The Motivating Power of the Gospel

For many of us, our initial encounter with the gospel when we first trusted Christ occurred many years ago and is now a distant memory. . . . The Christian life may now be more of a duty than a joyous response to the gospel. Consequently we may not experience the motivating power of the gospel.

That's why we need to intentionally bathe our minds and hearts in the gospel every day. Remember, we need the gospel not only as a door into an initial saving relationship with Christ, but also . . . to keep our daily lives from becoming a performance treadmill. As we rely on Christ's righteousness in this manner, far from leading to a license to sin, it actually motivates us to deal with the sin we see in our lives.

--Jerry Bridges and Bob Bevington, The Bookends of the Christian Life (Crossway 2009), 39-40