The Gap

There stands a gap between our personal righteousness and the perfect holiness of God. Indeed it is a gulf.

But Jesus spanned that gulf. Jesus crossed over from God's unaproachable holiness into our unrighteousness and bridged that gap in His Own blood, taking on our sinful flesh and overcoming it. First He blessed it with His incarnation. Then He submitted it to the Father through baptism. Then He overcame the temptations of the devil. Then He made His own body a sin offering through His suffering, death, and burial, and He conquered death itself through resurrection. Then He ascended to the Father after appearing alive again through many proofs and after instructing His disciples to wait for the promised outpouring of the Holy Spirit. That Holy Spirit outpouring continues to this day; it is the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry "abba father."

We are not only saved *in spite* of that gap between God's perfect holiness and our imperfect righteousness; we are saved *because* of that gap. That gap represents the holiness of Jesus that we could never accomplish, and that gap IS where God's righteousness flows into our lives and SAVES us from wrath. We could never fill that gap ourselves before our salvation, and we can still never fill that gap even after being saved. We forever depend on the righteousness of the Son and His blood to make us holy, and that very gap He fills IS our salvation. Our shortcoming is the place Jesus occupies in our lives to make us holy and acceptable. That is why we confess our sins, daily, and why we never pretend to be holy or righteous but always depend on Jesus and His blood.

The gap between our righteousness and God's righteousness is filled in with Jesus, and Jesus is our life. The more we see that we depend on Jesus moment by moment, the more we are filled with and actuated by His power.