I (Mike) was working with one of my daughters the other day on her Math. I remembered the days of flashcards and worksheets that seemed endless. I liked Math (I hated Reading) but I did think we overdid the worksheets.
As we have been talking in our Galatians series (No Other Gospel), we are quite capable of some very Bad Addition. We try to “add” to Jesus. We may try to add our superior behavior, our devout prayer life, our sinless morning, or any other performance to Jesus and hold that up to God and say “here, I did this…now do you accept me?!” But that is bad addition. We don’t add to Jesus. We are not saved by our works and we are not now accepted by our performance. We are saved by grace (Eph. 2:8-9) and we don’t add our spiritual resume to get His daily acceptance. We add nothing.
The good news of the Good News (gospel) is that we don’t trust in OUR performance, but we trust in Jesus’ performance. Jesus lived a perfectly sinless life, died a horrible death, and was our substitute on the cross…taking the wrath we deserve and giving us His good standing with the Father. This performance, HIS performance, is what gives us favor with God the Father. So, whether you have had a great spiritual day today or you are very aware of all of your failures today, if you have trusted Jesus as your Savior, your standing…has…not…changed. You are God’s child, adopted, by Him.
Let’s stop the bad addition and trust in Jesus performance, and not our own.
Here is a post a friend sent me that reminds me of all of the good things that we can try to add to Jesus…