I'm thinking of those of you who have fragile personalities who are very sensitive to

your own failures who are always feeling defeated who wonder if you're a

Christian half the days of your life I would just love to build into you some gutsy

guilt.

How do you fight sin when you are weighed down by your own failure?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper turns to Micah Seven to show how a justified sinner fights for joy in Christ.

This message was originally given at the Desireing God Regional Conference in Greenville, South Carolina on August 20, 2005.

Do not fight in order to be justified before God, but fight as a justified sinner. Or as I like to say, learn the secret of gutsy guilt.

I hope all of you know the secret of gutsy guilt.

I suppose that in this crowd I don't need to say too much about the doctrine of justification, but I want to anyway.

The fight for joy is not the foundation of your acceptance with God.

The foundation of your acceptance with God is Jesus Christ, his blood and righteousness.

He is living, his dying, he is rising from the dead, did everything to make you wholly acceptable to God, and you have that purchase by faith alone apart from works of the law

and apart from a fight for joy. It is a falling on Jesus, not a fight. Galatians 313,

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us.

So this we know, everything the law demanded of me, I have failed to perform as I should, and therefore I'm under the curse of the law which is

damnation. I am therefore lost all the people in the world are in this condition

apart from Christ and Christ, and Christ then, it says,

became a curse for us.

Romans 832, he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all.

Will he not with him freely give us all things? things. So you have not only the curse removed, you have a commitment, a covenant

blood-bought commitment that everything good for you for eternity has been bought for you

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