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Centrality of the Gospel
The gospel is:
- you are more flawed and lost than you ever dared believe, yet
- you can be more accepted and loved than you ever dared hope at the same time, because Jesus Christ lived and died in your place.
Salvation is of the Lord (Jonah 2:9)
The irreligious don't repent at all. The religious only repent of sins.
But Christians also repent of their righteousness. Moral and religious
people are sorry for their sins, but they see sins as simply the failure
to live up to standards by which they are saving themselves. They may
go to Jesus for forgiveness-but only as a way to "cover over the
gaps" in their project of self-salvation. But a Christian is someone
who has adopted a whole new system of approach to God. They realize their
entire reason for either irreligion or religion has been essentially the
same and essentially wrong! Christians realize that both their sins and
their best deeds have all really been ways of avoiding Jesus as savior.
... the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin... -Flannery O'Connor
A Christian says: "though I have often failed
to obey the law, the deeper problem is why I was ever trying to obey it!
Even my effort to obey it is just a way of seeking to be my own savior.
In that mindset, even if I obey or ask for forgiveness, I am really resisting
the gospel and setting myself up as Savior." To "get the gospel"
is turn from self-justification and rely on Jesus' record for a relationship
with God. "Lay your deadly doing down, down at Jesus' feet. Stand
in Him, in Him alone-gloriously complete."
The Two "Thieves" of the Gospel - Legalism and Liberalism
Tertullian said, "Just as Christ was crucified between two thieves,
so this doctrine of justification is ever crucified between two opposite
errors." These errors continue to "steal" the gospel from
us. They are "legalism" and "liberalism". On the one
hand, "legalists" have a truth without grace, for they say or
imply that we must obey the truth in order to be saved. On the other hand,
"liberals" have a grace without truth, for they say or imply
that we are all accepted by God regardless of what we decide is true for
us. But those with truth without grace, do not really have the truth,
and those with grace without truth, do not really have grace. In Jesus
we behold the glory of the one "full of grace and truth". De-emphasize
or lose one or the other of these truths, you fall somewhat into legalism
or somewhat into license and you eliminate the joy and the "release"
of the gospel. Without a knowledge of our extreme sin, the payment of
the gospel seems trivial and does not electrify or transform. But without
a knowledge of Christ's completely satisfying life and death, the knowledge
of sin would crush us or move us to deny and repress it. Take away either
the knowledge of sin or the knowledge of grace and people's lives not
changed. They will be crushed by the moral law or run from it screaming
and angry.
As Luther put it, the Christian is simul justus et peccator (simultaneously
accepted, yet a sinner). We are more sinful than we ever dared believe,
but through Christ we are more accepted than we ever dared hope. When
the gospel dawns on the soul, it becomes a transforming power (Romans
1:17). Instead of seeing the law of God as an abstract moral code, Christians
see it as a way to know, serve, and resemble their Master. Instead of
obeying to make God indebted to them, they obey because they are indebted
to him. Instead of being driven by an anxious sense of being unacceptable,
they are empowered by grateful joy. The difference between these two ways
of morality could not be greater. Their spirits, goals, motivations, and
results are entirely different.
