Martyn Iles - At the Crux

Mercy. Integrity. Peace. These are qualities we admire, but they are not always easy to practice. What makes someone genuinely merciful? What does it mean to live with a pure heart? And where does real character come from? Jesus describes a kind of character that cannot simply be manufactured through self-improvement.

What actually makes someone a better person? More confidence? Greater self-belief? Looking deeper within? Jesus gives a very different answer. His opening words in the Sermon on the Mount show that real change begins when we stop looking to ourselves for the answer.

We are quick to say that we want justice. But what happens when that same standard is applied to us? If God is just, His justice cannot stop with everyone else. None of us measures up. The gospel offers something we cannot achieve or earn for ourselves: a righteousness that God provides.

Self-love, self-esteem, self-confidence, self-care, self-discovery. We live in an age increasingly preoccupied with self. But the self cannot be both the problem and the solution. We suppress the truth about God because acknowledging God threatens our desire to be our own authority. To understand who we are, perhaps we need to start by asking a different question: Who is God?

There is no shortage of theories about what is wrong with the world. Some blame politics, others education, others bad ideas or plain ignorance. But what if we have misdiagnosed the problem and there is something deeper going on? What if we are far better at suppressing the truth than we realize? [Romans 1]