Radically Insecure Christians

The following quotation is from Richard Lovelace's The Dynamics of the Spiritual Life. I found the quote at a blog called Fairly Ordinary (but it is not in the least bit ordinary). Anyway, the quote is lengthy but I wanted to share it with you because I think it is quite fundamental to our progress and understanding.

Only a fraction of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. In their day to day existence, they rely on their sanctification for their justification. Drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, from their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of their conscience willful disobedience. Christians who are no longer sure that God loves them and accepts them in Jesus apart from their present spiritual achievements are subconsciously radically insecure people. Much less secure than non-christians because of the constant bulletins they receive from their Christian environment about the holiness of God and the righteousness they are supposed to have. Their insecurity shows itself in pride, a fierce defensive assertion of their own righteousness and defensive criticism of others and they come naturally to hate other cultural styles and other races in order to bolster their own security and discharge their suppressed anger. They cling desperately to legal pharisaical righteousness but envy and jealousy and all other branches of the tree of sin grow out of their fundamental insecurity. This anxiety and insecurity that comes from modifying grace and looking at our performance as the basis of our acceptance with God creates compulsive, ego-centric drives which can produce some of the most selfish, contentious, leaders and lay people on earth. More difficult bear in a state of grace than in a state of nature.

The post from which I lifted this quote is called No More Chains, and it is well worth your time. Thanks, Jennifer!