Identity in Christ

Christ’s Sufficiency

Christ’s sufficiency means that the Lord Jesus is fully adequate for every part of the salvation He undertook for His people. Nothing needs to be added to His righteousness, sacrifice, mediation, wisdom, power, or grace. He is not one helper among many possible saviours. He is the only Mediator between God and man, and He perfectly accomplishes the work entrusted to Him.

To be “complete in him” does not mean that believers are already free from all weakness, sorrow, or remaining sin. It means that our standing before God is complete in Christ. We do not need to create an additional righteousness, pay an additional price, or find another mediator. Christ is enough to reconcile us to God and bring us safely home.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession states that the Lord Jesus fully satisfied divine justice, obtained reconciliation, and purchased an everlasting inheritance for all whom the Father gave Him. Our salvation is therefore not suspended from the fragile thread of our present performance. It rests upon the finished and effectual work of Christ.

1. His Grace Is Sufficient for Present Weakness

Christ did not tell Paul that weakness was imaginary. He promised grace sufficient within it. We often ask for enough grace to feel strong in advance, but the Lord frequently gives grace in the act of dependence. The supply appears as we walk, pray, endure, obey, and return to Him.

Sufficient grace is not always felt as emotional ease. It may look like being kept from despair, enabled to ask for help, strengthened to resist a compulsion, given patience for one more hour, or sustained in a duty we feared we could not perform. We may still tremble, yet find that Christ has not let us go.

2. His Priesthood Is Sufficient for Guilty and Fearful Hearts

An anxious conscience may keep asking whether we have confessed well enough, believed strongly enough, repented deeply enough, or remembered every possible sin. Hebrews directs us away from endless measurement of ourselves and towards the living Priest who saves to the uttermost.

Our confidence is not that we have presented a flawless case, but that Christ’s intercession is flawless. We come to God by Him. When our prayers are broken, Christ remains whole. When our understanding is limited, His knowledge is perfect. When assurance feels dim, His priestly work has not weakened.

3. His Sympathy Is Sufficient for Sufferers

Christ’s sufficiency is not cold competence. The One who saves us is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. He knows suffering from within true human experience, yet without sin. We do not bring our grief to a distant official, but to a compassionate High Priest.

His sympathy does not always remove the burden immediately. It changes where we carry it. We bring it to the throne of grace, where mercy and timely help are promised.

4. Christ’s Sufficiency Does Not Forbid the Use of Means

Trusting Christ does not mean refusing medicine, counselling, friendship, rest, practical planning, or skilled support. These things are not sufficient saviours, but they may be useful gifts. We receive them beneath Christ’s lordship, test them by His Word, and refuse to make them bear the weight that belongs to Him alone.

We may therefore seek help without placing ultimate hope in a helper. We may use a strategy without treating it as a guarantee. We may value bodily care without believing the body must feel calm before the soul can trust. Christ remains the fountain; created means are channels He may graciously use.

From the August 2026 Monthly Biblical Encouragement. See the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), Chapter 8, “Of Christ the Mediator”.

Kept by Grace: The Perseverance of the Saints

Waiting would be frightening indeed if our final safety depended upon our maintaining an uninterrupted level of spiritual strength. Scripture gives better comfort. Those whom God has truly united to Christ will be preserved by Him and will persevere in faith to the end.

The 1689 Confession states that believers “can neither totally nor finally fall from the state of grace”, and grounds this perseverance not in human free will, but in God’s unchangeable love, Christ’s merit and intercession, union with Him, the abiding Spirit, and the covenant of grace.

This doctrine is not teaching that true Christians never stumble, doubt, sin grievously, or experience seasons when God’s love feels obscured. The same confession explicitly recognises such seasons. Perseverance means that God does not abandon the work of grace He has begun.

1. Our Preservation Rests Upon God Before It Appears in Us as Perseverance

We really do believe, endure, repent, pray, and continue. Yet underneath our continuing is God’s keeping. The Christian life is not a cliff edge upon which one tired step necessarily means final ruin. Our Father has committed His people to the Son, and the Son does not lose those given to Him.

This gives particular comfort when anxiety says, What if I cannot keep going? We may answer, My strength is limited, but my salvation does not rest upon an isolated act of my strength. God keeps His people through faith.

2. Preservation Does Not Guarantee Constant Felt Assurance

A believer may be preserved while feeling frightened, dry, discouraged, or uncertain. We must not make the feeling of security the foundation of security. Feelings are real experiences, but they are not the covenant.

There may be seasons when we need to return again and again to ordinary means: Scripture, prayer, worship, the fellowship of the church, repentance, and wise pastoral help. The God who ordains the end also ordains the means by which His people are nourished and kept.

3. Waiting Is Not a Pause in God’s Preserving Work

Sometimes we imagine that God will resume His work once our circumstances change. Yet the waiting itself belongs within His providence. He may be teaching patience, exposing self-reliance, strengthening faith, deepening prayer, or simply teaching us to live one day at a time beneath His care.

We should not speculate confidently about every purpose behind a particular trial. But we can be confident of this: God has not ceased to be at work merely because we cannot presently see what He is doing.

From the September 2026 Monthly Biblical Encouragement. See the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), Chapter 17, “Of the Perseverance of the Saints”.

Learning Contentment in Christ

Our circumstances can change profoundly without changing the foundation beneath us. No created loss can strip Christ from those who belong to Him.

Paul says that contentment is something he learned. That is wonderfully hopeful. We need not conclude that we are spiritually defective because contentment does not come naturally. It is learned in the school of Christ.

Jeremiah Burroughs built The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment around Philippians 4:11, exploring the way Christ teaches His people to live with a settled submission to God in changing circumstances. The point is not that Christians cease to desire change. Paul knew hunger and abundance, need and provision. Contentment means that our hearts are not finally governed by the sentence, I cannot be at peace unless this circumstance changes.

1. Contentment Is Not Passivity

We may pray for change, seek treatment, pursue reconciliation, apply for work, make an appeal, set a boundary, ask for help, solve a practical problem, or leave a genuinely dangerous situation. Contentment does not forbid action.

Rather, it changes the spirit in which we act. We use lawful means without making those means our saviour. We pursue good things without demanding that God give them on our timetable. We act responsibly, then leave the outcome with Him.

2. Contentment Is Not Pretending We Do Not Care

Sometimes we imagine that the godliest response is to become emotionally indifferent. But Paul does not say that he learned not to care whether he was hungry. He says that he learned contentment in both hunger and fullness.

Christian contentment does not erase preference. It loosens preference from ultimacy. We may say, I deeply desire this, but I do not worship it. I would be grateful if God gave it, but His goodness is not on trial until He does.

3. Contentment Grows from the Presence of God

Notice the reason Scripture gives for contentment: “for he hath said, I will never leave thee”. The answer to a restless heart is not merely, Look at what you already possess. It is, Remember Whom you possess, and Who has promised not to forsake you.

The Christian learns contentment because the Lord Himself has not left. Our deepest security does not rest upon possessing every created good we desire, but upon belonging to Christ and having the abiding presence of God.

4. Contentment Turns “Not Enough” into Prayer

Discontent often speaks in absolutes: This is not enough. I cannot bear this. I must have that. Life cannot be good unless this changes. Contentment does not silence need; it carries need to God.

We can learn to replace the demand with prayer: Father, You know what I desire. If it is good, please give it. If I must wait, sustain me. If Your answer differs from mine, keep me from bitterness. Teach me to receive today’s mercies while I continue to bring tomorrow’s desires to You.

From the October 2026 Monthly Biblical Encouragement , “A Quiet and Contented Heart”. See Jeremiah Burroughs, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment .