gospel

That’s How the Gospel Works

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That’s not how I would have done it. If I’d had my way, probably Paul would have gotten his just desserts. He’d have received the same as he gave — that’s how Hollywood typically plays it. I can see his death scene playing out like Hans Gruber falling from the top of the Nakatomi Tower at the end of Die Hard.

But thankfully God’s ways are not like my ways. That same Paul went from being enemy #1 to Jesus and the faith to being the biggest champion of Christianity and spreading the gospel. God turned the bad guy into one of the good guys, as we’d say in old Hollywood.

That’s how the gospel works. The very worst of humanity can be transformed into a saint. And by saint, I don’t mean someone who is a notch above the rest of us and super holy. As I’ve heard it said, a saint isn’t someone who is good but who has seen and embraced the goodness of God.

It’s a bit of an ironic twist that the man who formerly persecuted the Church and made so many martyrs ended up himself becoming a martyr for the very faith he once tried to destroy. Again, that’s how the gospel works. That is something only explainable by the mercy of God.

That’s why I think a lot of the current political rhetoric is foolishness. Neither Biden or Trump are beyond the grace of God. That’s why I pray for the salvation of both every single night. Who knows? What an amazing testimony either one (or both) could have. And yes, I also pray for the salvation of Kamala Harris as well.

Who knows what any of us could be apart from the grace of God? Who knows that any of us could descend further than any Hitler or Stalin or Bin Laden? All of us are capable of any kind of evil apart from God’s continuous mercy.

I know that I’m not a believer because I was so very smart to choose Christ. I know it’s not because I was better than anyone else in the world. It’s only because God chose me first and set His love on me that I could even choose Jesus in the first place.

Billy Joel said, ““If I ever reach heaven I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.”

I think that any of us who end up in heaven will spend eternity amazed that we somehow made it in despite all our unworthiness and all the rest of that eternity will be our endless gratitude and praise for being there and for Jesus who got us there.

Holding on to the Gospel

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“Too many times we give away the one thing the world needs from us to secure the shallow security of ‘fitting in'” (Mike Glenn).

“One of the most striking evidences of sinful human nature lies in the universal propensity for downward drift.

 In other words, it takes thought, resolve, energy, and effort to bring about reform.

In the grace of God, sometimes human beings display such virtues. But where such virtues are absent, the drift is invariably toward compromise, comfort, indiscipline, sliding disobedience and decay that advances, sometimes at a crawl and sometimes at a gallop, across generations.

People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, and obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.

We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance;

we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom;

we drift toward superstition and call it faith.

We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation;

we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism;

we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated” (Don Carson, For the Love of God, p. 23).

I remember in ye olden days when I first heard the plan of salvation. I can’t remember the exact details, but it involved a loving God, sin separating me from God, Jesus shedding His blood on a cross to make a way for me to be right with God, and eternal life that comes from salvation.

Now a lot of churches are preaching a gospel of “I’m okay, you’re okay, there’s no sin or need of salvation.” There’s no such thing as hell and God accepts everyone, regardless of lifestyle choices or addictive behavior. Churches are bending over backward to accommodate a culture we’re supposed to be trying to reach for Jesus. We’re blending in when we should be standing out, as I’ve heard it said.

We’ve traded in the gospel that is the power of salvation for something that has the form of godliness but without any actual power to do anything other than make people comfortable in their sin. The Apostle Paul would call such a gospel false and would say that anyone who preaches such a gospel, even an angel from heaven, is anathema or cursed.

The point was never to fit in. We’ll never fit in. Eventually, we’ll look and sound so much like the world that we’ll be unrecognizable as a church and cease to have any anointing or authority. When churches host pride events or have nights that celebrate people like Beyonce instead of Jesus, they have stopped being churches.

I think nothing short of revival will do. Nothing short of a supernatural movement of God in American churches will stop the drift away from true and orthodox faith. But God is still able. All we need to do is humble ourselves and pray.

Being the Easter People

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Easter is over, according to all the stores and calendars. There are no more cute little bunny displays at your local Hallmark or Cadbury eggs or wicker baskets at the grocery store. Seemingly just about everybody has moved on to the next big holiday, which I believe is Mother’s Day in May.

But for those who celebrate Easter as Resurrection Day, the celebration goes on. We know that Jesus is still risen and alive. Plus, if you follow the Book of Common Prayer you know there is still Ascension Day and Pentecost to come.

I’m not against all the Easter bunnies and baskets and Easter egg hunts and all the candy. I’m especially not against the candy. But when you reduce Easter to these symbols and turn it into just one day, it cheapens the meaning.

Just as the birth of Jesus ushered in a new way of counting the years (as we moved from B.C. to A.D.), so Easter is equally a marker in history where everything changed. Many Old and New Testament prophecies came to pass on that day.

I hope that we won’t go back to business as usual next Sunday. I hope we will retain the message of Resurrection Day through all the weeks and months to come. The worst moment, the worst day, the worst part of your life is never the final defining moment in your life because Jesus is alive and the tomb is empty. Your hope is never in vain because Jesus conquered sin, death, hell, and everything else that will ever come against you to defeat you.

Easter isn’t just a day but a mindset. As Pope John Paul II said, “Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”

Holiness and Mercy

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I was watching a podcast video with Andy Chrisman and Steve Camp talking about how Steve took such a bold stand in the late 90s against what was going on in the Christian music industry at the time. He also spoke about a couple of his songs related to the emerging AIDS crisis in the 80s. One phrase that stood out to me was “holiness never compromised, mercy never restrained.”

That’s the essence of the gospel. We’re never to tolerate sin in the name of mercy, but we’re also never to condemn the sinner in the name of holiness. The same Jesus that told the woman that He didn’t condemn her for her adultery also said, “Go and sin no more.”

Jesus never accommodated sinful lifestyles, but He also never withheld His love from those in those lifestyles who earnestly sought Him in their need. The message He proclaimed was not “I’m OK, you’re OK, just do the best you can” but “I’m calling you out of your sin into something better because I love you enough to want God’s best for you.”

I can’t say that I’m the best at balancing holiness and mercy. I can testify that I’m really good at looking down on sins that I don’t struggle with. I can be more permissive with my own faults than forgiving of others with theirs.

But I believe that Jesus is the one who perfectly embodies holiness and mercy as the 100% God, 100% man who is both just and the justifier. I believe in the gospel message that Jesus can change and transform anybody from anything into something holy. I’m seeing it in my own life and in so many lives of the people I know and love.

The challenge is to hold to both holiness and mercy, not pitting one against the other or elevating one at the expense of the other. We need both. Most of all, we all need Jesus.

Nothing Else Will Do

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I’m excited. My church is weeks away from moving to a permanent campus where everything will be brand new and shiny. I’m reminded of the metaphor Jesus used about believers being a city on a hill, because this new location is literally sitting on a hill over looking the intersection.

I’m super hyped, but I’m also smart enough to know that the honeymoon won’t last. More accurately, I’ve hopefully learned by now through lots of times where I got excited only to see the enthusiasm fade and normalcy fade in.

I can remember all those Christmas gifts that I was thrilled to get. I remember how I felt, but looking back, I can’t remember the specific gifts any more. They lost their luster and faded from my memory. Some of them even ended up in garage sales a few years later.

That’s how it goes with anything I set my heart on this side of eternity. Anything less than God won’t fill that God-shaped yearning in me. Or as C. S. Lewis put it, anything that isn’t eternal is eternally out of date and obsolete.

I look forward to our move-in date in late May. I hope I will always be grateful for this gracious gift on God’s part. But I know that at some point, it will be just a building. More than likely, it will require maintenance and updating and repairs. And at some point, it will be no more.

But what it represents and what our church is all about (and every true Bible-believing church is all about) won’t ever fade or get stolen or moth-eaten or rust. The hope of God-with-us revealed in Jesus will only get better and more wonderful and more glorious over time, past time, and into eternity.

A Prayer for the Church

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I found this prayer for the Church that spoke to the state of the American Church and its great need for renewal and revival. In my opinion, so many of the churches in America have lost their way by either tying the gospel with politics and candidates or by becoming so much like culture that they no longer have a distinct message of hope that actually offers hope.

There’s a warning in the book of Revelation to the church at Ephesus that if they don’t repent, Jesus will come and remove their lampstand. That means that either they will cease to be an actual church or that they will continue with no authority or influence. I think some churches (and some denominations) in this country are already there. Many of them are what Jesus called the church at Laodicea in that they think they are alive but they are actually dead.

What we need isn’t the right candidate to win the election or for our side to be proven right and the other side shown to be wrong. What we need is to get back to the whole gospel that Jesus and the disciples proclaimed.

This is a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer written in 1662 that just as well could have been for 2024 (with little update on the old King James English):

“Most gracious God, we humbly beseech thee for thy holy catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all peace. Where it is corrupt, purge it; where it is in error, direct it; where anything is amiss, reform it; where it is right, strengthen and confirm it; where it is in want, furnish it; where it is divided and rent asunder, make up the breaches of it, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Camping Out in the Gospels

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After several years of reading through the Bible in different translations, I decided to swerve off the well-trodden path and do something a little different. I’m reading through the Gospels in 2018.

I’m using the NIV Harmony of the Gospels, which instead of presenting each Gospel separately, puts parallel passages side by side and puts the story in narrative order. For example, the birth narrative starts with Luke’s introduction, John’s description of Jesus as the eternal Word of God, the genealogies of Jesus, the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth and the conception of John the Baptist, and so forth.

I’m looking forward to rediscovering Jesus, free of all the political baggage that has been placed on Him from both the right and the left, conservatives and liberals alike. I have a feeling that Jesus said something at some point that both sides would deem offensive.

I want to fully embrace Jesus as both 100% man and 100% God (and not 50-50). I want to know Emmanuel, God with us. My plan is to read through the Gospels as many times as I can this year and let Scripture speak for itself.

If you’re interested in the book I’m using, you can pick up a copy here:

https://www.amazon.com/NIV-Harmony-Gospels-Robert-Thomas/dp/0060635231/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1516593638&sr=8-1&keywords=the+niv+harmony+of+the+gospels

 

 

Peter, Peter, Peter II: The Sequel

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“The members of the council were amazed when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, for they could see that they were ordinary men with no special training in the Scriptures. They also recognized them as men who had been with Jesus. But since they could see the man who had been healed standing right there among them, there was nothing the council could say. So they ordered Peter and John out of the council chamber and conferred among themselves.

‘What should we do with these men?’ they asked each other. ‘We can’t deny that they have performed a miraculous sign, and everybody in Jerusalem knows about it. But to keep them from spreading their propaganda any further, we must warn them not to speak to anyone in Jesus’ name again.’ So they called the apostles back in and commanded them never again to speak or teach in the name of Jesus.

But Peter and John replied, ‘Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than him? We cannot stop telling about everything we have seen and heard'” (Acts 4:13-20, NLT).

I wrote something a while back about how Peter always gets a bad rap for taking his eyes of Jesus while he’s walking on the water and sinking. People point out how Jesus had to rescue him and rebuke him for his lack of faith.

Yet Peter remains one of the only two people in history to ever walk on water, with the other being Jesus Himself. At least Peter got out of the boat. The other 11 stayed behind.

Peter had a long history of good intentions mixed with some bad execution. I personally can relate to that quite well. He’s the one who made the profession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God, only to turn around and try to rebuke the Messiah later in the same conversation.

What I love about Peter is that he never quit. Even after so many embarrassing failures and foot-in-mouth incidents, he kept going. Eventually, he kept his zeal and enthusiasm, but added some wisdom to it.

That same apostle who denied Jesus three times is the same one who preached the Pentecost sermon that saw 3,000 saved. He’s the one who stated that he wouldn’t (and couldn’t) stop talking about how Jesus changed his life. They could beat him, stone him, jail him, and even kill him, but nothing would deter him from sharing the Gospel.

That same apostle ended up (according to tradition) being crucified upside down for his faith because he felt he was unworthy to be killed in the same manner as his Lord. He kept his word and was faithful even unto death.

What made the difference? What made people sit up and take notice when he opened his mouth to proclaim the gospel? It was the time spent with Jesus.

I’m thankful that God still uses people like Peter. God isn’t looking for the best-looking or the most gifted or the most gregarious. What he wants are people who are available and surrendered. He can use the least and the lowliest.

What He wants is you and me.

 

The Church as a Refuge

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I’ve been thinking lately about the whole refugee crisis. I’ve also been putting some thought into what my pastor said about the church being a refuge. Who better than to show hope to refugees than people whom the Bible calls aliens and strangers in this world who await a coming Kingdom?

The body of believers should be a place where people can go to escape from the fallout from the lies that society tells people about finding inner peace and fulfillment through outward change.

It should be where people go to find God and find the hope of salvation offered in the person of Jesus Christ, not more condemnation for lifestyle choices. It should be where spiritual transformation happens and not mere behavior modification.

I noticed today that when Jesus talked to the woman at the well, He didn’t force her to change her lifestyle before He offered the living water to her. He didn’t make her go end her relationship with the man she was living with who was not her husband.

He simply offered her a gift that would change her life forever if she took it. After all, it’s the Gospel that changes people. It’s what changes peoples’ hearts, which in turn leads to changed lives.

The Church has been guilty of putting up barriers between people and the Gospel almost from the very beginning. The people who need Jesus and the Gospel most are often the ones who feel the least welcome inside our doors.

The Gospel is for everyone. Thus, the Church is for everyone.

 

Grace Given Vs. Grace Received

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“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace – only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us” (Anne Lamott).

During the homeward commute, I thought I’d play the Good Samaritan and let the car beside me merge in front of me. Little did I know that the next three cars behind that car would take advantage of my generosity.

For a brief moment, I was upset. I was livid. I mean, how dare they? All of us good and faithful drivers have been patiently waiting in line while these others felt they could rush past us and force their way in at the last possible moment.

There’s no way they deserve to merge in front of me.

Then it was like God spoke to me. I don’t claim to hear the audible voice of God and I’m not claiming I had a prophetic word, but I had the strongest impression that God said, “You know that you’ve deserved far less and received far more than these people have.”

The heart of the Gospel is that Jesus came for the undeserving– the hell-deserving– and instead of giving them what they (and I ) deserved, He lavished them (and me) with exactly what they didn’t deserve but needed most. Grace. Mercy. Forgiveness.

That’s why I don’t buy into karma. I don’t go around bragging about other people getting what’s coming to them because I know where I’d be if I ever got what I truly had coming to me. It wouldn’t be pretty.

That’s why I’m such a huge fan of mercy and grace. I don’t get what I really deserve and I get what I don’t deserve.

I believe that if we’ve received so much grace, we should be the first to show it not to those who deserve it, but those like we once were (and still are at times) who deserve it least but need it most.

That means those with different political ideology than yours. It means people that irritate you and get on your nerves. It means bad drivers who don’t know how to merge.

Ultimately, it means forgiving yourself when you let yourself down, remembering that God has already forgiven you.