Gospel for Life by Jerry Bridges addition (who do I think that I am?)

Bridges is correct in pointing out that the riches of Christ are most clearly seen upon the back drop of our sin, just as a diamond is most beautiful upon a black cloth, but I feel that he left out an important aspect of our sin, perhaps even more important than what he pointed out. He told us how we are born with sin natures which make us guilty from conception, and how these natures pollute even our best and most noble deeds, but it seems to me that he left out another point of our sin that needs to be considered first, before even beginning the book; namely that sin blinds us and makes us ignorant. Blindness and ignorance are both referring to the same thing but the words paint different pictures. Blindness is obviously not physical and ignorance is not in reference to intelligence but both are in relation to spiritual things. Why do I think that these points are more important than the points he made? Mainly because blindness and ignorance will keep you from seeing and understanding the points that Bridges has made.
“Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see…”we all sing the song but do we understand what it was that John Newton was saying. Do we understand that implications of this blindness and ignorance partially removed in salvation. The bible calls this blindness many things, perhaps the most familiar verse would be, “the heart is deceitful about all things.” It is a deceitful blindness. Eph 4:17 says that all gentiles (i.e.: lost people) walk in the futility of their minds, have darkened understandings, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart…
Sin makes us blind and ignorant to Truth and God. We have no understanding of how things really are. “But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them for they are spiritually discerned (I Cor 2:14). Sin makes us think we are wise when if we saw our selves in the light of the knowledge and wisdom of God we would realize our own complete inadequacy and insufficiency. The wise of our day have agreed that there is no god, yet, we know that only the fool says there is no god.
What must be understood is that because of our sin we are ignorant, not seeing things the way they are, even after salvation we are only mildly cured. We remain weak and fallible and even our greatest wisdom is finite. We do not know what tomorrow brings, nor can we know. Even our best deduction and reasoning is limited by our very being of dust. Any wisdom and sight we may have is only from God (I cor 4:7) and even this is quickly tainted by our sin.
Why is this so important to understand? Because until we really start not trusting our selves we exalt ourselves over and against God. We doubt His way and His word when we do not distrust self at every turn. As long as we trust self even a little we set ourselves up to fall. For it is pride that thinks more of self than is written. The wisest thing we can do is trust the scripture that we are blind and ignorant for when we start here we start where God begins. With truth.
Jerry Bridges wants us to see what we posses in Christ, but the biggest obstacle is our blindness and ignorance. We can only be told but not forced to believe, but where does our disbelief lie except in our “wisdom.” We don’t really believe these things or we would live in light of them. We will hear nothing new in this book. He even says his book is 101. Yet, if we believe just the 101, our lives will be radically impacted for Jesus. We would never live vainly or in futility if we thought that God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, had come as man and lived a perfect life in subjection to law, died a perfect death in obedience to law, and had done it specifically for you. But we don’t fully believe because we are still partially blind and still partially ignorant. But if we start here, with our known ignorance and seeable blindness, if we truly except scripture above our understanding, then we may see what it is that we have been given in Christ. Then we may know what we have been given in Christ.