John 3:16

While the gospel is very big and very multifaceted, some believers tend to make it a sort of catch-all word for anything that has to do with God. The most common way is in the context of the phrase "living out the gospel." What people generally mean by this is "doing good things for other people." So the gospel must be translated, in this instance, to "good things for others." This is a gross misunderstanding of what the gospel is.

First, gospel is a word that comes from an old English translation of the Greek word euangelion, which means "good news." More specifically, the gospel is an announcement. But it has to be a good announcement. The announcement that you must "love the Lord your God with all you heart, soul, mind, and strength" is news, but it's not particularly good if you're a human being like me. Historically, Christians have defined the gospel as the announcement that Jesus has died to save sinners. So the phrase "living out the gospel" makes no sense when the gospel is understood in this way: an announcement of good news.

If you watch newscasts, you know you can't "live out" the news. You can react to it, certainly, and knowledge of it may well influence the things you do. The gospel is the same way. It will, no doubt, impact your life. But that impact is not the gospel. It can't be. It's the impact of the gospel. And it should be noted that the gospel itself does not demand a certain response. It makes no demands at all. Remember, it is an announcement. Hearers of the gospel, from the apostle Paul to the atheist Richard Dawkins, have recommended responses, but again, these responses are not the gospel.

The gospel is that Jesus has died to save sinners like me, and like you.

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Mark 10:21-27

Are you concerned you're not giving enough money to your church? You should be! Consider Jesus' interaction with a rich young man in Mark 10:17. The man asks Jesus what he must do to be saved - a question that we all ask ourselves with regularity. But far from talking about faith in God or dependence on Himself, Jesus talks to the man about his money. The man who wants to know how to be saved says he's been keeping all the commandments since his youth. He's basically telling Jesus that those things are easy, child's play, even.

"One thing you lack," Jesus said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" (v. 21). Mark says that the man was shocked to hear this, "and went away grieving, for he had many possessions" (v 22).

When we think about how to be a good steward, we often use the tithe, or 10 percent of income, as the standard of good stewardship.

But Jesus doesn't ask the rich man for 10 percent. He doesn't ask him for 25 percent. He doesn't even ask him for 50 percent. He asks him for everything! Apparently for Jesus, the standard for good stewardship is nothing less than every stitch of clothing on your back and every stick of furniture in your house. You have to give everything away.

We might well echo the disciples, who, upon hearing this, whispered to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus' response contains some of the most comforting words in all Scripture: "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God" (v. 27).

The standard of good stewardship is too high. So with the pressure to be good removed, think about what you actually want to give. Just know, as you consider your giving of your time, talent, and your treasure, your relationship with God is secure in the gift of Jesus Christ, not in the size of your offering. The righteousness God requires cannot be achieved. It can only be received. And thankfully it is given to us for free.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

Joshua 1:8

One of the marks of a truly maturing Christian is that he or she begins to love the things God loves and hate the things God hates. In this regard, the law (all of the imperatives we find in the Bible) guides us well and wisely. It tells us what God wants and who God is. Yes, the law is good.

But while the law guides, it does not give. To be sure, the Spirit does use the whole Word in our satisfaction - the law as well as the gospel. But the law and the gospel do different things in sanctification. The law has the ability to reveal sin but not the ability to remove sin. It points to righteousness but can't produce it. This is not a matter of whether obedience to God's law is important to us or to God. Of course it's important. The question is: Where does the power to obey God's commands come from? Does it come from the gospel - from what God has done for us? Or does it come from the law - from what we must do?

Paul lays out the intensity of his strength in Romans 7 to make it clear that although the law can no longer condemn us (because Jesus has kept it perfectly on our behalf), it's still unable to produce in us the desire to keep it. It can only tell us what God requires, which it does. But the law is not the gospel.

We must understand the precise role the law plays for us today. The law now serves us by showing us how to love God and others, and when we fail to keep it, the gospel brings comfort by reminding us that God's infinite approval doesn't depend on our keeping of the law but on Christ's keeping of the law on our behalf. And guess what? This makes us want to obey Him more, not less.

Therefore, it's the gospel (what Jesus has done) that alone can give God-honoring animation to our obedience. The power to obey comes from being moved and motivated by the completed work of Jesus for us. The fuel to do good flows from what's already been done.

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Romans 10:4

Anyone who went to high school knows about letter jackets. It was the thing all the jocks had and the thing they wore at every opportunity. I remember the practice of girls wearing their boyfriend's letter jackets. It was the easiest way to tell who was dating whom.

The most interesting thing about letter jackets, though, is what happens to them after graduation. In other words, where do letter jackets go to die? If there's one ironclad rule about letter jackets, it's that you can't wear them after you're out of high school. There's nothing lamer than holding on to past coolness.

In the sitcom Community, the jock character, Troy, is getting made fun of at community college for wearing his high school letter jacket. As he puts it to his friend Jeff: "People have been clowning me about this jacket since I got here, but if I take it off to make them happy, that just makes me weak, right?" Jeff's answer is wise: "Listen, it doesn't matter. You lose the jacket to please them; you keep it to tick them off. Either way, it's for them. That's what's weak."

This is a great illustration of the inescapability of the law. Whether we struggle to obey the law or we reject it, we are under its power. Think of your parents: whether you are just like them or are committed to being nothing like them, they are still the ones influencing you. Paul wrote, "Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked" (Galatians 6:7). In other words, don't think you can avoid the reach of the law. You can run toward it or away from it, but it still controls you. There is no escape.

Well, there is one escape. When Paul wondered who would rescue him from "this body of death" - the inescapable reality of the law - he immediately turned to his Savior. "Thanks be to God," he said, "for Jesus Christ my Lord" (Romans 7:24-25).

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

1 John 5:9 - We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.

There are two kinds of stories that we hear in our lives, and one of them is much more prevalent than the other. We could call them the human story and the God story. John calls them "the testimony of men" and "the testimony of God." Perhaps most simply, they could be called the law story and the grace story.

The law story, unfortunately, is the prevalent one. You know this story well. It'll probably be the dominant story you deal with today. This-for-that, tit-for-tat, you-scratch-my-back, I'll- scratch-yours - all of these things typify the law story. The law story is the one you must familiarize yourself with and participate in if you want to get ahead in life.

If you want to be the one to get the promotion at work, you tailor your output to what will catch your supervisor's eye. You might do a favor for someone with the expectation that, should the need arise, they'll do a favor for you in the future. You might be willing to say something that you don't really believe in order to be seen in a certain light.

The God story, however - the grace story - isn't like this at all. Since God has already given us everything we need in Christ - all the affirmation, all the value, all the significance - we don't have to get any of those things from other people. That means we don't have to worry about scratching their backs in order to have ours scratched; our backs have been scratched in Christ, so we can find ourselves free to serve our neighbors without regard for what we might get in return.

Here;s the good news: the God story always trumps the human story. The law is the way of the world - the people in your office will never let you forget it - but grace is not of this world. That's the truest testimony according to John: "God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son".

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,
 

Acts 13:39 - Through him everyone who believes is set free from every sin, a justification you were not able to obtain under the law of Moses.

In the Bible "law" does not always mean the same thing.

For example, in Psalm 40:8 we read: "I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart". Here the law is synonymous with God's revealed will. A Christian seeking to express their love for God and neighbor delights in those passages that declare what God's will is. When, however, Paul told Christians that they are no longer under the law (Romans 6:14), he obviously meant more by law than the revealed will of God. He was talking there about Christians being free from the curse of the law, not needing to depend on adherence to the law to establish our relationship to God: "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes" (Romans 10:4).

The reason Paul said that Christ is the end of the law in this sense is because, in the gospel, God unconditionally gives the righteousness that the law demands conditionally. So Christ kicks the law out of the conscience by overcoming the voice of condemnation produced by the condition of the law. In other words, the conditional voice that says, "Do this and live" gets outvolumed by the unconditional voice that says, "It is finished."

When this happens, we are freed from the condemnation of the law's conditionally (the law loses its "teeth") and are therefore free to hear the law's content as a description of what it looks like to love God and neighbor. But every day in various ways we disobey and stubbornly serve ourselves rather than others, thereby "submitting ourselves once again to a yoke of slavery." And when we do, it is the gospel that brings comfort by reminding us that God's love for us doesn't depend on what we do (or fail to do) but on what Christ has done for us. Jesus fulfilled all of God's holy conditions so that our relationship to God could be wholly unconditional. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).

-- Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,

 

John 10:28 - I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one will snatch them out of my hand.

There is an all-important distinction Christians must make between horizontal consequences of sin and vertical condemnation for sin.

When a Christian friend falls into sin, lots of people confuse these two categories, which results in two basic responses. Some people question their friend's salvation: "How could anybody really be a Christian and do something like that?" Others say, "Just let it go. After all, nobody is perfect. Don't we believe in grace and forgiveness?"

The first group needs to be reminded that God's love for us and acceptance of us does not in any way depend on what we do or don't do but rather on what Jesus has done. Who we are before God is firmly anchored in Jesus' accomplishment, not ours.

The second group needs to be reminded that consequences on the ground of life are real. Real people make real mistakes that require real action to be taken. So for instance, we can talk bad about our boss without sacrificing one ounce of God's acceptance, because before God, our sin has been atoned for, our guilt has been removed (Isaiah 6:7). But we might still lose our job. We can make the mistake of driving one hundred miles per hour without losing a bit of God's love for us, because nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. But we might still lose our license.

When we confuse consequences with condemnation and vice versa, we don't know how to make sense of things when our brother or sister makes a big mistake.

The truth is that when we are in the throes of consequences for foolish things we do, our only hope is to remember that "there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). In fact, the kind of suffering that comes from the consequences of sin is like a brushfire that burns away every thread of hope we have in ourselves and leaves only the thread of divine grace - a thread that will never break no matter how foolish we may be.

Helping people live life with Jesus everyday,