Category: The Gospel

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Four Things the Cross Teaches about God’s Wrath

The character of God would not allow him to forgive human evildoing simply out of mercy.

Jesus cross God's wrath

The gospel of Jesus Christ is a unique photograph of God, enabling us better to understand God and his ways. We began looking last week at what the gospel reveals about the wrath of God. Since to a great extent the gospel pivots on this, let’s explore his wrath more deeply. The gospel teaches us four crucial truths about God’s wrath.

1.  God’s wrath must be satisfied

In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus pleaded with the Father three times asking, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me” (Matthew 26:39 ESV). Because of who God is, it was not possible, and Jesus went to the cross. Despite the infinite, eternal love of God for his Son, it was not possible to change God’s plan. The wrath of God against evil must be satisfied.

God wanted to save fallen humanity from eternal judgment, for he is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9) and wants all people to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4). Nevertheless, the character of God would not allow him simply to overlook human evildoing, to forgive it only because he is merciful and loving (which is what most people and non-Christian religions wrongly think God is willing to do). If that were possible, God would not have denied his beloved Son’s request and sent him to suffer the unspeakable horrors of the Cross to save humans.

No one could force God to send his Son to suffer at the cross; God chose to do it because of who he is. He did it for his own sake. He is a God of perfect justice and holiness whose fierce wrath against evil must be satisfied.

God’s wrath does not dissipate over time. He doesn’t get over it. It doesn’t come and go like a bad mood, bad weather, or a bad economy. Like a financial debt that must be paid, his wrath must be satisfied.

Human guilt for evildoing is real, not imaginary. Human guilt is real to God, the holy judge of mankind. In his perfect knowledge of what is right, guilt must be judged.

2.  God’s wrath must be satisfied by a death

Scripture says, “It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!’ And having said this he breathed his last” (Luke 23:44–46).

“When [Pilate] learned from the centurion that [Jesus] was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb” (Mark 15:45–46).

For God’s wrath to be satisfied, it was not enough that Jesus only suffer, by scourging, whipped by a strong Roman soldier again and again nearly to death by a Roman lash with pieces of bone and metal tied into the end of the leather thongs. Suffer by hanging on a cross with spikes pounded through his feet and hands. Suffer from the mocking, shame, and spitting of his enemies. The point of all this was not just suffering—it was death. Jesus had to die to satisfy God’s wrath against human evil.

The need for a death to satisfy God’s wrath was established from the beginning. When God put Adam in the Garden of Eden, he commanded, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16–17).

The need for a death to satisfy God’s wrath came into enduring focus in one element: blood. Today we view bloody, animal sacrifices as the epitome of primitive thinking and superstition. Nevertheless, in the Bible, blood and sacrifice dominate the narrative from beginning to end as central themes of God’s relations with mankind. Blood is vitally important to God.

There is something deeply spiritual about blood. God told Moses, “The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Leviticus 17:11).

The life is in the blood. Therefore when God redeemed Israel out of Egypt, he instituted the sacrificial system for the regular shedding of blood, death repeated again and again, for the atonement of evildoing. Over and over again in the temple the animal sacrifices reminded people that the only way to satisfy God’s wrath was by a death.

The Gospel accounts stress that Jesus had to die.

3. God’s wrath can be satisfied by the death of a substitute

If the truth about God’s wrath ended with the first two points—God’s wrath must be satisfied and must be satisfied by death—we would all be doomed. But the gospel reveals that the story does not end there. The necessary death that your evildoing demands does not have to be your death. God’s wrath can be satisfied by the death of a substitute.

When Jesus first began his ministry, John the Baptist, his forerunner sent to prepare the way for him, saw Jesus and told his disciples, “Behold, the Lamb of God” (John 1:36).

In the Old Covenant, lambs were sacrificed to atone for sin and turn the wrath of God to the favor of God. The life of the lamb was in the blood, and the shedding of blood could substitute for the death of the person who had sinned. The blood sacrifices of the Old Covenant taught mankind that God would accept a substitute to die in place of the evildoer.

But Jesus was the true Lamb of God. The only reason the blood of animals could substitute for human evildoing under the Old Covenant is that it was a temporary proxy for the blood of Jesus. Talking about Old Covenant sacrifices, Scripture says, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Hebrews 10:4).

The gospel teaches that only the death of the man Jesus could truly substitute for the sins of mankind and satisfy God’s wrath. It could not be animal for man; it must be man for man.

4. God’s wrath could only be satisfied by the death of God himself

Though Jesus was truly a man, fully man, he was also fully God.

“In the beginning was the Word [Jesus], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:1, 14).

Through Jesus’ union with humanity, God died on the cross. In Jesus Christ, the second member of the Trinity, God himself died to satisfy his own wrath. Because Jesus was fully God and fully man, his death on the cross was both man for man and God for man. Because Jesus was and is fully God, his infinite worth, unquenchable life, and perfect righteousness could satisfy God’s wrath against any number of people. Only the infinite holiness of the Son of God could satisfy God’s infinite justice. God’s death was big enough to satisfy God’s wrath against many.

This is why the only way to have a relationship with God is through faith in Jesus Christ. No other religion, no other “God,” no other efforts to be good on one’s own can satisfy God’s wrath.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

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Wrath

Jesus not only suffered God’s wrath, he satisfied God’s wrath against those who sincerely believe in him and accept his rule.

God's wrath

I spoke with someone last week who went to the dentist for a checkup that included x-rays. After examining the pictures, the dentist said the nerve for one tooth had died, and untreated it would eventually become infected, which leads to bigger problems. The treatment, he said, was a root canal.

Have you ever felt as though you needed a root canal? Probably not. You get a root canal because someone who knows more than you says you have a bigger problem than you realized. The person who told me this story said her tooth had been sensitive to hot and cold for some time but not painful.

Whether we are deciding about getting dental work, car repairs, home repairs, or surgery, the only thing that makes us willing to spend significant money and perhaps experience significant pain is the alternative of doing nothing is even worse.

Evil deeds are a bigger problem than we realize

To many lost souls, the gospel is like a root canal. It only sounds like good news when they understand the scope of their problem. People reject the gospel of Jesus Christ because they think their teeth have become sensitive to hot or cold, or just maybe they have a cavity. They don’t realize every nerve in every tooth of their mouth is dead, and their gums are infected, and as a result they have other serious medical conditions in the rest of their body. The disease in their mouths could literally kill them.

Oh come on, it’s not that serious.

Sure, it’s not that serious if we are distracted by the cares and pleasures of this life, by movies, sports, and news, by work and good times with family and friends; if we think more about money than about God; if we don’t read the Bible or take it seriously.

But if you read and believe the Bible, you can’t miss here, there, and everywhere a disturbing revelation about God. Namely that he hates evil—hates it, opposes it, constantly, fiercely. He is never indifferent to it. He feels about evil the way a dog or cat lover feels about animal cruelty, the way a nature lover feels about pollution or commercial development of wetlands and forests, the way an art lover feels about vandalism of public art, the way a humanity lover feels about sex trafficking and hunger and cancer and child abuse. Every single incidence is grievous, a cause for sorrow and outrage.

God feels about evil the way we should but generally don’t. We become dulled or exhausted by all the evil in our world and in ourselves. We can only remember or stomach so much of it. God, however, does not become dulled or forgetful of evil. He mourns every incidence of human evil.

God’s wrath

At some point, immediately or eventually, he feels and expresses what the Bible calls wrath. Romans 1:18 says, “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” Romans 2:5 says, “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” Psalm 7:11 says, “God is a righteous judge, a God who displays his wrath every day” (NIV).

Wrath is the right response of a good person—a healthy moral being—to evil. In other words, a person who sees someone torturing a dog and laughs about it or shrugs his shoulders and says “whatever” is sick. God’s wrath is the right response to human evil. It is the right response morally, emotionally, relationally. His response is never extreme or out of control. Scripture says he is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger” (Exodus 34:6). Although his opposition to evil never varies, his full wrath usually waits. The wrath he does feel and express is always perfectly right, the outworking of his justice, holiness, patience, mercy, perfect knowledge, righteousness, redemptive desires, love, and slowness to anger.

Why we don’t see our own evils

One big difference between us and God is he perfectly recognizes what is evil. Although we recognize many evils, we also miss and minimize many.

One reason God correctly recognizes many evils we miss is, we are part of the problem. We have evil in us that blinds us to evil. We do not see our own evil, or we minimize it. If our evil is lying, for example, we may see the wrongness of lying as a 2 on a scale of 10, as fibs rather than lies, and we rationalize that we only lie occasionally when we need to, and nobody is hurt by it. And then we forget our “fibs,” forget that we have told dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of lies over our lifetime.

Evils committed against God himself

In particular, we are blind to our evils committed directly against God our Creator, who gives us all we have and daily sustains us. Just as we can commit evils directly against other humans, so we can do toward God, and so we all have done. People use his name in vain, disobey his commands, ignore his Scriptures, don’t bother to give thanks to him and worship him, treat what God has created as if it were God by loving it above God himself, which is a form of idolatry, and even blaspheme him.

The greatest evils humans can commit are evils directly against God himself. To ignore God—the highest good and source of all good—is evil. Not to believe God—who is the truth and tells only truth—or not to believe in him, is evil. Such evils end in his proper wrath.

Because of God’s wrath, we need the gospel

The gospel brings God’s wrath into sharp focus. It is one of the gospel’s prominent ideas because at the center of the gospel is Jesus Christ and his substitutionary death on the cross. The cross, and the scourging that preceded it, was a horrific, bloody, gruesome event. It only makes sense if we understand the wrath of God. Although Jesus had never done evil, he suffered God’s wrath against evil humanity—as a substitute—to save humanity from wrath. What you see at the Cross is God’s wrath.

Jesus not only suffered God’s wrath, he satisfied God’s wrath against those who believe in and accept his rule. He changed God’s attitude toward the followers of Jesus from wrath to favor.

Romans 5:1–2 says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand” (ESV).

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We do not see human evil for how heinous it actually is.

God’s way: The gospel teaches us that the Lord rightly sees evil for its wrongness, vileness, and corruption, and hates it.

Life principle: Mankind’s biggest problem is the wrath of God. Every person needs to be saved from it, and the only way that happens is by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, who alone at the Cross dealt with the problem of God’s wrath.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

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Faith versus Works of the Law

Only faith in Jesus connects us to God’s grace and makes us good enough for God.

good enough for God

The U.S. Marines have two slogans that make great soldiers. The slogans are two sides of the same coin. One is, “Earned, Never Given.” Marine recruiting ads picture those words with a sword in the background, the idea being that the Marines don’t give the symbolic sword of membership to anybody. You have to go through boot camp and prove your mettle before you become a real Marine.

The other slogan is, “The Few, the Proud, the Marines.” Pride goes hand in hand with earning your sword. If you have earned your place, if you deserve to be a Marine, then you have something to be very proud of.

However, as valuable as these slogans are for making exceptional soldiers in this age, in another arena of life—one’s relationship with God—these slogans perfectly illustrate spiritual attitudes that can make it impossible to have a relationship with God.

(Don’t misunderstand. A person can be a great Marine and a great Christian. You just can’t approach God to become a Christian in the way you approach becoming a Marine.)

These attitudes—earning your way, and the pride that come with it—are diametrically opposed to the gospel and repugnant to God.

Good enough for God

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

By grace…through faith…not your own doing…the gift of God…not the result of works…that no one may boast. That is the exact opposite of “earned, never given” and “the few, the proud.”

Continuing my series on what we learn about God from the gospel, in my previous post we talked about God’s grace, and now we will focus on faith. The message of the gospel is that you are saved through faith, not through works. Specifically, the gospel says your faith must be in Jesus Christ, that he is God’s Son, that he is Lord, that he died for our sins, and that God raised him from the dead.

People once asked Jesus, “‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent’” (John 6:28–29).

These people had been raised under the Law of Moses, and as a result their mindset was you find acceptance with God by carefully keeping hundreds of rules, by doing the works of the Law. Jesus explodes that approach. His answer was to believe in him. That’s the work. That’s the gospel.

The apostle John said he wrote his Gospel “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Faith and humility

Faith precludes boasting. Faith is complete reliance on God rather than self. That’s why it pleases and glorifies God rather than exalting us. Gospel faith utterly abandons self-reliance and self-righteousness.

When Paul the apostle thought of his own sparkling spiritual pedigree as a standout former Pharisee, which was the strictest sect of Law-keepers in Israel, he nevertheless said he now “put no confidence in the flesh” and “whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:3, 7–9).

This is the gospel. Righteousness—right standing with God—comes through faith in Jesus.

Moreover, even faith itself is not a meritorious work; that is, faith is not something we can boast in. Righteousness is not from faith, but rather “through faith” (Philippians 3:9, above). Faith simply receives what God has given. Faith simply depends on another, on Jesus.

A different gospel

Furthermore, coming to God on the basis of faith in Jesus, instead of on the basis of the works of the Law, is not optional. These are mutually exclusive approaches. To choose one way is to abandon the other.

For example, the apostle Paul taught that some people who professed faith in Jesus were unwittingly breaking their relationship with him by teaching that Christians had to keep the law of circumcision in order to be saved. Paul called this “a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6–7). Paul battles this different gospel for the first five chapters of Galatians (read it!) and concludes with this black-and-white assessment of their situation:

“Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:2–6)

This is the true gospel. A different gospel will get you nowhere with God—nowhere. This is what we must learn about God and his ways. This is how the gospel is a photograph of God. You don’t know God rightly until you know this: He is not impressed by those who try to gain access to him by any other means but faith in Jesus.

That is because any other approach is a self-reliant approach that depends on your being good enough morally for God. Only the cross of Jesus offers a God-reliant approach.

Only faith in Jesus connects us to God’s grace.

Never good enough for God

That’s why Scripture says God rejects generic faith in God that rejects Jesus (Acts 4:12), presuming thereby not to need Jesus, presuming to be good enough to have earned God’s approval.

He rejects any kind of religion that rejects Jesus and tries to earn God’s approval by keeping a moral code.

God even rejects those who zealously believe in the God of the Old Testament but reject Jesus. Paul writes of his fellow Jews:

“1 My heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.” (Romans 10:1–4)

Notice that Paul says in verse 1 that they are not saved.

Notice in verse 2 that they believe in God and are zealous for God. Still, they are unsaved because their belief is a wrong belief, that is, “not according to knowledge.”

And notice in verse 3 that they tried to establish their own merit through self-righteousness, through law-keeping. They would “not submit” to God’s way but tried to do it their way. This was a proud act of disobedience.

Notice in verse 4 that faith in Christ is the opposite approach, the end of trying to be righteous through keeping the law.

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We want to trust in ourselves rather than God.

God’s way: Righteousness and the salvation that come with it are given, never earned. God is fiercely opposed to self-reliance as a means of righteousness, and to human boasting. He loves faith, but not any sort of faith. You must have faith in Jesus.

Life principle: No matter how long we live as a Christian, we need to keep our faith in Jesus and his Word as our means of acceptance with God.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

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Grace versus Self-righteousness

God's grace

God’s grace is so central to who he is that he won’t let humans come to him in any other way.

The primary purpose of this series of articles about the gospel of Jesus Christ is not to learn the gospel or how to be saved. Our purpose is to learn about God, to learn about him through the lens of the gospel that he designed.

For he designed the means of salvation for humans based on who he is, what is important to him, what he hates, and what he loves. The gospel is what it is because God is who he is. He determined the way of salvation before he created anything. Therefore the gospel is not a workaround or a mere fix, such as what the NASA engineers did when they repurposed various objects on Apollo 13 to save the lives of the astronauts. The gospel and the means of salvation is what God wanted it to be.

And therefore it is perfect. It perfectly reveals the glory of God. It perfectly reveals how to relate to him in a way fully acceptable and pleasing to him.

In fact you cannot understand the rest of the Bible properly without it. Without the gospel, other aspects of God’s nature and ways can easily be twisted and misused.

God’s grace

The first quality we will address is what the gospel teaches about God’s grace. Shortly we will go beyond the essential but familiar truth that God’s grace is his unmerited favor toward sinners, but let’s first lay that foundation.

It is no less sweet for being familiar. One parable of Jesus makes the meaning of grace perfectly clear. A young man rejects his father. He requests his inheritance and moves away. He wastes his money on the pleasures of parties and sex, until the cash is gone.

“And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:14–24 ESV).

That is the grace of God. It is a picture that becomes more sweet and dear with every reading. It is perhaps the fulfillment of the greatest longing of the human heart. A loving Father joyfully, unexpectedly receives home is his evil, unworthy, but repentant offspring, and all is now well between them.

What God wanted from the beginning

God designed the way of salvation to magnify his grace. He wanted all creation to know what a wonderful thing is his grace and what endless joy there is in experiencing it:

“He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us” (Ephesians 1:5–8).

He didn’t become gracious because he had to in response to mankind’s fall. God doesn’t change. He is gracious and has always been gracious for all eternity. But toward fallen humanity he chose to display it. We are the masterpiece of God’s grace, the expression of his grace whose beauty is never exhausted.

Moreover, we must understand that he did not manifest this grace reluctantly. It pleased him to do this. It is as natural and pleasing to him to show grace as it is for an eagle to soar.

When God revealed his name and glory to Moses on Mt. Sinai, “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin’” (Exodus 34:6–7).

When the apostle John described Jesus, having walked with him for over three years, he said, “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…. For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 16–18).

Jesus made the grace of the Father known.

The writer of Hebrews describes God’s throne as “the throne of grace” where Christians “may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).

So God not only delights to show undeserved favor to lost sinners, but also to his redeemed children.

Grace alone

We don’t understand how important God’s grace is to him until we also recognize that he will not let it be set aside. We must experience grace on his terms, and his terms are narrow. His grace comes only to those who come to him through a living and active faith in Jesus Christ, not by good or religious works, not by trying to earn merit through any religion of our choosing:

“6 Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—… 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” (Ephesians 2:6, 8, 9).

(See also John 3:16–17; 1 John 5:10–12; Acts 4:10–12; Romans 3:10–26)

The bane of self-righteousness

The opposite of the gospel message that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ is the false gospel of self-righteousness. The gospel of self-righteousness is that we can be saved—we can become acceptable to God—through our own efforts at keeping some moral code or following some religious system with its rituals. That code could be “Do to others what you want them to do to you,” or, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or, “Be kind,” or “Be good,” or, “Leave the place better than you found it,” or, “Work hard and pay your taxes,” or, “Keep the Ten Commandments.”

Any good thing you do, or any success you have in avoiding bad behavior, that you trust in as your merit before God actually makes you unfit for God. That’s because you are setting aside your need for grace. You are setting aside your need for Jesus. If by self-righteousness you reject grace and reject Jesus, God will reject you.

Grace is so important to God that he will not save a self-righteous person. It is a form of extreme pride, and pride is evil. That is the message of another parable of Jesus:

“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: ‘Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted’” (Luke 18:9–14).

(See also Romans 10:1–4 and Galatians 1–2.)

Our way and God’s way

Our way: We think that surely in the end God will save a person who believes in God and tries hard always to be good, even if he or she rejects Jesus as Lord. Surely he will save a good Hindu or a good Muslim or a good Buddhist.

God’s way: He joyfully delights to accept people, forgiving all theirs sins, by his grace through their faith in Jesus Christ. And he accepts people only in that way, because he saves by grace, not by being religious or following moral codes no matter how good. If we think otherwise, we don’t understand grace, and it is even possible we ourselves are believers in the false gospel of self-righteousness. It is possible we ourselves presume that God’s grace expressed in Jesus and his cross were ultimately unnecessary.

Life principle: Meditate on God’s grace until it affects you as God intended. God is gracious, and he wants you to appreciate it. Rejoice in it. Revel in it. Worship him for it. Rely on it. Renounce self-righteousness. Reject moral pride. You don’t know God’s grace well enough if you have not been moved to worship him wholeheartedly and continually for his grace. The point and purpose of grace is worship and the complete abandonment of moral pride and self-righteousness.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)

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The Gospel: A Photograph of God

We cannot overstate the necessity of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The vital key to knowing God truly and as fully as possible is to deeply understand and believe the gospel.

necessity of the gospel of Jesus Christ

God’s way is the gospel.

God’s way of saving lost souls is the gospel.

And God’s way of turning his enemies into his beloved sons and daughters is the gospel.

God’s way is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

God’s way is faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What the gospel teaches us about God

The header of this website says its subject is knowing God and his ways. God’s way is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and for the next few months we will probe this crucial message for what it teaches us about God and his ways with mankind. For the gospel truly does reveal his ways, his counterintuitive ways, his ways so unlike man’s ways, his priorities and values, his likes and dislikes.

The gospel is a photograph of God. Understand, truly understand God’s gospel and how different it is from any of man’s gospels, and you see God as he is in full, crisp, sharp color—a photograph of God as large as heaven.

Every aspect that we know of God and his ways is contained somewhere in the gospel. Creator and Redeemer, Judge and Savior, wrath and mercy, holy and good, lawgiver and sin-forgiver, wise and loving, sovereign and free, revealing himself and hiding himself, God in heaven and God on earth, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the Cross, the blood, the resurrection, the ascension, and much, much more. The gospel is our most complete understanding of God.

The necessity of the gospel

The gospel is the heart of the Bible. You can understand many true things about God and his ways, but if you don’t understand and believe the gospel, you don’t know God as he must be known.

Exhibit A is the Pharisees. They studied the Old Testament Scriptures obsessively, yet when God himself stood before their very eyes they did not recognize or accept him because they did not understand or accept the gospel. Meanwhile, uneducated, simple people who did understand the gospel clearly and quickly saw God in Jesus.

The gospel is a sword that is infinitely sharp for cutting to the deepest depths of the human soul. Because it reveals God like no other message, it either draws people in or drives people away like no other message. You either love it or hate it. In the gospel of Jesus Christ you either see infinite love and wisdom, or foolishness.

If you believe the gospel you are saved. If you reject the gospel, you are condemned.

“I am not ashamed of the gospel,” wrote the apostle Paul, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith.’” (Romans 1:16–17 ESV)

Fasten your seat belts. Prepare for uncompromising biblical truth. Don’t miss a week. We now begin the series of all series. Kneel and worship the Creator and Redeemer—the God of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)