Salvation and the Gospel

2 May
SALVATION BRINGS FREEDOM

As we considered Justification by faith alone, we know that Christians have been set free from the law as a system of salvation. Being justified by faith, they are no longer under God’s law, but under his grace. Their standing with God rests wholly on the fact that they have been accepted and adopted in Christ. It does not, nor ever will it, depend on what they do; it will never be imperiled by what they fail to do. As long as they are in this world, they live not by being perfect, but by being forgiven.
No human performance is ever good enough; there are always wrong desires in the heart, along with a lack of right ones, regardless of how correct one’s outward motions are, and it is at the heart that God looks first.

All that the law can do is arouse, expose and condemn the sin that permeates our moral makeup, and so make us aware of its reality, depth and guilt.
The natural instinct of fallen man is to seek to please the deity he worships (whether conceived as a personal God or in other terms) by disciplines of law observance, right ritual, and asceticism. This is how the world’s faiths prescribe the establishing of one’s own righteousness – the very thing Paul saw unbelieving Jews trying to do (Rom. 10:3). Paul’s experiences had taught him that this is a hopeless enterprise.

Hence Paul wrote: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Gal.5:1).

10 May
LOSING GRIP ON THE GOSPEL

We have concentrated on ‘doctrinal error’ that can affect the outworking of the life of individuals and the church – the focus was on “Justification by faith in Christ alone” and how many have misunderstood this doctrine, even among outstanding Christian leaders of the past in church history. This doctrine has been inaccurately communicated, for instance, for fear of ‘easy believism’; there is the misunderstanding that ‘good works’ and holy living may be jettisoned, based principally on not realising that good works and holy living ‘belong’ to ‘sanctification’ which follows justification (Eph.2:10), and justification by grace through faith (a gift from God) is all ‘God’s doing’ and it does not rest on us, – hence there is no room for boasting (Eph. 2:8-9).

Apart from serious doctrinal error, the church may lose its grip on the gospel whenever Christians cease to walk according to the truth of the gospel – this can happen to the church whenever it falls under the sway of an outlook that would swallow up the gospel by assimilating it into a larger, non-evangelical outlook. When the gospel becomes primarily about “social concerns”, “environment concerns” (not that these issues are not important, but they should spring forth from believers who seek to honour God by being lights of the world and salt of the earth), then the gospel is ‘diluted’ and it is no longer about communicating the salvation plan of God and declaring that “Christ is the way, the truth, and the life”; and this is the primary issue whilst the rest (important as they are) are secondary issues that spring forth from those who have the primary issues resolved in their lives.

The apostle Peter withdrew from table fellowship with Gentile Christians at Antioch under pressure from the Jerusalem party (Gal. 2:12), and had to be corrected by apostle Paul. Some may feel that it is not helpful for Paul to do that publicly and it seems rather ‘unloving’ for him to do so, especially when Peter was the leader of the church in Jerusalem. However, what Peter did was actually accentuating the call from the Judaistic Christians from Jerusalem to observe Jewish ceremonial law as part of being true Christians – this, if uncorrected, can grow into a movement that breaks the church into two – a Jewish church and a Gentile church – when in fact the church ought to be one in Christ. As Peter withdrew from table fellowship with Gentile Christians publicly, Paul had to correct him publicly before the grip on the Gospel slips away. When seen in this light, we can realise that the issue was a serious departure from the truth of the Gospel – Peter, as a respected leader, would have caused the gospel of salvation to become a “Gospel plus” – a gospel that is not just based by grace through faith in Christ alone, but one that needs an extra (observance of Jewish ceremonial law) to be valid. Paul calls any gospel that differs from the original gospel from God as a false gospel and those who preach such a gospel are ‘eternally cursed’ (“anathema”). Paul was in fact defending the sufficiency of Christ as Saviour and the completeness of the salvation that believers have in Him. Paul was also, in effect, combating “legalism” in the Galatian church, when certain fractions are ‘superior’ to other factions because of their “additional requirements” which are not in the Gospel proper.
The Colossians worshipped angels (Col. 23:18) – here the gospel was, in effect, being swallowed by polytheism.
In the book of Hebrews, it is clearly written that Christ, “after he had provided purification for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So, he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs” (Hebrews 1:3b). In fact in 1:3a, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” – i.e. Jesus is God himself, and only God can and should be worshipped.

We can lose grip on the Gospel without awareness and compromise the Gospel assigned to us as believers; Paul withstood such errors of practice no less vigorously than he opposed deviations from doctrinal errors.
Our practice may actually compromise the truth of the gospel without us or other believers realising it, and we should be vigilant and alert to preserve the truth of the Gospel of Christ. This wrong practice can even affect leaders who are highly respected (example of Peter in Antioch) and those who see it and know it must lovingly and wisely correct such ones, even though others may not fully understand why this has to be done. Our final loyalty is to the Triune God and not to any human influence or authority, or even to respected Christian leaders. We thank God for men like Paul who stood up to preserve the truth of the Gospel at a great cost to himself.

21 May
PUTTING THE GOSPEL FIRST AS A PRIORITY

Previously, in my sharing “Seeing things as they are”, I have shared on my burden to be a “watchman” – this burden has been in my heart years back when I was serving in a church as one of the pastor-elders. The burden still remains and in some ways, it is getting more intense with the knowledge that I have limited time left to be faithful to God to discharge this burden.
This explains why I shared, in some details, the need for biblical preaching and teaching in the church as well as for a clearer understanding and experience of the ministry of the Holy Spirit among God’s people.

Another significant burden is the spiritual state of the church – this comes across very clearly as I read and reread the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation. The other passage which speaks to me is found in Ezekiel 33:

“When I say to the wicked, “You wicked people, you will surely die,” and you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways, these wicked people will die for their sins, and I will hold you accountable for their blood.” (vs8)
“As surely as I Ilve, declares the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live, Turn! Turn from your evil ways! “(vs11). I trust that we will understand the seriousness of being faithful to warn God’s people to turn away from their negative ways; otherwise, we would be accountable to God for failing to speak up and to sound the alarm and warnings when God first speaks to us and grant us the burden to be a ‘watchman’.
As for the letters to the seven churches, two warnings seem so relevant to the state of our churches today:
“I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up!” (Rev.3:1-2)
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – l am about to spit you out of my mouth” (3:15-16).

The above two rebukes seem to fit the people of God today. Christians generally do not want too much of the gospel; they do not wish to be involved with Christ too much – they would like enough gospel and commitment to make their families secure and their children well behaved, but not so much that they find their ambitions redirected, or their giving too greatly enlarged and expanded.
Religion is marginalised and privatized, and the gospel is rendered unimportant.

What governs our attention – almost everything but the gospel: economics, politics, entertainment, sports, what’s in and what’s out. There is relatively very little moral discourse, and almost none that has to do with eternal perspectives- how to live in the light of death and the final judgement – despite the centrality of that theme in the teaching of Jesus.

Then there is the sapping influences of self-indulgence – these also wield their power in the church. For many confessing Christians, it has become more important to be comfortable and secure than it is to be self-sacrificing and giving.
The heart of true Christian fellowship is self-sacrificing conformity to a shared vision – the vision that will put the Christian fellowship into conformity to the gospel. There may be overtones of warmth, but the heart of the matter is this shared vision of what is of transcendental importance- a vision that calls forth our commitment. It cannot be neither ‘hot’ nor ‘cold’; it cannot be having a name that we are spiritually alive, but in fact we are dead.
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples” (John 8:30-31). or “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first” (Heb. 3:14).

The fellowship of the gospel, the partnership of the gospel, must be put at the centre of our relationship with other believers. This means that in our conversations we ought regularly to be sharing in the gospel: delighting in God, sharing with one another what we have been learning from God’s Word, joining in prayer for the advance of the gospel, encouraging one another in obedience and maturing discipleship, bearing one another’s burdens and growing in self-sacrificial love for one another for Christ’s sake.

Just as knowledge of God and his Word serves as an incentive to Christian love, so love is necessary for a deepening knowledge of God. The reason is that it is exceedingly difficult to advance in the Christian way on only one front. We cannot for instance desire to improve our prayer life but not our morality; we cannot hope to grow in love for others but not in purity or to increase our knowledge of God but not in our obedience. The Christian life embraces every facet of our existence – all our living and doing and thinking and speaking is to be discharged in joyful submission to God and to his Son, our Savior.

If the gospel is first in our lives, then we are to labour to advance the work of the gospel in the lives of believers and to pray and ask for gospel fruit in their lives – and the ultimate purpose is to bring glory to the God who redeemed them.
We should strive to inculcate more spiritual knowledge and insight among God’s people and the church so that they may discern the best things from God and prove them in their own experience, being filled with the fruit of righteousness, to the glory and praise of God.

Many believers devote most of our praying and striving to personal matters largely removed from the gospel interests: our mortgages, physical safety, good health, employment for ourselves or someone else. Doubtless these and countless other concerns are legitimate subjects for prayer and focus – after all, we serve a God who invites us to cast all our cares on him because he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). But where is our gospel focus? It is not enough to insist that we are gospel-focused in our messages, bible studies, but in outworking, there is in fact no gospel focus at all, in any substantial way.

We need to put the gospel first – that means our priorities, our prayer life, our fellowship, our conversation and all that we speak and do are centred on the gospel purchased for us by the precious blood of Christ. It means also that our comfort, our bruised feelings, our reputations, the misunderstanding of our motives – all of these are insignificant when compared with the splendour and advance of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Indeed, put the gospel first: “Only one life, ’twill soon be passed; Only what’s done for Christ will last.”
Like one godly Christian said, “When I am dying, how glad I shall be, that the lamp of my life has been burned out for Thee”.

22 May
THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING THE GOSPEL FULLY

The Gospel comes from God; its subject is Jesus; it is as promised in the Old Testament; it is for all people; and it calls everyone to believe and obey.
The heart of the Gospel is that it reveals a righteousness that comes from God. This has been elaborated fully in the sharing on “Justification is by faith in Christ alone”, where the subject of the “Great Exchange” was discussed.
One of the greatest errors is to place ourselves at the heart of the gospel we preach. “Righteousness’ is the attribute of acting consistently in a good and right way. As such, it finds its complete expression in the character of God Himself. God always acts rightly, in accordance with His nature and promises, and His perfection in this regard is the standard against which every person is measured. That means that God must punish sin and therefore must take action against the unrighteousness evident in us. Yet it also means that His promises to save a people must also stand. The wonderful good news of the gospel is about how God can make us righteous, without compromising His own righteousness. People can only be justified (made righteous) by faith and God has made this possible through Christ.
The good news, about how God can make people righteous is set against the backdrop of our utter condemnation and our total powerlessness to do anything to save ourselves.

Romans 1:1: The gospel comes from God i.e. the source of the good news is not humanity, not even the apostle Paul, but God Himself. And the gospel is about God. Hence the gospel is not ours to alter in any way – we must merely be faithful to His message and to pass it on as it is given to us.

Vs 2 – it was promised beforehand in the Holy Scriptures. It is God’s eternal plan, revealed to His people hundreds of years previously, in the Old Testament. Throughout history God has been working to fulfil His plan. Jesus is not God’s ‘second plan’, or that the Old Testament is about a God of anger and the New Testament about a God of love. In our study of the gospel of Luke, we see how the promise of a Messiah finally came, following the birth and ministry of John the Baptist, and after Malachi, there was about 400 years of ‘silence’.

Vs 3 – the gospel is about Jesus. The reason why the gospel is ‘regarding His Son’ (rather than us and our needs) comes over in verses 3-4 of Romans chapter 1, where Paul reveals the fullness of Jesus’ identity: he describes Jesus from two points of view – in earthly terms, he was a descendant of David, but in the spiritual realm, he has been declared to be the powerful Son of God by means of His resurrection from the dead. (Only a king who conquers death can reign forever as in 2 Sam. 7:13).
Thus he is Jesus (the man) Christ (the promised Messiah) our Lord (the supreme ruler of the universe).

Vs. 5 – the gospel demands the obedience of faith – the appropriate response to such a figure as Jesus is absolute submission. The goal of gospel proclamation is not our benefit, but that Jesus’ name might be honoured; and the gospel is for everyone.
We are not at liberty to present the gospel and the response as a satisfying and fulfilling way to live and invite them to try it out for themselves – we are not in the business of presenting lifestyle options. We need to wake people up to the fact that their Creator is rightly angry with them for the way they treat Him and that they are powerless to save themselves. God’s judgement does not mean that He is unloving; love and justice are hallmarks of His perfectly righteous character.
It is commonly held that we need to be saved from our sins, but the sobering truth is that we need to be saved from God Himself, for His anger is personal and active. Just as He reveals HIs righteousness, so He reveals His wrath, and the purpose of both is to lead people to repentance and faith.

If, wrongly, we identify ‘sins’ as the problem with the world, then we will look for moral reform, teaching religion in order to help people live ‘better lives’. If, on the other hand, we see our problem correctly, that God must punish our rebellion and that he has already handed us over to judgement, then we will realise that we are absolutely powerless to alter our plight – our society completely fails to understand the helplessness of our situation. Most people acknowledge that something is wrong but they suggest we should try to make ourselves better – but all these solutions are a waste of time, because they address the symptoms rather than the disease.

Since the problem is that we are facing God’s wrath as a result of our unrighteousness, the solution cannot come from us. We need God to step in, which is what He does. It is God Himself who makes people righteous i.e. in the gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed.
God’s solution must be apart from the Law because no-one’s good works can be sufficient to secure a righteous verdict on judgement day. In fact, the Law only makes us conscious of our rebellion. Hence the need for Jesus to come and the need for the gospel – God’s righteousness is appropriated in a different way, ‘by faith’. God’s righteousness is bound up with the salvation He will bring – God’s righteousness is given to all who believe (the gospel through His Son). To justify does not mean ‘to let off the hook’, or ‘to treat as righteous’; rather it means to declare righteous – it is a legal term, meaning that someone is justly acquitted because the penalty for his crime has been paid – this verdict comes as a generous gift from God; it has to be given since it cannot be earned.

It is essential to see the cross as addressing the issue of God’s justice. God did not let us off the hook, nor did He overcome His anger by means of His love; each would have been fundamentally unjust. Rather, through Jesus’ death, the price has been paid. We must be wary of our tendency to put ourselves at the centre of God’s plans. Although we are great beneficiaries of His grace, He did not send His Son to die, primarily on our account. Rather, it was for the sake of His name and His character, so that it should be proved that He is faithful and just and able to fulfil His promises.

Faith is about putting one’s confidence in the fact that God is faithful to His promises of salvation and is able to keep them. Faith is not ‘a work’, because it does not earn justification; in fact, it is the opposite of works – faith is trusting solely in what God has done. Indeed, by grace we have been saved through faith – and this is not from ourselves. It is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. (Eph.2:8-9)
It is only by understanding the gospel fully would we bow down on our knees,in gratefulness, adoration, and worship, and give our lives to live for Him who died for us and rose again. It is only by fully understanding the gospel that we can truly appreciate in depth the grace, mercy, and love of the Triune God; and also feel burdened for those who have not responded to this wonderful good news!