Jerry Bridges (1929–2016): Five Lessons from a Remarkable Life of Faith
Chapters
0:00:5 Who is Jerry Bridges?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Best-selling author Jerry Bridges passed away today at the age of 86.
00:00:11.000 | He was not only a friend, he was a big influence on my Christian life, and I know many of you
00:00:15.560 | could say the same thing.
00:00:17.640 | His writings were as wonderful as they were authentic, and I've always had the sense that
00:00:22.000 | his books were really the product of the deepest wrestlings that he faced in his own walk with
00:00:26.960 | the Lord.
00:00:27.960 | Over the years, I've had the honor to interview Jerry several times, and in the winter of
00:00:31.600 | 2011, I asked him, looking back over his 60-plus years as a Christian, what were the hard-won
00:00:37.280 | lessons that he would want younger believers to take from his life today?
00:00:41.360 | Here's what he said.
00:00:42.360 | Well, there are probably five significant truths that I would like for a young believer
00:00:49.000 | to know.
00:00:50.320 | Unfortunately, I learned these over a period of a number of years, simply because I was
00:00:56.920 | not exposed to the right kind of teaching.
00:00:59.400 | I'll just take them in the chronological order in which I learned them.
00:01:03.560 | It doesn't mean that this should be true.
00:01:06.720 | In fact, if I were going to reverse the chronology, I would certainly do that.
00:01:11.640 | But the first thing I learned, which really began my walk with the Lord, is that the Bible
00:01:17.520 | is meant to be applied specifically in our daily lives, because most people just have
00:01:24.400 | the idea that, you know, if I don't murder somebody or don't do these things, I'm okay.
00:01:31.040 | But I learned that the Bible was meant to be applied in my daily life.
00:01:35.960 | I was a young officer in the U.S. Navy at the time.
00:01:40.520 | I was serving under a commanding officer who was not easy to get along with.
00:01:46.120 | He had almost no people skills.
00:01:49.440 | And those of us who were younger officers resented him.
00:01:54.160 | And one day I read 1 Timothy 6, 1, and I'm going to be quoting from the King James Version,
00:01:59.760 | "Let as many servants as are under the oak count their own masters worthy of all honor,
00:02:06.080 | that the name of God and His doctrine be not blasphemed."
00:02:08.880 | And immediately I made the application of the principle, "Let a young officer who's
00:02:14.640 | serving under a difficult commanding officer count him worthy of all honor.
00:02:19.280 | For God's sake."
00:02:20.800 | So that was a specific application.
00:02:22.960 | That's what I mean to be very specific and very practical in the application of Scripture.
00:02:29.240 | Chronologically, the second great truth that I learned was union with Christ, that I am
00:02:34.280 | in Christ as the vine and the branches or have that living union.
00:02:39.880 | So Christ and I have that living union.
00:02:43.880 | I live in Him, He lives in me, and I depend upon Him for the power to live the Christian
00:02:50.080 | life.
00:02:51.080 | The third significant truth that I learned was the doctrine of election, that I'm a
00:02:57.960 | Christian because God chose me from before the foundation of the world.
00:03:03.320 | And when I was first exposed to that, there was a brand new thought, and I pushed back.
00:03:09.160 | I thought, "My friend, oh, she's gotten into heresy."
00:03:13.840 | But God in His grace opened my eyes to the truth, and I remember very well my reaction
00:03:19.520 | as soon as it just sort of hit me all of a sudden.
00:03:24.880 | And I just dropped to my knees, and I thought of Romans 12, 1, "I appeal to you by the
00:03:31.000 | mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice."
00:03:35.600 | And I remember saying, "God, I've done this before, but I've never understood Your mercy,
00:03:40.960 | Your grace as I do right now."
00:03:43.560 | And so that was it.
00:03:45.440 | Again, chronologically, the next great truth that I learned was the necessity of preaching
00:03:51.680 | the gospel to myself every day, of learning to look to Christ as my righteousness rather
00:03:58.400 | than to my own performance.
00:04:01.040 | And then I think the next one, I had in my early Christian life, I'd gone from the extreme,
00:04:09.240 | one extreme, what I call self-effort, this is what the Bible says, "Just obey it," to
00:04:15.640 | the opposite extreme, "You can't do anything.
00:04:18.480 | You just trust Jesus to live His life through you."
00:04:21.320 | These are two ditches you want to stay out of.
00:04:24.440 | And after wrestling through both of those, the Lord opened my eyes from the Scriptures
00:04:31.360 | to see that what the Bible teaches is what I call dependent responsibility.
00:04:37.640 | I am responsible to deal with sin.
00:04:40.160 | I am responsible to grow in the fruit of the Spirit, but I'm dependent on the enabling
00:04:46.240 | power of Christ through the Holy Spirit to enable me to do that.
00:04:51.080 | And then I would say the last significant thing that I would want to say to them, and
00:04:57.640 | I'd have to work out the sequence in which I would do this, and it probably would depend
00:05:02.320 | on tailoring it to their situation.
00:05:06.160 | But the last one that I've learned is an increased awareness of our dependence upon the Holy
00:05:12.920 | Spirit and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, both as the one who is the director
00:05:20.160 | of our Christian growth.
00:05:21.880 | Just as an athletic team needs a coach, so we need the Holy Spirit to coach us, to point
00:05:28.800 | out our weaknesses, to help us, so He gives us direction.
00:05:32.920 | Then He works in us Himself.
00:05:35.600 | The technical term is monergistic, which means He works by Himself apart from our input.
00:05:41.480 | And then He also works synergistically, which means He enables us to work.
00:05:47.400 | And I would say in the last couple of years of my own life, thinking now 63 years, that
00:05:55.680 | an increased awareness in my absolute dependence on and my appreciation for the work of the
00:06:02.520 | Holy Spirit has been that.
00:06:04.600 | So I would say those are the great truths I've learned.
00:06:08.760 | And I see no reason why a new Christian cannot at least begin to learn these right up front.
00:06:16.920 | There's no point in having to work through 50 years of difficult experience like I had
00:06:22.260 | to do, just give it all right up front, in small doses of course, just like you go to
00:06:27.680 | school and you're taught to read and then you're taught to count and then you get into
00:06:32.640 | fractions and things like that.
00:06:35.500 | So I really think that what I, and I've tried to do this in my books, is to help people
00:06:42.360 | to learn some of these great truths early on so they don't have to make all the mistakes
00:06:48.280 | that I made.
00:06:49.280 | There's an old, I think it's a German proverb, "Too soon old, too late smart."
00:06:56.160 | I think that describes my Christian life.
00:06:58.560 | But I think it doesn't have to be that way.
00:07:00.720 | That's right.
00:07:01.720 | Unless you're German like me, we learn very slowly.
00:07:05.120 | Yes.
00:07:06.120 | Well, that is wonderful.
00:07:07.120 | Thank you for your testimony.
00:07:08.120 | Thank you for the model that you give this younger generation of a man who is willing
00:07:13.240 | to learn all throughout life, willing to grow, willing to preach the gospel to himself every
00:07:18.640 | day.
00:07:19.640 | You're quite a model, and I'm very grateful to God for you.
00:07:22.560 | Well, it's all by His grace, as you know.
00:07:24.560 | Paul says, "But by the grace of God, I am what I am."
00:07:28.600 | That was bestselling author Jerry Bridges talking with me back in the fall of 2011.
00:07:34.360 | Jerry passed away today at the age of 86.
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