Obeying the Gospel

THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS (MARCH 9)

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"And he commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that [Jesus Christ] is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name" (Acts 10:42,43).

THE GOSPEL MAY BE DEFINED AS THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST. And it is in two different senses that it is “of” Jesus Christ. First, it is the good news or glad tidings preached by Jesus, the gospel of the kingdom of God (Mark 1:14,15). But also, it is the message about Jesus. In the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion and the first Gentile convert to Christ, Peter said that God “commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead.”

It is a fact that the judgment of the world has been given into the hands of Jesus Christ, and we will give account of ourselves to Him. Speaking to a group of philosophers in Athens, Paul said that God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

But if Jesus is our Judge, He is also the Savior of those who accept Him. That is why the gospel is good news. As Peter announced in Acts 10:43, “Everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” And the consequence is that when God’s wrath falls upon the world, those who are forgiven will be spared. Paul put it vividly when he described Jesus as the one “who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:10).

What makes Jesus so disliked, however, is the gospel’s claim that forgiveness is only in Christ. To many, there is no more objectionable statement of Jesus than His saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Yet that is what He said, and we must decide whether He was telling the truth. Great outcomes depend on our decision.

May we not quibble, but rather be grateful. For where else can we go but to Christ? As Peter said when Jesus asked him if he and the other disciples were going to turn away from Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).

"By a Carpenter mankind was made, and only by that Carpenter can mankind be remade" (Desiderius Erasmus).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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THE WORST WORDS WE CAN IMAGINE (MARCH 8)

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"And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness'" (Matthew 7:23).

HAVING BEEN MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE, OUR DEEPEST NEED IS FOR FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM. He created us as personal beings, and one of the characteristics of personal beings is their need for relationship with other persons, above all with their Creator. If it is hard for us to be alienated from other human beings, it is even harder to do without our Heavenly Father, although when we’re alienated from Him we often misdiagnose the problem and try to fill the void in our hearts with other things besides God.

As Adam and Eve found out, sin cuts us off from the God whose fellowship we need so deeply. Outside of Eden, it may have taken them a while to realize just how much they had lost, but they lived a very long time after their separation from God and we can only imagine the emptiness and sorrow of their experience.

But God had a plan ready by which He would bring His Son into the world to die for mankind’s sins and open up the door to forgiveness. Having been forgiven, those who accepted God’s plan would have a partial fellowship with God restored to them in this world, but that blessing would only be a “down payment” on the perfectly restored fellowship they would have with God in eternity. This, in a nutshell, is the message of the gospel of Christ, and it centers on the restored fellowship with God we can have when He has brought the history of this sin-damaged world to its end.

Only by God’s grace could such a thing be possible. Yet God has made receiving the benefits of His grace contingent on our accepting the terms or conditions which He has set. But what if we say no to God’s plan? What if we reject the good news of the gospel?

The answer is that the saddest thing in the whole creation will happen: we will have rejected the very thing we were created for. Fellowship with God — lost by our sin but offered back to us in the gospel — will be forever out of our reach when we hear Him say, “Depart from me.” But for the time being, that horror is still an “if.” We will hear those words if . . . we say no to our Savior.

"The pain of punishment will be without the fruit of penitence; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late they will believe in eternal punishment who would not believe in eternal life" (Cyprian).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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THE HIGHEST (AND HARDEST) KIND OF HONESTY (MARCH 7)

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"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jeremiah 17:9).

ALL OF US WANT TO VIEW OURSELVES IN A POSITIVE LIGHT. As a result, we often tell ourselves what we’d like to hear rather than what we need to hear. The human heart is exceedingly “deceitful,” as Jeremiah 17:9 says, and it takes an uncommon measure of honesty for us to see when we are lying to ourselves. Think about three areas where self-honesty is both important and very hard:

(1) WHAT DOES GOD’S WORD TEACH? Especially when a text calls for a change that would be difficult to make, we reason our way around it, convincing ourselves of the meaning we prefer the text to have. We tell ourselves that we’re “explaining” the passage when all we’re really doing is dodging the inconvenience of obeying it.

(2) WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DO I HAVE WITH GOD? Ideally, we should see our relationship with God exactly as it is, neither overestimating nor underestimating it. But rather than look at the facts honestly (2 Corinthians 13:5), we often allow our hearts to lie to us. We define reality in terms of whatever makes us feel good.

(3) WHAT ARE MY TRUE MOTIVES, DESIRES, AND INTENTIONS? Here is the hardest area of all. If the question is What is the real reason why I want to do this? that can be a painful question to answer. It takes peeling off many successive layers of the “onion” of our hearts to get down to the real, true desires that are driving our decisions.

Edward White Benson remarked, “How desperately difficult it is to be honest with oneself. It is much easier to be honest with other people.” And yet, this harder kind of honesty is also more important than the easier kind. If we’re not willing to see (1) what God teaches us in the Scriptures, (2) the true status of our relationship with God, and (3) the true motives behind the decisions we make, then no amount of external honesty with other people is going to amount to much. It is God who is our Judge, and He knows “the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). We ought to embrace all of what He knows to be true — even about ourselves. Is it not the truth that will set us free?

"Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself" (Sydney J. Harris).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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SEEING THE SERIOUSNESS OF OUR OWN SINS (MARCH 6)

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". . . but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).

INSIDE ALL OF US IS A DEEP NEED TO SEE OURSELVES AS GOOD PEOPLE. We readily admit we’ve made mistakes, but we like to think that’s all they were: just mistakes. If others knew the extenuating circumstances, they would see how hard we’ve had it and how understandable the errors have been. Even in our confessions of wrongdoing, we often come out of the experience with people thinking more highly of us for being so humble and courageous.

The gospel, however, asks us to see ourselves not as nice folks but as sinners. It was not the inadvertent slip-ups of good people that put Christ on the cross, but the rebellious acts of creatures unwilling to accept the will of their Creator. And lest I think that “sinners” is just a reference to the human race in general, I need to understand this: if I were the only person God ever created, my sins alone would have been every bit serious enough to crucify Christ.

But do we see ourselves that way? Probably not. If I’m giving a talk at the Lord’s Table on Sunday, my eyes may fill with tears as I talk about how “sinful” and “unworthy” I am, but on Monday I may bristle with defensiveness if I find out that some of my peers actually do view me as a wicked person. I will probably feel that I’ve been judged unfairly and try to salvage as much of my reputation as I can. But if I cry, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13), I need to get comfortable wearing that suit of clothes honestly. If that’s the truth and I really believe what I said about myself, why should I object if others see me the same way?

The gospel is indeed “good news.” It’s the message of a love so great that it moved God to give the life of His Son for our sins. Rightly do we celebrate the goodness of God’s forgiveness. But those who appreciate it most are those who see the seriousness of their own sins most clearly (Luke 7:47). As long as we live in this world, godly sorrow and repentance will always be the springs from which our joy flows. We can’t have the latter without the former. So when we say Christ died for us “while we were still sinners,” let’s be sure we understand exactly what we’re saying.

"None of us feels the true love of God till we realize how wicked we are. But you can’t teach people that — they have to learn by experience" (Dorothy L. Sayers).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE SCRIPTURES - 2 (MARCH 5)

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"For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3,4).

WHEN WE SPEAK OF THE NEW TESTAMENT RECORD OF JESUS’ LIFE, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION, THERE ARE THREE LINKS IN THE CHAIN OF TRUSTWORTHINESS. First, there were the prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament. Second, Jesus fulfilled those prophecies with strict accuracy. And third, the New Testament writers reported the facts about Jesus’ fulfillment of prophecy, again with strict accuracy. At each step of the way, the process depended on faithfulness to the historical events behind the gospel.

In between steps one and two, there was a gap of several centuries, and this adds to the credibility of Jesus’ messiahship. When Jesus fulfilled the Hebrew prophecies, those predictions had been known publicly for at least two hundred years. The Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament) was begun around 250 BC. So even if none of the prophecies were any older than that (most were much older), the prophets could not possibly have known, that far in advance, what Jesus would do — yet virtually everything Jesus did matched up precisely with the prophecies.

But what about the gap between steps two and three? Here, we need a gap as small as possible, and that is exactly what we’ve got. If the New Testament writings had been made two or three centuries after Jesus lived, we might argue that their presentation of Jesus was legendary and not historical. But the gap between the events and the reporting of those events was not two or three centuries; it was only a few years. Paul’s writings are the earliest, beginning as early as AD 50-51, but even the last of the New Testament writings were completed during the first century, while eyewitnesses to the recorded events were still living.

So as we said in yesterday’s reading, the New Testament writings are trustworthy. We may reject the gospel as being a doctrine we’re not interested in, but we may not, if we’re historians, claim that Jesus never said or did the things that are attributed to Him.

"The Christians may not have been interested in “history”; but they were certainly interested in the “historical.” The preachers of the new faith may not have wanted to narrate everything about Jesus, but they certainly did not want to relate anything that was not real" (Pierre Benoit).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE SCRIPTURES - 1 (MARCH 4)

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"Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures . . ." (Romans 1:1,2).

PAUL UNDERSTOOD HIMSELF TO BE A MESSENGER. As an apostle, commissioned by Christ to proclaim the gospel, he saw his work as faithfully transmitting to others that which he had received. He made no attempt to be theologically inventive or original. Quite to the contrary, Paul, with the other New Testament writers, adhered to a strict standard of accuracy in regard to the received tradition (1 Corinthians 11:23; 15:3,4; Galatians 1:11,12). The whole value of their work lay in its absolute faithfulness to the truth of “what really happened.” To deviate from factualness in regard to Jesus’ life was tantamount to deserting the gospel itself.

As we see in Romans 1:1,2, Paul knew the gospel had been foretold in the prophetic writings of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was not a new theology, unheard of until the New Testament writers cobbled it together; rather, God had “promised [the gospel] beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures.” In fact, evangelism in the New Testament period consisted largely of showing the exact correspondence between what happened in Jesus’ life and what had been prophesied about it ages before.

What sense would it make, then, for the evangelists of the Christian faith to hang their whole case on the fulfillment of the Old Testament in the events in Jesus’ life, if it could be shown that no such things ever really happened in the life of Jesus? Evangelism would have been a farce if there was no correspondence between what had been “promised beforehand” and what later took place. And don’t forget: the New Testament writings were completed in the first century — while those who were in a position to know what had occurred were still living. So we are left with what, to some, is an uncomfortable truth: the New Testament documents are a trustworthy account of the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

"All of [the Gospel writers] are conscious of being reporters of real events played out by a real historical person. For all their effort to create a conviction about that person, and to testify to the divine power that operated through him, they are essentially reporters, not free to invent or falsify the data which the tradition of their churches presented as having happened in Galilee and Judea a generation earlier" (E. C. Blackman).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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WHY WE STUDY THE SCRIPTURES (MARCH 3)

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". . . from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 3:15).

THERE ARE MANY REASONS WHY WE MIGHT STUDY THE SCRIPTURES, BUT FOR TODAY’S MEDITATION LET’S THINK ABOUT ONE PARTICULAR REASON. The Scriptures are able, Paul says, to make us “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” Whether we ourselves study them or someone else teaches us (as was the case when Timothy’s mother and grandmother taught him the Scriptures in his childhood), it is through the Scriptures that the knowledge necessary for us to be saved is mediated to us. We don’t rely on the subjective feeling that God may be speaking to us in our hearts, nor do we depend on the mystical transmission of esoteric knowledge. It is by the simple process of reading, understanding, and obeying the Scriptures that we learn what God wants us to know.

Notice especially that Paul says it is “through faith in Christ Jesus” that we can be saved and that the Scriptures are our means of coming to know about Him. If Jesus is who He claimed to be, the One who can save us from our sins, it is critically important that we know what He taught and what we must do to receive His salvation. He was, after all, a historical figure, and historical figures must be learned about through the documents that contain information about them. Rather than debating feelings, opinions, and prejudices, we would do well to immerse ourselves in the actual documents — and on that basis make our decision about Jesus.

The Bereans in Acts 17 had the right idea. They listened eagerly as Paul argued that Jesus was the Messiah, but as they listened they were “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so” (Acts 17:11). The Scriptures were their final arbiter.

But here is the point I hope you’ll get: it is not only at the beginning but also throughout our lives as Christians that we must study the Scriptures. We will never, in this life, outgrow our need to be more and more “wise for salvation.” So we keep studying. The treasure house of wisdom in the Scriptures is inexhaustible. When it comes to salvation, our need is great — and the resources are rich.

"Nobody ever outgrows Scripture; the book widens and deepens with our years" (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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ZACCHAEUS: A LOST SOUL NEEDING TO BE SAVED (MARCH 2)

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"For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:10).

IN THE GOSPEL WE ARE CONFRONTED WITH THE FACT THAT GOD ENTERED THIS WORLD AND TOOK UPON HIMSELF HUMAN FORM IN THE PERSON OF JESUS OF NAZARETH. As the apostle John put it, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). In accounts like the one in Luke 19:1-10, we have a chance to learn something about why this happened.

As Jesus was passing through Jericho, He entered the home of a certain man named Zacchaeus, who was “a chief tax collector and was rich” (v.1). Zacchaeus had shown extraordinary interest in Jesus, and he proved himself sincere in his desire to repent of the sins he had committed, especially as a tax collector. And Jesus pronounced a blessing upon him: “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham” (v.9).

As He often was, Jesus was criticized for entering the home of such a person as Zacchaeus. But Jesus was looking for people like Zacchaeus. “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (v.10). The thing that distinguished Zacchaeus from so many others who crowded around Jesus was not that he was lost, for every person Jesus ever met fell into that category. The quality that made Zacchaeus special was his recognition that he was lost. He knew he needed what Jesus came to offer: the forgiveness of sins.

The miracle of the Incarnation was necessary if any of us were to be forgiven. To die for us and atone for our sins, God had to take upon Himself the form of a human being who could be killed. And those who would receive the benefit of that sacrifice would be people just like Zacchaeus, those willing to humble themselves in true penitence and seek the grace of a forgiving Father.

Just as Jesus was misunderstood in His day, He is often misunderstood today. He is usually looked upon as a teacher of ethics, a social worker, or a psychologist. But Jesus came to be none of these things. He came to be our Savior. To be like Zacchaeus, we need to dispense with our preconceived notions and personal preferences — and let Christ save us in the way He came to save us.

"The more you know about Christ, the less you will be satisfied with superficial views of him" (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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THE GOSPEL OF GOD’S KINGDOM (MARCH 1)

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"Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel'" (Mark 1:14,15).

THE GREEK WORD TRANSLATED “GOSPEL” IN OUR ENGLISH BIBLES WAS FAMILIAR IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. It meant the joyful proclamation of some great event, often one having to do with Caesar, the Emperor. But in the New Testament, it refers to the greatest of all proclamations: not one concerning Caesar, but glad tidings pertaining to God Himself, the very King of the universe — God is establishing the kingdom predicted by the prophets, and He is offering the forgiveness of sins to everyone who will submit to His Son, Jesus Christ.

THE TIME IS FULFILLED. In Isaiah 9:6,7, Daniel 2:44, and many other places, the Hebrew prophets had foretold the coming of a kingdom ruled over by God, something unique in the entire history of the world since Adam and Eve sinned and were exiled from Eden. In his account, Mark tells us that the coming of this kingdom is what Jesus preached. The time foretold by the prophets had arrived.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS AT HAND. What was about to happen, according to Jesus, was that God was going to establish His kingdom. A “kingdom,” of course, is a realm where someone rules or exercises authority. But the kingdom Jesus spoke of would be nothing like any of the kingdoms of men. It would be nothing less than God’s kingdom. Its citizens would live under His rule, reverently and lovingly acknowledging His right to be their Lord.

REPENT AND BELIEVE IN THE GOSPEL. The news of the coming kingdom required a response. Even as it approached, before its actual establishment in Acts 2, the proper response was to “repent and believe in the gospel.” If the problem was that God’s rule over His world had been rejected, admission to the new kingdom would require that people cease their rebellion and come back to the King, believing the truth of everything the King said about (1) Himself, (2) the problem of sin, and (3) the salvation He was providing. So if the gospel says the true King has returned, the question we must ask is: will we join His cause or continue to support the rebellion?

"Enemy-occupied territory — that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage" (C. S. Lewis).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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THIS JESUS IS THE CHRIST (FEBRUARY 29)

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"Now when they had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, 'This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ'" (Acts 17:1-3).

TO A JEWISH AUDIENCE, THE CENTRAL CLAIM OF THE GOSPEL WAS THAT JESUS WAS THE MESSIAH PROMISED IN THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES. Jewish hearers already accepted God and the writings of the prophets as the word of God. But whether Jesus was the Messiah promised by the prophets was another matter. Jesus put it simply: “You believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1 NET).

We should note that with a Gentile audience, the argument had to start further back. They had to be persuaded that the God presented in the Hebrew Scriptures was the true God. It is interesting, however, that in both cases the apostles’ argument rested on the resurrection. If their testimony to Jesus’ resurrection was true, then Jesus was both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:32-36). To the Jews, this meant that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God. And to the Gentiles it meant there was a God for Jesus to be the Son of.

But let’s go back to our text in Acts 17:1-3 and Paul’s presentation of the gospel in the Jewish synagogue at Thessalonica. To convince them that Jesus was the Christ, he “reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead.” Even to those who took the prophets seriously, it needed to be shown that the death and resurrection of the Messiah were predicted by the prophets (Psalms 16,22,110; Isaiah 53; etc.) and that Jesus had fulfilled not just some of these messianic prophecies but all of them.

Personally, I would love to have been there to see the excitement of those who were persuaded by Paul’s exposition of the Scriptures. To have known these prophecies all one’s life and then be able to exclaim, “Yes, this Jesus is, in fact, the Christ we’ve been looking for” — their jubilation must have been like fireworks!

"According to those predictions [in the Hebrew Scriptures], the Messiah was appointed to suffer and then rise again from the dead. Both these experiences had been fulfilled in Jesus, and in nobody else; therefore, said Paul, this Jesus of whom I tell you is the promised Messiah" (F. F. Bruce).

Gary Henry - WordPoints.com + AreYouaChristian.com

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