Tag: gospel

Miraculous Proof

pastortravislv

In the New Testament, Jesus performed miracles for multiple reasons. Of course he did miracles out of love and kindness. The Savior did miracles to show that he was pushing back the effects of the fall of man, defeating sin and Satan by his power and for his glory. And, Jesus did miracles to show us all that he is exactly who he claims to be, God the Son, God in flesh.

Matthew 9:2-8 — 2 And behold, some people brought to him a paralytic, lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.” 3 And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” 4 But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? 5 For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise and walk’? 6 But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Rise, pick up your bed and go home.” 7 And he rose and went home. 8 When the crowds saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

Here is an example of a miracle in which Jesus intends to attest to his deity and authority. Before he heals the paralytic who had been carried to him, Jesus pronounces the man’s sins as forgiven. What was he doing? Jesus was making a declaration that was only God’s to make.

Only God has the right to forgive sins against God. I cannot forgive you for sinning against my neighbor. It’s not my place. If you have offended my neighbor, you need to go to my neighbor to seek his forgiveness. And I cannot forgive your sins against God. Only God can do that.

The scribes, for all their flaws, saw exactly what Jesus was doing. They saw him claiming to be God by claiming the right to forgive a man’s sins against God. This is why they said he was blaspheming. And, were Jesus not God, he in fact would have been blaspheming.

Then Jesus sets the stage for the miracle. He asks the scribes which is easier, to declare the man’s sins forgiven or to tell him to rise and walk. This is not a difficult question. It is easy to declare a person forgiven. Who can prove you wrong? But it is hard to do the miraculous and to make the crippled man walk. Jesus is presenting an argument of greater to lesser. If he can do the obviously hard thing of giving this man the ability to walk, he will be showing us that he can do a thing only God can do. And if that hard thing is true, if Jesus proves he does what only God can do, then, Jesus has the right to declare the man forgiven.

WE see it happen. WE see Jesus heal a man. We see the crowds astonished. We see Jesus prove that he is God with God’s authority to forgive.

Do you see that Jesus is God with the authority of God to forgive you? If so, you should come to him in faith. After all, the paralytic was not forgiven because of his performance of religious rituals. Jesus forgave him when he saw the group’s faith. Trust in Jesus. Run to him for mercy. Know that he and only he can forgive you. And you, like the paralytic, will find the forgiveness of God. But know that, as the paralytic’s life was changed from that moment forward, so too will your life be changed as to come to Jesus is to surrender to him as your Master and Lord.

And, if we see this, we should know that we must come to Jesus and Jesus alone to find God’s forgiveness.

Simple Depth in Glorious Doctrine

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Sometimes the simplest of doctrines are the ones we need to remember most. IN churches like the one I serve, there are always folks who are interested in the “deep” things. And, quite often, the things these folks consider to be deep are primarily things that are hard to understand or not broadly known. While we want to study all biblical doctrine, we can, if we are not careful, become fascinated with the obscure and fail to embrace and cherish the simple and true.

Christians, may I remind you that depth does not equal obscurity? May I also remind you that simple does not mean shallow. Sometimes deep study and deep faithfulness means learning to embrace with all of your being the things that every Christian should know.

Here is an example of a few things said in Psalm 18 that we all should love deeply.

Psalm 18:30-31a

30 This God—his way is perfect;
the word of the Lord proves true;
he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
31 For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God?

Let me point out four doctrines, lovely doctrines, simple doctrines, deep doctrines, that we should love from those lines. First, note the perfection of God. David refers to God by saying, “his ways are perfect.” That is not a shallow truth. God’s ways are perfect. All that the Lord is and all that the Lord does is perfect. There is no flaw. There is no sin. There is no taint. God is absolutely, unquestionably, immeasurably perfect.

How important is that doctrine? How does it change us? When the Lord says that he will do a thing, our response must never be to measure it by whether or not we approve. God’s ways are perfect. Our response, when we see that the Lord does a thing should be to ask the Lord to reshape us in our sinfulness to love and embrace his perfection. Thus, when God speaks of things with which we are uncomfortable, we are the ones flawed, not the Lord.

Second, the word of the Lord proves true. This is a reminder that not only is what God does perfect in every way, all that God says is true. For David, this helped him to embrace the Pentateuch and the words of the prophets around him. For us, this develops for us our doctrine of holy Scripture.

Just like thinking of the ways of God as perfect, we now think of his word as true. So, what happens when our experience or our best understanding stands in contradiction to the word? WE have a choice to make. We either decide that we are more true than the word of God or that the word of God is more true than our experience. Christians, this is a vital piece of doctrine to get right, as it will shape everything you think you know.

Third, God is a shield for all who take refuge in him. What a glorious truth this is. God is a gracious God. God receives kindly those who come to him for shelter. Consider, there is no rule beyond God that says he has to do this. He could turn us away in our cries for his mercy. But he does not.

Here is a doctrine that helps us to understand the grace of God. We are all a people in danger. Our sin would cause us to be eternally condemned. But God is a shelter for all who take refuge in him. If you come to the one true God seeking shelter, he will grant it. We know from the rest of Scripture that there is only one way to come to God for shelter, through the person of Jesus Christ (John 14:6). But we also are gloriously encouraged by the truth that all who do come to Jesus in faith and repentance are genuinely saved (Rom. 10:9-10, 13).

Fourth, and finally, notice that David also tells us that there is only one God. Who is God but the Lord? Much of the world thinks in the terms of multiple divinities. Much of the world assumes all religions are the same. But the word of God tells us that there is not another God, period.

This doctrine is vital to the believer. We know that all other world religions are false, because we know that there is only one God who may only be approached through the person and work of Jesus. All other claims of authority are illegitimate, because we know that there is only one God. All that oppose God do not merely oppose a religion, they oppose the one and only Creator and Lord. And all who have the favor of God have blessing that can never be removed, because God is the only God. There is no competition for God. There is no alternative to God. There is only the one God.

You might say that all these things are easy to know. Perhaps they are. But that does not make these shallow. These are vital truths. And the more you think about them, the more you embrace them, the more you will love the Lord you serve. I’m glad that we have the opportunity as believers to delve into end times, to think about election, to seek to understand the intricacies of the trinity, to ponder the covenants. But I’m even gladder that we are given by God the chance to know that he is the only God, that is ways are perfect, that his word is true, and that he welcomes all who run to him for shelter. These things should change your daily life, and change it forever. So do not miss them as you seek to study the deep things of the Lord.

Thinking about Being Saved Through Faith

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Ephesians 2:8-9 – 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

When we say that a person is saved by grace through faith, we are attesting to what makes Christianity vastly different than any other religion in the world. We are saying that a person receives salvation, not because they do a thing, performing a ceremony, making an offering, but simply because God has changed them and allowed them to fully entrust themselves and their soul to him.

Just consider the difference. Other religions out there, man-made religions, tell people that they get into the favor of their deity by doing things. A person may believe that they will be in their god’s favor because they climb a particular mountain and drink from a sacred stream. Another might think that chanting a particular phrase is what makes them OK with the divine. Yet another says that if they do good deeds and do not do really bad things, they will be fine.

Only biblical Christianity tells us that we do nothing, we take no physical action at all, to gain the favor of our God. Instead, God does all the work. God takes all the action. God gives life to our dead and sinful hearts. And we respond to God by believing in Jesus. And God counts that faith as righteousness for us. God counts our belief as if we had lived perfectly before him. God grants us Jesus’ perfect record of righteousness when we entrust ourselves fully to him, believing him, having true faith.

Let me take this moment to say to you that, if you have never come to Jesus in faith, you need to do so in order to have the forgiveness of God. You are a sinner, just like me. Your only hope for salvation is to believe in Jesus. When you believe that Jesus is the Son of God who died for your sin and rose from the grave, when you believe that Jesus is willing to forgive you if you come to him, when you believe in Jesus in such a way that you fully rely on him and him alone for salvation, you are forgiven by God. If you are forgiven by God, he will change you and help you live to his glory. I urge you to turn from sin and believe in Jesus today.

Have We Lost Wrath?

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The word gospel means good news. The gospel is the good news of Jesus. It is the good news of his life, death, and resurrection. The gospel is the good news of the perfectly fulfilled plan of god to save for himself a people.

It is interesting that, as we talk about the gospel in today’s culture, there are words that are emphasized and words that are whispered. Take, as an example, the word brokenness. In many presentations today, there is tremendous emphasis placed on the fact that our sin leads us into a broken state. As we step away from the plan of God and the ways of God, we break our lives. We hurt ourselves emotionally. We harm our families, our friendships, and our very own souls. And this is surely a true thing.

What I wonder, however, is if some who emphasize the soul-damaging effects of sin are failing to emphasize the biblical result of sin.

1 Thessalonians 1:9-10 – 9 For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10 and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

In his letter to the Thessalonians, Paul emphasized the turning of the people to the gospel. But notice, in verse 10, that Paul has a word that is seldom used in popular circles these days. The people who were transformed in Christ were awaiting the arrival of Jesus, the one who delivers us from the wrath to come.

I am wondering if, in popular Christianity today, we have lost the concept of wrath. The wrath of God is his perfect, righteous, furious judgment for sin. Wrath is not God getting mad or getting his feelings hurt. God’s wrath is a set position of the Lord to always hate sin in all its forms with all that he is. And his wrath, poured out, leads to the judgment of and destruction of the wicked. A person who experiences the full wrath of God experiences hell forever.

Paul was not shy in his letter to remind the Thessalonians that Jesus delivers us from the wrath to come. The gospel is a salvation from the wrath of God. And the wrath of God is coming. The result of sin is that wrath. And I believe that, if we fail to talk about this fact, we fail to paint a true picture of the gospel.

Please do not hear me attempting to knock those who use terms like brokenness when they discuss the effects of sin. The present experience of those who have walked away from God is quite often a strongly felt, strongly experienced brokenness. People in our modern culture may well be able to identify with the fact that, no matter how hard they have tried, they have not been able to escape their experience of being less than what they were created to be. And I do understand that this can be a significant entry gate to a gospel conversation.

What I am suggesting, however, is that brokenness is a symptom on the disease track, not its final dark end. Yes, sin results in brokenness. But, even worse, that brokenness, without a true gospel cure, leads to spiritual death and the wrath of God. The Bible tells us that Jesus is our only rescue from the wrath to come. So, whether a person feels broken or not, the final judgment is on its way. Christ will return. God will judge. All who refuse the grace of God in Jesus will face, unprotected, the wrath to come. And none of us can survive that.

Christians, if you wish to talk about the soul-harming effects of sin, do so. If you can show a person that sinful choices lead us to personally experienced destruction in the here and now, that is a great conversation starter. But do not lose the wrath of God. Sin is an affront to the Living God. We are all guilty of it. Sin leads to wrath. And we need Jesus to rescue us from that wrath, or we will suffer the right consequences of rebellion against the Creator and Lord over all.

A Crime Against the Lord

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Do you think that, were you to die and stand before God right now, he would welcome you to heaven or send you to hell? When that question is asked, most people who acknowledge the truth of God’s existence say that they hope for heaven. But if you ask them by what standard they expect heaven, they have no biblical answer. In most cases, they look to whether or not they believe themselves guilty of a damnable offense.

One of our greatest problems in relating to God is our inability to really understand what is offensive to the Lord. Yes, the Lord has shown us this in his word, but we are so very dull. Obviously we grasp that some things are wrong. There are things that nearly any human being would agree are evil. WE do not like to see other people hurt. We agree that things like theft and assault are wrong. We agree that murder is wrong.

The thing that is very difficult for the people of our world to imagine is that God would judge a person, eternally judge a person, based on issues of faith. It is an unwelcome idea in the world to suggest a person would be lost based on a refusal to believe in Jesus. Such a doctrine is seen as bigoted, closed-minded, and unsophisticated. A person will ask, “Are you telling me that I’m going to hell if I do not believe what you believe?”

When we are faced with the world’s scorn for suggesting that faith or lack thereof is the measure of salvation, we have one of two choices. WE can either compromise by ignoring the word of God, or we can allow the word of God to show us the truth. God has always judged men and women based on more than their participation in what we consider to be major evils. God also judges based on our hearts. And God sees a lack of faith in him as a damnable offense.

Zephaniah 1:12

At that time I will search Jerusalem with lamps,
and I will punish the men
who are complacent,
those who say in their hearts,
‘The Lord will not do good,
nor will he do ill.’

Notice whom God will judge in this passage. It is not that God says he will search Jerusalem for the vilest offenders only. HE is not simply after the murderers, rapists, and the like. For sure, those will face God’s judgment. But God is here telling his people that he will judge the men who are simply complacent about him. God’s judgment will fall on those who simply assume that God is a non-factor.

While I have no reason to try to justify the judgments of the Lord—he is absolutely perfect, after all—I will make a simple point here. God is the Creator. God is the Lord over the universe and beyond. God fashioned this universe for his glory. God created people in his image to acknowledge his lordship. It is an evil thing for a person, who has the responsibility to worship the Lord, to instead refuse to acknowledge him. God is not petty. God’s purposes are perfect. And to refuse him that for which you were created is to rebel against him deeply.

So, will a person be judged by God for something as seemingly trivial as not believing? Absolutely they will. This is because what seems trivial to fallen man is not at all trivial. God is our Creator. He created all things for his glory. He has every right to demand our allegiance. If we refuse him that allegiance, he has every right to judge us for that offense.

And before being offended about this concept, remember that the Lord has also given a global command. All people everywhere are commanded by God to turn from sin and trust in Jesus Christ to be saved. Will you obey God’s call? Will you yield to the Lord who made you? If so, praise God, you will be saved. If not, do not be surprised that you will face the judgment of the God you refuse.

Too Light a Thing

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Over the past several weeks in our church, we have been working through the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians. This book is lovely in so many ways. In Ephesians, we see gospel all over the place. We see the individual side of salvation by grace alone through faith alone. We also see the way that God reconciles peoples to himself, as the gospel unites Jews and gentiles into one people.

The creation of a new nation in Christ is something that Paul refers to as a mystery. What he means by this is that the truth of God’s ultimate plan was present in the Old Testament, but it was not something that people understood until God brought it to pass and explained it through his Spirit. As Paul tells us, “When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:4-5).

It was interesting to me, working through my daily reading, to run across a place where the mystery is hidden in the Old Testament. Take a look at this from Isaiah and see the mystery of God’s eternal plan.

Isaiah 49:5-6

5 And now the Lord says,
he who formed me from the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him;
and that Israel might be gathered to him—
for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord,
and my God has become my strength—
6 he says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

How is this the mystery? How is the plan present but concealed here? Isaiah knew that God had created him and tasked him with communicating his word and truth to the nation of Israel. Isaiah was to watch as Judah continued to refuse to be faithful to the Lord and marched toward Babylonian captivity. But Isaiah also had a job to preach to the people the coming restoration of Israel. God would not keep Judah captive in Babylon forever. God would not leave the nation without hope. And we know that, after 70 years of captivity, God returned the people of Judah to their land.

When thinking of the mystery of God hidden in the Old Testament, peek again at verse 6: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” God says that it is too light, too small or little a thing for him to use Isaiah to preach only to the descendants of Israel. Yes, the restoration of Judah to the land will be glorious. Yes, the restoration of Jerusalem is a wonderful thing. Yes, it is glorious that God is continuing to preserve his promise to Abraham. But there is something greater. Isaiah will not merely preach to and about Israel, he will be a light to the nations. God wants Isaiah to preach things that will communicate salvation to the ends of the earth.

This is a great example of the mystery present in the Old Testament. Imagine that you were a Jew living a few hundred years after it was spoken. You would know that God had kept his promise to restore Judah to the land. You would know that Isaiah was a part of preaching the true plan of God for Israel. And you would see that last line. You would see that God says this is something about being a light to the nations. You would know that this was a true thing God would do. But you might not know how God would bring salvation to the nations. You would know Israel was involved. You would know that this is global and not local. And yet, the plan, the how, the nuts and bolts of what God is up to would have escaped you.

Paul tells us in Ephesians that he now gets to preach this mystery. The salvation for the nations that comes out of Israel is Jesus. The mystery hinted at by Isaiah but unclear to the Old Testament saints is that there is one salvation to preach to all nations. That salvation does not involve becoming a part of physical Israel. That salvation does not include getting under Old Testament temple worship. The mystery now revealed is that there is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus alone. The mystery is that the same salvation is available in exactly the same way for the Jew and for the gentile. And the mystery is that, in Christ, the Jew and the gentile become part of one new nation, one new family, one new spiritual temple of the Lord.

To Isaiah and the folks of the Old Testament, the idea of God preserving Israel and returning the Jews to the land would have been huge. In the mysterious plan of God, preaching only that is too light a thing. There is something greater, the ultimate plan of God. God was sending Christ through Israel to make for himself one new people, one nation of the redeemed, from every people on the planet. Anything less than seeing the people of God as a new people, a new nation, a new family is too small a picture of the plan of God.

God Restores

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Real people who live real lives have experienced real pain. There are pains that we face that feel to us as though we can never be whole again. The loss of a loved one, the experience of abuse, the humiliation of a failure, all these can leave a person feeling irreparably broken and hopeless.

In the days of the prophet Joel, the people of Judah may well have felt broken beyond repair. The southern kingdom had sinned against the Lord and experienced his judgment. They faced crop failure, locust plague, and enemy armies. Their land was desolate. Their hope seemed dashed.

But God called the nation to return to him. He invited confession and repentance. And God promised restoration. This is beautiful; don’t miss it.

Joel 2:25-27

25 I will restore to you the years
that the swarming locust has eaten,
the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter,
my great army, which I sent among you.
26 “You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,
and praise the name of the Lord your God,
who has dealt wondrously with you.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.
27 You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
and that I am the Lord your God and there is none else.
And my people shall never again be put to shame.

God promised to restore the years that the locusts had eaten. Sense the beauty there. The people were damaged. They were damaged from their own sin against the Lord. They were damaged by the cruel actions of others who hurt them. But God says that he will restore.

Can he? Of course God can. The Lord can heal a land. The Lord can grow crops where crops had failed. The Lord can bring a harvest that goes beyond the loss of the years. And the Lord can help the people worship him again.

The Lord also promises the people a future. Notice that twice in verses 26-27, God says that they will not experience this shame any longer. God not only can fix the land, he can bear away the shame from the people.

This is lovely in the context of Old Testament Judah. It is infinitely more lovely in the work of Jesus Christ. We, like Judah, have sinned against God. We, like Judah, have been sinned against by evil people and a hostile world. We have been hurt. We have experienced shame. We have lost days, months, even years.

But God can restore. He can take from us our guilt and shame. This is part of what Jesus came to do. Jesus bore the shame of the cross in order to cover our shame in his perfection. Jesus took the wrath of God for sin so that we could have our sins covered by his righteousness. Jesus rose from the grave to show us that there is life after shame, life after guilt, life after death in his perfect grace.

Perhaps you have hurt. Perhaps you have guilt and shame. Perhaps you have done wrong. Perhaps you have wronged others. Run to Jesus. He is your only hope. He covers the guilt of those who come to him. He bears away the shame of those who come to him. He understands your pain more than you could ever imagine. He can heal. He can bring new growth. Jesus can restore the years the locusts have eaten.

A Prayer for Salvation

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What does it look like to pray that God save you? There is, of course, no “sinner’s prayer” as a prayer of salvation in Scripture. There is no prayer like the prayer at the end of the gospel tracts. That is, of course, good, as the point of coming to God in faith is not empty repetition of magic words to get yourself into heaven.

With that said, it is also nice to have something of an example of what it looks like when a sinner in need cries out to the Lord.

Let me preface. This Psalm is not a prayer for spiritual salvation. It is, in fact, a prayer for a physical salvation. But, if you study the Scriptures well, you will find that the physical salvation of Israel from Egypt or David from enemies is a picture for us of the coming and eternal spiritual salvation we find in Christ. There is a parallel that we can see. And with that in mind, I want us to see how David opens this prayer.

Psalm 143:1-2

1 Hear my prayer, O LORD;
give ear to my pleas for mercy!
In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness!
2 Enter not into judgment with your servant,
for no one living is righteous before you.

David cries out to God. Please hear me. Please have mercy. Be righteous as you always are. Please do not enter into judgment over me. I, like all people, cannot stand up to your perfection. Lord, have mercy.

That is a beautiful prayer. When a person comes to God admitting right away that we have no ground upon which to stand, that is good. When we realize that we can only fall upon the mercy of God, that is right. And, thanks be to God, the Lord is both perfectly righteous and wonderfully merciful.

Is the gospel here? Of course it is. God is just and merciful. The justice of God is perfectly satisfied as Jesus, God in flesh, took upon himself the right wrath of God for my sin. The mercy of God is perfectly evident in God rescuing me, a sinner, from the wrath I deserve.

And, let us not leave this prayer without a moment to focus on the state of all people. David says, “for no one living is righteous before you.” No living human being can be righteous on his or her own. If you are outside of Christ and think you are OK with God, you are thinking unbiblically. We are not righteous before the holy one. We are less than his perfection. We need to be forgiven. WE need to be saved.

Let David’s prayer be yours even today. If you are a Christian, let this prayer remind you of your state before salvation and your continuing need for God’s grace. If you are not a believer, know that you need the righteousness of God and his mercy to forgive you, as none of us can stand under the judgment of God and live.

God is not an Option

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In the realm of bad evangelistic presentations, there are many things that I have heard said that are troubling. Perhaps the worst in this batch would be a person encouraging others just to try giving their lives to Jesus. The evangelist, with a genuine heart, called on people to just give Jesus a try and see if he did not give them life and peace and the rest. Just pray this prayer, believe, and you’ll get better.

Friends, this is not the way to share a genuine gospel. In fact, it is dangerous for the person to whom you speak. See this warning God gave in Ezekiel.

Ezekiel 14:1-5 – 1 Then certain of the elders of Israel came to me and sat before me. 2 And the word of the Lord came to me: 3 “Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? 4 Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, 5 that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols.

In the days of Ezekiel, the people of the land were miserable. The Babylonians had come in and taken over. The people wanted to be returned to Judah from their foreign captivity. And they were willing to try anything to get home.

In this passage, God is responding to something that was apparently going on. IT seems that some of these people, the leaders of the captives, were approaching Ezekiel to ask him to inquire of God on their behalf. IN general that sounds good. But there is a problem.

The Lord tells us that the people coming to Ezekiel have taken their idols into their hearts. You see, these people coming to Ezekiel were dedicated to idol worship. IN earlier chapters, we saw that these folks were bowing to idols, fashioning pictures of animals on the temple walls for worship, and were even bowing to the sun. They were not turning to the Lord as the one true God. They were simply giving a nod to the Lord to try him out to see if he might help them out of their calamity.

God is clear in that passage that he will not be one among many. God will not be an experiment for a wayward, idol-worshiping people. HE will especially not be merely an option for a people who had agreed to a covenant under which they would obey his law and he would be their God. These people were brazenly violating the terms of their agreement with God, and then turning to God to see if he might work as a solution to their political problem. And the Lord is having none of it.

While you and I are not Old Testament Israel, there is still a lesson for us to learn. God will not be one option among many for people. God will not be an experiment for you. God will not give a sweet answer to a person who turns in his direction all the while having a heart full of idols. The gospel does not promise eternal life and hope to people who are willing to mouth a prayer or get wet in a pool but who are not really willing to surrender to the lordship of Christ.

Salvation is a free gift of God. We receive it by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. We do not do any sort of works or ceremonies to gain salvation. But, true salvation includes our repentance. And repentance includes our turning from all our idols and our full-scale surrender to Jesus Christ as our ultimate and eternal King. Those who turn to Jesus have been born again. Those who are born again have changed hearts. Those who have changed hearts follow Jesus and reject idols. But no person is saved who is merely turning to Jesus as one option among many to try.

Christians and Commands

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How do followers of Jesus interact with commands from God? This ought to be simple, but I think it becomes complicated by folks from time to time. So, let’s take a brief look at a couple principles that relate to believers and our responsibility toward the commands of God.

Romans 3:20 – For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

2 John 6 – And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.

3 John 11 – Beloved, do not imitate evil but imitate good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.

First, obedience to commandments does not save us. God’s word is clear that none of us can be saved by following any sort of law of God, as Paul tells us in Romans 3:20. This is because the perfect righteousness of God displayed in the law exposes our sin and need for a Savior from outside of ourselves. We have already sinned against God and earned his judgment. We are already guilty from the fall of man. We cannot make up for that with good behavior, even perfect behavior, from now on. No person will be saved by works. Thus, there is no Christian call to obey commands to be saved.

Second, as we see in 2 John 6, to love God is to walk in accord with his commandments. While obedience is not a part of our salvation, obedience to the commands of God is the clear fruit of loving God. Not to obey the word of God is not to love God. The one who loves obeys. Our obedience to the commands of God is not a fulfilling of legal requirements, as those requirements have already been fulfilled in Christ. But our obedience is the way that those who are changed by God display that change.

Third, disobedience is a sign of being lost. As we see in 3 John 11, “whoever does evil has not seen God.” This verse is not saying that a single mistake or fall means a person is lost. But a person who does evil, who lives in it, who refuses to obey the righteous commands of God, that person displays by his actions that he is not part of the family of God. Note that this is not a call to obedience to fulfill legal obligation that impacts one’s status before God. Instead, it is clear that a heart that is set on what opposes God and that does not desire to obey the commands of God for the love of God is a heart not changed by God.

We could draw a neat little circle with these three points. Obedience to the commands of God does not save you. Obedience to the commands of God is required to love God. Lack of love for God, which is displayed in a lack of obedience to God’s commands, shows that you are not saved. Thus, obedience is not required to earn salvation, but obedience is a necessary result of salvation.

With all that said, how do you feel about the commands of God? Do you delight to obey? When God tells you to meet regularly with the local church for worship, teaching, fellowship and the rest, do you love that command and obey it for God’s glory? When you hear God’s command not to lie, not to gossip, not to seek personal revenge, do you delight in obedience out of love? When you hear God’s command to love others as you love self, do you delight in his word? When you hear God forbid sexual immorality in all its forms, do you delight in purity as God defines purity for his honor? When you hear how God wants the family and the church to be structured, do you delight in doing what the culture opposes because you desire to honor the Lord who saved your soul? Do you delight in obedience to the commands of God, not to earn points, but as a display of love?