Daily Devotional

July 14

A First Book of Daily Readings

by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (selected by Frank Cumbers)
Sourced from the OPC website

I am what I am ... by the grace of God

What matters first of all if you are a Christian is not what you once were, but what you are. Does that sound ridiculous ? It is so perfectly obvious.... Yes, how obvious when I put it like this, but how difficult to see it sometimes when the devil attacks us. The Apostle said that he was ‘not worthy to be called an apostle because [he] persecuted the Church of God’, but he goes on to add: ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am.’ What does it matter what I was? ‘I am what I am.’ Put your emphasis there. Do not be for ever thinking about what you were. The essence of the Christian position is that you should remind yourself of what you are. Certainly there is this past with all its sins. But say this to yourself:

Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
Who like [me] His praise should sing?


‘I am what I am’—whatever the past may have been. It is what I am that matters. What am I? I am forgiven, I am reconciled to God by the Blood of His Son upon the Cross. I am a child of God. I am adopted into God’s family, and I am an heir with Christ, a joint-heir with Him. I am going to glory. That is what matters, not what I was, nor what I have been. Do what the Apostle did, therefore, if the enemy is attacking you along this line. Turn to him and say: ‘What you are saying is perfectly true. I was all you say. But what I am interested in is not what I was but what I am, and “I am what I am by the grace of God”.’

Spiritual Depression, p. 85–6

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“Text reproduced from ‘A First Book of Daily Readings’ by Martyn Lloyd-Jones, published by Epworth Press 1970 & 1977 © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. Used with permission.”