Obeying the Gospel

SEEING THE TRUTH, DECIDING TO RESPOND (DECEMBER 18)

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"But when he came to himself, he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you"'" (Luke 15:17,18).

THE LOST SON IN THIS STORY MADE A DECISION. Alienated from his father, and having abused every blessing he had ever been given, this young man “came to himself.” Finally recognizing the foolishness of his previous choices, he decided to get up out of the pig pen, go back home, and seek his father’s pardon.

There are those who would argue that such a thing is impossible. Deterministic views of life see everything about us as the product of forces beyond our control (divine predestination, genetic determinants, environmental pressures, psychological compulsions, and social restrictions, to name just a few).

But the fact is, we are not helpless. As we see in the story in Luke 15, the positive choice is always available. No matter how desperate the situation, there is always some step we can take in the right direction. Are we influenced by the temptations around us? Yes. Are we weakened by our previous sins? Certainly. But we are not helpless. We have the freedom to choose repentance rather than further rebellion.

We can hear the sadness in Jesus’ voice when He lamented His own people’s rejection of Him. “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37). You were not willing! In another place, He said, “You refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:40).

We have defined “obeying the gospel” as rightly responding to the gospel. To be morally “responsible” means “able to choose our response.” So with the power to decide, let’s decide! We’ve wasted enough time. Now is the time to quit being foolish.

"Man is no helpless invalid left in a valley of total depravity until God pulls him out. Man is rather an upstanding human being whose vision has been impaired by the cataracts of sin and whose soul has been weakened by the virus of pride, but there is sufficient vision left for him to lift his eyes unto the hills, and there remains enough of God's image for him to turn his weak and sin-battered life toward the Great Physician, the curer of the ravages of sin" (Martin Luther).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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WE CAN'T GET BACK TO GOD ON OUR OWN (DECEMBER 17)

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"For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe" (1 Corinthians 1:21).

IT IS OBVIOUS THAT THE CONSEQUENCES OF SIN IN THE WORLD ARE DISTRESSING TO US. There are few rational people anywhere who do not understand the difficulties of the human condition: we struggle with loneliness, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, alienation, and irrelevance (to name just a few of our challenges).

But for all those who recognize the reality of these struggles, few see clearly that they are, indeed, the consequences of sin. Not every instance of suffering is the result of some sin in the life of the sufferer, of course, but suffering in general would not be in the world if all human beings were still in a right relationship with God.

We live in the age of optimistic “self-help.” We may struggle, but we believe the answers lie within us, or at least that science and psychology will eventually find a way to alleviate our pain. So we keep searching, looking for the right technique or ideology.

But if the root of the problem is our alienation from God — and that is exactly what the gospel of Christ affirms — we will not be able to fix this problem on our own. Only God can open the door that would readmit us to His throne room. And the wondrous news is that He has done so. By giving His Son to die for us, He made an atoning sacrifice that did for us what we could never have done for ourselves. “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6 NASB).

But not only must we accept God’s solution; we must accept it on His terms. If we could never have worked our own way back to Him, neither can we refuse, or even attempt to modify, the conditions that God has attached to the granting of His salvation to us.

So the gospel requires the humbling of ourselves before God, the God against whom we have rebelled. And this makes sense, doesn’t it? If the problem of sin is the problem of self-will, we must lay aside our self-will in order to be saved. If we insist on self-help, we may become nicer people, but our sins will still be unforgiven.

"The love of God, with arms extended on a cross, bars the way to hell. But if that love is ignored, rejected, and finally refused, there comes a time when love can only weep while man pushes past into the self-chosen alienation which Christ went to the cross to avert" (Michael Green).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE SAY NO? (DECEMBER 16)

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"As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?" (Ezekiel 33:11).

IT WOULD BE A MISTAKE TO THINK THAT GOD IS UNAFFECTED WHEN WE REJECT HIM. It was He who gave us the freedom to choose, and He will not force His will upon us, but that does not mean He is impartial or indifferent as to which choice we will make.

Our Father loves us more than we can imagine. He gave His Son to save us (John 3:16; Romans 5:6-8). Surely, His preference is that we say yes to His offer of salvation and allow Him to reconcile us to Himself. Like the father of the Prodigal Son, God will not follow us into the far country, nor make us get up out of the pig pen and come back home — but when we do come home, He will run to meet us and embrace us (Luke 15:11-32).

Can we not hear the sorrow in Jesus’ voice when He said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37)? And do we not feel the urgency of God’s concern when He said, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel” (Ezekiel 33:11)? Our God is a God of tears.

At judgment there will be some to whom the Lord will have no choice but to say, “Depart from me” (Matthew 7:23), but it will break His heart to do so. In that moment, God will lose far more than we will. Having created us, He has far more invested in us than we have in Him. So the loss of even one person whom He has created in His image must of necessity be a tragic loss to Him.

Freedom is a fearful responsibility. It may be hard for us to wrap our minds around the fact that God has given us the power to break His heart — but the desire to love Him and not break His heart ought to be one of the prime reasons why we obey the gospel. Could there by anything worse than saying no to our Father?

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.' All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell" (C. S. Lewis).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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WILL ALL BE SAVED? (DECEMBER 15)

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"Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God's righteous judgment will be revealed" (Romans 2:4,5).

MOST PEOPLE BELIEVE THAT EVERYBODY IS GOING TO HEAVEN. At almost every funeral service, the speaker comforts the family by saying that the deceased (no matter how irreligious or immoral) is now at peace with God. Somehow we find a way to believe that, in the end, all of us will find our way to heaven.

If God is an objective reality, that reality is independent of our personal preferences. Whatever is the truth about God, we must be prepared to accept it. And we ought to decide what the truth is by consulting God’s revelation of Himself and not our own opinions.

When we consult the evidence, what we find is that God is a God of grace. This is good news, to say the least. God wants to save us from our sins, repair the damage sin has done to our character, and then have us enjoy eternity with Him (John 3:16).

But the evidence also indicates that God will not take away our free will. He will not force us to accept His salvation. Instead, God makes salvation available to all (John 3:17), and grants the gift to those who accept it on His terms (John 5:39,40). If we reject the gospel, we won’t share the same destiny as those who obey it.

God “will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be tribulation and distress for every human being who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality” (Romans 2:6-11). Having given us Christ, God has put the choice in our hands. Will we surrender and submit to our Savior?

"I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully, 'All will be saved.' But my reason retorts, 'Without their will, or with it?' If I say, 'Without their will,' I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say, 'With their will,' my reason replies, 'How if they will not give in?'" (C. S. Lewis).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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IN CHRIST, WE CAN BE EVERYTHING GOD INTENDED (DECEMBER 14)

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"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans 8:19).

BOUND TO THE PRESENT MOMENT AS WE ARE, WE CAN’T SEE VERY FAR BACKWARD OR FORWARD. So we can only imagine what human beings were before they fell into sin, and it is beyond our dreams to envision what we will be, in Jesus Christ, when God has completed His future plans for us. Paul said “the revealing of the sons of God” is a thing being awaited with “eager longing.”

If this perspective on our past, present, and future is true to reality, however, it is at odds with the account given by modernism. According to that account, human beings have arisen by the random process of genetic mutation (and more recently by their own efforts) from amoral organisms to those that can think and struggle morally. And just as the past is to be accounted for without recourse to any god, so the future, whatever it turns out to be, will be only what we are able to make of it and no more. Indeed, modernism looks upon religion, and especially theistic religion, as a part of the primitive past that must be discarded if humanity is going to overcome its problems and achieve its best future.

If the account of modernism is true, it should be accepted. But if it is not true, it is nothing less than the most devastating blow in history to the hopes of the human heart. If we can rise no higher than the heights made possible by our own ingenuity, the results so far do not give us cause for anything but great worry.

We do not, of course, choose between modernism and the gospel of Christ merely on the basis of which ideology gives us the greater comfort. The gospel makes its case historically, hanging everything on the credibility of the resurrection of Christ.

If the resurrection happened, the gospel is true and there is great glory both behind us and ahead of us. Created in God’s image, human beings were glorious, but they fell into sin. In Christ, our humanity can be restored — and what Christians are now waiting for is what Paul described as “the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21 NKJV). So God is not a hindrance to human progress. He is our only hope of becoming fully human.

"By his first work God gave me to myself; and by the next he gave himself to me. And when he gave himself, he gave me back myself that I had lost" (Bernard of Clairvaux).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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GOD, THE SUPPORT OF THE SAVED (DECEMBER 13)

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"Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen" (Jude 24,25).

JUDE’S CHRISTIAN FRIENDS NEEDED TO BE ASSURED OF GOD’S HELP. They faced difficulties that would test their allegiance to Christ, ordeals that might overwhelm them if they didn’t have the faithful support of their Heavenly Father. So Jude ended his letter of warning to his brethren with this ascription of praise to God: “[He] is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.”

On the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest, He predicted that Peter would deny Him and forsake Him. But Jesus also assured Peter that he would come back from his failure, stronger for having fallen and gotten back on his feet. “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31,32).

A part of the help God gives us in Christ is that we have our fellow Christians’ help in times of temptation and failure. Paul wrote, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:1,2). And “we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all” (1 Thessalonians 5:14). In Christ, we are never alone in our struggles.

We can be grateful that God restricts Satan’s power. “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Having obeyed the gospel, our glorious hope is an eternal rest, one where all our stumblings will be behind us. Until then, we have the promise of God’s steadfast love and constant support.

"O Lord, support us all the day long, until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done. Then in thy mercy grant us a safe lodging and a holy rest, and peace at last" (John Henry Newman).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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LOOKING BEYOND OUR SALVATION TO THE SAVIOR (DECEMBER 12)

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"The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'" (John 1:29).

AS THE “LAMB OF GOD,” JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONE WHO “TAKES AWAY THE SIN OF THE WORLD.” The words “looking to Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) are powerful. If our sins are to be taken away, it is to Him that we must look. We have no other hope (Acts 4:12).

However, there is a subtle danger in focusing on our need for salvation. I hate to mention it, because the last thing some people need is to pay less attention to their need for forgiveness. But if we’re not careful, we may put the emphasis in the wrong place. It is true that we are a needy people and only God can save us. Without God’s grace, we are lost. But something is wrong if we think of God as existing for the purpose of serving our needs.

So I want to recommend an adjustment to the way in which many of us think about God. As the gospel first begins to do its work, we are most conscious of our sinfulness and need for salvation. Then, if we obey the gospel, we start living on the basis of gratitude for our salvation. That surely marks a huge step forward. But the third stage is even more important: the stage in which we forget ourselves and are focused on God. As wonderful as it is to see that we’ve been saved, it is better to think of the God who saved us. And frankly, I’m not there yet. Are you?

When we get to heaven, we will be completely happy. But I believe our thoughts will not be centered on how happy we are. We will be so completely caught up in the glory and majesty of God that our happiness will simply be a byproduct of thinking rightly about God. The truth about God will have set us free — free from, among other things, any preoccupation with our own salvation.

For now, our thoughts are often about ourselves: our needs and the Lord’s ability to supply them. But we need to be growing toward a greater maturity. When our salvation has reached its final perfection at the foot of God’s throne, we won’t be thinking about ourselves or even the fact that we were saved. We’ll only be thinking of the Savior Himself. And even now, it is beneficial to think less about what we desire from God and more about who He is.

"Looking at the wound of sin will never save anyone. What you must do is to look at the remedy" (Dwight Lyman Moody).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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OBEDIENCE IS NOT A NEGATIVE CONCEPT (DECEMBER 11)

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"By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome" (1 John 5:2,3).

NOWADAYS, MOST PEOPLE THINK OF EQUALITY IN SUCH A WAY THAT THEY BELIEVE HIERARCHIES ARE EVIL AND ARE TO BE AVOIDED WHEREVER POSSIBLE. The very word obedience evokes an image of pre-modern times, before equality came to be viewed as it is today. As a result, when we delve into the Scriptures and encounter words like lord, master, ruler, king, and lawgiver, many people have a knee-jerk reaction against the very idea conveyed by such words.

To “obey,” of course, means to yield to the command of someone else. The idea may be unwelcome in our culture, but Jesus was not averse to it. During His sojourn in this world, for example, He submitted to baptism as an act of obedience, despite having no sins that He needed to repent of (Matthew 3:13-17). And on one occasion, He said simply, “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me” (John 6:38).

When the gospel of Christ was preached on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, Peter concluded his sermon by saying, “Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (v.36). Both Lord and Christ. To be Christians, we will have to accept not only the messiahship but also the lordship of Christ — and that will require us to get comfortable with the idea of obedience.

So we need to view obedience in a more kindly light. And even in our relationships with other human beings, we should not think of hierarchies and submission as inherently evil. Without so much as a word of resistance or resentment, Jesus submitted to the authority of a Roman governor and allowed Himself to be put to death. And even in the years of His youth, He had been submissive to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:51,52), although as their Creator He would have had the right to command their behavior. Wherever we look in the New Testament, we see Jesus recommending obedience as something to be honored and appreciated. He showed us that it was not obedience that got us into trouble, but obedience to sin.

"Thirty years of our Lord’s life are hidden in these words of the gospel: 'He was subject to them'" (Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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THE MOST DISTURBING MESSAGE IN THE WORLD (DECEMBER 10)

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"Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'" (Acts 2:37).

WOULD YOU SAY BEING “CUT TO THE HEART” IS A GOOD THING? These days, most people wouldn’t. We want, at all costs, to experience happy feelings, and we would be turned off by any sermon that called on us to pass through the wilderness of godly sorrow. We only want to hear how much God loves us (forget the sorrowful things God’s love might require of us), and if our wonderful “self” needs any change, it just needs to be “actualized.”

But the gospel — preached first by John the Baptist, then Jesus, and later the apostles — was disturbing. The first thing it produced, at least in the hearts of honest hearers, was not joy but grief. When people heard about “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2), they contemplated His death with tears of repentance, asking fervently, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37).

There is a sense in which conservatism (“preservation of the status quo”) is our deadliest spiritual enemy. The truth is, we are lost in sin and alienated from God, but we think we’re doing fine. If the gospel can’t break through that complacency, it can’t save us. Not even the gospel can save those who see no need to be saved.

OUR “HOUSE OF CARDS” IS UNSTABLE. The gospel wants to disrupt our assumption that the lives we’ve built are secure (Luke 12:16-21). Eventually, our “house of cards” is going to come crashing down, and if we’re not shaken up by the prospect of that, we should be.

OUR SINS ARE SERIOUS. In Luke 18:9-14, the Pharisee would have admitted that he had a few imperfections, but he was out of touch with how serious those shortcomings were. He needed nothing quite so much as to be troubled by the truth about himself.

OUR CHARACTER IS FAR FROM GOD’S CHARACTER. Those who have been Christians for many years often overestimate how much they have grown spiritually. If we keep listening to the gospel, it will often disturb us with the reminder of how far we still have to go.

The bottom line is this: if the seed of the kingdom is going to grow within us, the fields of our hearts have to be plowed up. And the harder the ground, the more painful the plowing is going to be.

"If Christianity has never disturbed us, we have not yet learned what it is" (William Temple).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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JESUS, THE CRISIS-PRODUCER (DECEMBER 9)

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"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword" (Matthew 10:34).

IN RESPONSE TO JESUS, PEOPLE DID MANY DIFFERENT THINGS, BUT ONE THING NOBODY DID WAS REMAIN NEUTRAL. Jesus’ teaching authoritatively called for a decision, and those who did not make a decision for or against Jesus were making the worst decision of all. As Jesus said, “Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters” (Matthew 12:30).

Jesus is often referred to as the Prince of Peace, and that is certainly what He was. (The description comes from the messianic prophecy in Isaiah 9:6.) But the peace that Jesus brought into the world was rejected by many. Not everybody agreed with what He said, and those who accepted Him often found themselves estranged from friends and family who had rejected Him. It is not hard to imagine the bitter disputes that arose wherever Jesus went. “And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds. While some were saying, ‘He is a good man,’ others were saying, ‘No, he is deceiving the crowd’” (John 7:12 NRSV).

If today it seems that not many are interested in Jesus’ teaching one way or the other, it is probably because Jesus’ followers have tamed His teaching and turned it into something far less disruptive than it used to be. The “gospel” has become so bland that not even the devil pays much attention to it anymore.

But if we go back to the Scriptures and grapple seriously with the teachings of Jesus and His apostles, we will be challenged just as people were back then. Our conscience will be pricked, and we will feel the same urge to declare ourselves — either as devoted disciples of the Son of God (Matthew 16:15,16) or the murderous friends of Beelzebub (Luke 11:15). When we hear Jesus honestly, a crisis is produced deep within our hearts. Is this teaching true? And if it is true, what are we going to do about it? The most tragic thing we can do is run away from this crisis. Painful though it may be, a decision must be made, either to follow Jesus or fight against Him.

"Wherever [Jesus] went he produced a crisis. He compelled individuals to decide, to make a choice. In fact, he struck me as the most crisis-producing individual I had ever encountered . . . Nearly everyone clashed with Jesus, whether they loved him or hated him" (Rebecca Manley Pippert).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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