the gospel Archives • Knowing God and His Ways

February 17, 2020February 8, 2020

Wrath

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

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)

January 27, 2020February 8, 2020

Grace versus Self-righteousness

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:

“⁶Even 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, ⁹not 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.

January 20, 2020February 8, 2020

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.

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.