In his book, Sunday Matters, Paul Tripp shares 52 devotions to help Christians to make the most of Lord’s Day worship. In his first chapter, he addresses the all-too-familiar problem of what he calls “losing our gospel mind.” That is, the tendency to live our lives as though we don’t know the gospel and its manifold implications. Perhaps you can relate. I certainly can.
Caught up in the rat race of life, we forget the truth that God has loved us from before the foundation of the world and that he will do so for eternity to come. We forget the gospel truth that Jesus Christ loved us and gave himself for us and that the Spirit of God is doing his guaranteed work of conforming us to the glorious image of the last Adam, our Lord and Saviour. We forget that in the promise of the gospel is the promise that our heavenly Father cares for us and provides for us and will never forsake us. We forget that all of these gospel truths, and more, give us every reason to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, knowing that, in doing so, we are laying up for ourselves treasures in heaven. We forget the gospel promise—the assured gospel hope—of our bodily resurrection and how this fact of the gospel motivates us to live steadfast, to be unmoveable, and to be always abounding in the work of the Lord. And amid all of such “gospel forgetfulness,” we forget that, even though we don’t remember, God our Saviour always remembers. We may lose our gospel mind but he never forgets us. Hallelujah, what a Saviour.
Yesterday, I was speaking on the phone to my 86-year-old uncle, catching up after several years. Over forty years ago, he introduced me to the doctrines of grace—the wonderful truth that salvation is completely of the Lord (Jonah 2:9), a gracious salvation to which the only contribution I make is my sin. At the time, I was the know-it-all college student arguing against what I have now for over three decades preached concerning God’s sovereign grace in saving sinners. But what was many years ago only a point of debate for me is the doctrine that is sustaining my uncle as he cares for his wife whose dementia ravishes her memory. Our thirty-minute conversation yesterday gave me new appreciation for the gospel truth that, though I sometimes lose my gospel mind, my loving Saviour continues to love me as though I remember.
My aunt is in a memory care facility on the premises of the retirement community where my uncle lives. Every morning, he goes to her room to spend time with his wife whom he has loved for over sixty years. Every evening, he sits again with her though she rarely says a word. She seemingly is unaware of her relationship to him and, in that sense, has lost her marital mind—and yet my uncle has not lost his. He knows her, loves her, cares for her, serves her, and knows that, in his words, within what seems to be a vacuous body, “____ is in there.” This morning, I awoke thinking, “This is how Jesus Christ loves his bride. This is how Jesus loves me.” Hallelujah, what a Saviour.
I am ashamed of how I too frequently lose my gospel mind, going hours throughout the day forgetting my Lord and living as though I have no relationship with him. I am convicted that I forget his glory, failing to remember his work on the cross and his promised return to set all things gloriously right. I grieve, in other words, that I spend so much time sweating the small stuff because of self-inflected spiritual dementia. Though my aunt has no control over her memory failure, I have no excuse for losing my gospel mind. And yet when I do, my Lord patiently forgives me, lovingly cares for me, and faithfully fulfils his “marital” covenant, never leaving me, staying with me amid my careless and this worldly cognitive decline. I forget; he always remembers.
My uncle serves as a wonderful testimony of what it means to love his wife through all the vicissitudes of life, until death parts them. Their marriage is a beautiful testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ’s love for his bride, the church. My uncle’s love for his wife, who apparently does not remember him, reminds me that, even when I lose my gospel mind, praise God, my Groom always remembers me. He will never forget that I am his; I will always be on his mind. And that moves me to want to guard against losing my gospel mind. May you and I remember that today.
Working on my memory,
Doug