks. And this is true to all of us. The self-righteous person in his smugness and the guilt-laden person have the same thing in common: their bookshelf of life has no bookends. The solution for them is the same as well, when we become united to Christ by faith, God places a set of bookends in our lives. He is the one who will provide. One bookend is the righteousness of Christ and the other is the power of the Holy Spirit.

     In Romans 1: 17, “…the righteous live by faith,” we have to understand the righteousness of Christ and why we need it as bookends in our life. It says in the book that the word righteous means perfect obedience. A righteous person is one who always does what is right. But our problem is we’re not righteous because we are born sinners. Romans 3:10-12 proves this. But a self-righteous person will contend to this, saying that he does not steal, commit murder, engage in sexual immorality, and that he always follows God’s commandments and the country’s laws. So how can Apostle Paul say that? We respond this way because we fail to realize how impossibly high God’s standard actually is. Remember the two greatest commandments of the Bible to which all the law and commands depend (Matthew 22:37-40). None of us are even close in fulfilling this command. And we are told to follow all; not most, not some, but ALL the commands of God. If we apply the same standard in the academic world, this means that 100% is needed to pass, in which even a single mistake in an exam or thesis would make you fail.  No school would apply these standards since no one would graduate. As such, they grade via curve. As we look at the scandalous sins of our society, we say that because we don’t engage in them, we think we’re better than them. But God does not grade on a curve and those who do not obey the law fall under a curse. As such, the good news of the gospel emerges. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming the curse for us.  We may not commit scandalous sins, but how about our pride? Selfishness? Impatience? Our critical spirit? We have to agree with Paul that no one is righteous, not even one. We know we need a Savior and so we need to trust in God. We need Christ, we trust in Christ to redeem us.  

     We sin every single day, every single minute, we can never be righteous. This approach is ultimately discouraging and devastating which is exactly why you need that bookend of Christ’s righteousness. He stands as the bookend so that what we put in the bookshelf won’t fall. That is how Christ cares for us. The more we think we are righteous, the more we become prideful but only Jesus Christ is the righteous one in the eyes of God.

     When I was reading this book, I said to myself that I didn’t want to give a message and that I didn’t want to be a messenger anymore. I’m not worthy of speaking in front of all of you but it is by God’s grace that he put him here. And I know that the same goes all for you. I don’t know for how long God will let me continue to be a messenger here but however long or short, I’m thankful for the privilege that he has given me.

As humans, we have dreams as well, and those books may represent our dreams. But if there are no bookends in your life, whatever you put in that shelf would just fall. We’re in the middle of Jesus who is continuing to support us and guide us, and sometimes we feel choked and want to get out because we want to enjoy our sins, but Jesus is so gracious that he restrains us from doing harm to ourselves and He continually supports us in our walk with Him.

Reference:

Bridges, J. & Bevington, B. (2009). The Bookends of the Christian Life. Crossway Books: Wheaton