The Gospel in Ten Words (18 page)

Let
me give you an example of how this works in my own life. I am a happily married
man in a world where there is ample temptation to be unfaithful to my wife.
(Being tempted is not a sin. Jesus was tempted in every way yet was without
sin.) If a pretty girl walks past and a tempting thought enters my head, there
are two ways I can respond. The carnal way is to preach law to myself in a
frenzy of grim determination.
I must not think adulterous thoughts. I must
not think adulterous thoughts.
Well you can guess where that will take me.
Since I am relying on my own willpower and strength, I will inevitably end up
captive to sin if I fall or self-righteousness if I don’t. It’s a lose-lose
proposition.

The spiritual way is to react to temptation with utter
deadness and make no provision for the lust of the flesh. I don’t gaze at the
forbidden fruit but instead make a conscious decision to live for Christ. In my
case this means I’ll start thanking God for Camilla. I’ll begin to praise him
for the gift of marriage and a wife who loves me. That may not seem
particularly spiritual but it is for I am consciously acknowledging my
dependence on Jesus. I am recognizing him as the source of all my blessings.

But what if I wasn’t married? How would I respond to
temptation if I was single? In that case I might respond like this: “Thank you,
Lord, for creating ladies. You did a particularly fine job with that one who
just walked past. And thank you, Lord that you know me inside and out. I trust
you completely. I know you will meet all my needs according to your rich
supply.” Again, this is the spiritual response because it is the faith response.
I am choosing not to worry but to present my requests to God (Philippians 4:6).
I am choosing to trust the One who knows me and my needs better than I know
myself. I am choosing to run after Jesus rather than the woman.

The faith response looks like self-denial but it isn’t. I
am not saying “No” to my needs, I am saying “Yes” to Jesus. Big difference.
Self-denial is a moral choice that offers merely moral rewards but I am
motivated by the pure pleasure of right living. I am delighting myself in the
Lord because he is the Lover of my soul. He, not my wife nor some strange woman
on the street, is the one who gives and fulfills the deepest desires of my
heart.

This revelation is the story of my life. Two roads
diverged in the woods, I followed Jesus, and that has made all the difference.

So
far, so good. But let’s be realistic. Occasionally, you may forget that you are
no longer Sin’s slave and stumble, and when you do it’s not going to be pretty.
What happens then? Well, two things will happen. The accuser of the brethren
will start pounding you with the crowbar of condemnation. “Look what you did!
You’re a terrible person. How dare you call yourself a Christian?” You
shouldn’t be surprised by this. If you open the door to the devil, he’s going
to make a mess in your house because that’s what he does. But while all this is
going on, the Holy Spirit will seek to convict you of your righteousness in
Christ because that’s what
he
does.

Again, because you are free, you have a choice. Who will
you listen to? Will you listen to the Lord of Life who declares you are
righteous even when you sin? Or will you listen to your old master, the Father
of Lies, who says you are an unregenerate sinner? Your flesh will say, “Look at
the evidence, the devil must be right.” But your faith will say, “Are you
kidding me?! Look to the cross and trust Jesus!”

We all stumble from time to time; it’s what you do when
you fall that counts. If you form a tag team with the devil and start beating
yourself up, well, you’re acting like your old ignorant self. But if you can
find the faith to thank Jesus for loving you despite your faults, then you will
rise in true repentance transformed by his grace and freer than ever before.

Walk after the flesh and you cannot win. But walk in the
newness of the spirit and you cannot lose. When you walk in the revelation that
your old self has died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God, Sin
cannot touch you and life becomes a win-win scenario.

The gospel is not a reform program for bad people; it is the liberating
declaration of new life for those who have died. The new cannot come until the
old has gone and on the cross the old went.
Every manmade religion preaches self-denial
and dying to self. The gospel simply declares: “You died.”

If anyone
is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (2
Corinthians 5:17)

The day I got
married, I became something I had never been before—a married man. I was single
no more. The old had gone and the new had come. Admittedly, I was a very
inexperienced married man with much to learn about his new identity. But the
thrill of marriage is learning how to be married when you are married. It is
one of life’s great adventures.

Marriage
gives us a good picture of how things are with us and Jesus. When you entered
into union with Christ, you literally became a new person. The old went and the
new came. Yet many Christians don’t know this. They think the old is going and
the new is still coming. They are caravanning somewhere between Egypt and
Canaan. They are striving to become who they already are and are missing much
of the thrill of being married to Jesus. It is a
heartbreaking tragedy. Instead of resting in the Promised Land of his love,
they are
wandering in the wilderness of their works.

People
like this go to church and study the Bible because they want to become a better
person, pleasing to God. There is nothing wrong with wanting to better
yourself, but you have to understand that in Christ, you are already as good
and pleasing to God as you ever will be. You are not on a journey to newness;
you are already new.

If
this sounds too good to be true, let me ask you two questions. What did Jesus
come to give us? He came to give us new life. Where is this new life found? It
is experienced in union with Jesus:

God has
given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
He who has the Son
has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.
(1 John
5:11b
–
12
)

Someone who comes to Christ automatically receives his new life.
This is a divine transaction, not a religious journey. It is a resuscitation,
not a road trip. It is Lazarus rising from the dead. This is what happened to
you. One moment you were dead in sins, and the next you were alive in Christ.
Badaboom. “Lazarus, come forth!” The old has gone, the new has come. Time to
start living.

As a
child in Sunday school I used to think that new life was simply an extension to
my current life. Instead of dying, I got to live forever. That is true but it
doesn’t begin to capture what is new about this new life we have in Christ.

When you got plugged into Jesus, his life began flowing through
you with divine vitality. You were regenerated by the living and imperishable
word of God (1 Peter 1:23). It was such a dramatic and lasting change that you
instantly became a different person.

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” The word
translated “new” means new in kind.
[62]
Anyone who is in Christ is a new kind of creature. You have not been improved
or modified but wholly remade. So don’t ever call yourself “a sinner saved by
grace.” You were a sinner; then you were saved by grace. Now you are a sinner
no more. You are a new kind of person. You are a saint.

Right here is where the good news of grace parts company from the
religion that many of us have grown up with. We have been told we are works in
progress as if there was some middle ground between saint and sinner. There is
no middle ground. You’re either dead or alive, lost or found, in Christ or out of
him.

Yet the in-betweeners persist with the myth of the middle saying
things like, “I’m not perfect, just forgiven.” Such a statement appeals to our
flesh and accords with our experience but it is an insult to the One by whose
sacrifice we have been made perfect forever.

“But Paul, look at me. I am a mess. I’ve still got plenty of
faults I need to work on.”

It’s true that on your own you are not perfect. You are far from
perfect. But that’s the point. You are not on your own any longer. You have
been united with the Lord, and there are no unholy branches on that holy vine.

Light and dark cannot coexist. Neither can perfection and
imperfection coexist. For the Lord to have any sort of union with you, he had
to make you into something you weren’t and he did.

When you
came to Christ, you literally became a brand-new creature. You were cleansed
from sin, re-gened, and joined in vital union with the Lord. You are no longer
part of Adam’s race. You are a son or daughter of the Everlasting Father.
Christ is your life. You stand on his faith and are cloaked in his love. Y
our present and
passing imperfections are hidden within his eternal and sublime perfections.

When
God looks at you, he doesn’t just see who you are now, with your visible faults
and hidden glory. He sees who you are in eternity. He sees the real you, and
from his timeless perspective you are faultless, blameless, and radiant with
glory.

I don’t claim to be a poet, but some time ago I penned a few lines
describing our new identity in Christ. The words below should be familiar to
you since I stole them all from the Bible. The question for you is, do you
believe them? Do you define yourself based on your imperfect performance or his
finished work? Do you see yourself as a half-holy, half-righteous work in
progress, or as one born to new life in the Lord?

Read the poem below through the eyes of faith. As you read it,
tell yourself, “This is me; this is who I am.”

I
am a saint, a trophy of Christ’s victory

I
am born again of imperishable seed
I am a new creation, complete in Christ and perfect forever

I
am a child of God, the apple of my Father’s eye
I am one with the Lord and the temple of the Holy Spirit

I
am eternally redeemed and completely forgiven
I am seated with Christ in heavenly places
I am righteous, holy, and blameless

I
am hidden in Christ and eternally secure

I
am my beloved’s and he is mine

I am the head and not the tail

I am blessed with every spiritual blessing, a
joint heir with Christ

I
am a competent minister of the new covenant
I am bona fide and qualified, chosen and anointed
I am his royal ambassador, a missionary to the world

I am as bold as a lion and more than a conqueror
I am the salt of the earth and the light of the world
I am the sweet smell of Jesus to those who are perishing

I
am a tree planted by the water, and I am a fruitful branch

I
am king o’ the world because His victory is mine!

I am the disciple whom Jesus loves

And
by the grace of God I am what I am.
[63]

The New
Testament paints many pictures of our new life but, for me, one of the best
things about it is the indwelling Holy Spirit. It was the Holy Spirit who led
me to Jesus and who constantly reminds me that I am my Father’s dearly beloved
son.

The Holy Spirit is also the best evidence that the old has gone
and the new has come. Think about it. In the old days we were separated
from the life of God
and strangers to his love. Surely God loved us but we didn’t know his love. Now
we do. How did this happen? God poured his love into our hearts by the Holy
Spirit (Romans 5:5). Do you love God? Then thank the Holy Spirit who made you
new.

At
one time we didn’t believe God existed or, if he did, we thought he was no
friend of ours. But now we call him Abba Father. This is a miracle! Again, this
was the Holy Spir
it’s doing (see Romans 8:15
–
16
).

In
the old days we dismissed the things of God as foolishness. The Bible made no
sense to us. But now we find therein the words of life. We receive them with
joy. Again, this is the work of the Holy Spirit.
When
he gives revelation the lights go on and the simple are made wise.

At one time we held no special opinion about
Jesus, but now he is our greatest love and the Shepherd of our souls. That’s a
new thing. Before we were saved we didn’t really care what other people thought
about Jesus but now we do. Our heart’s desire is for none to perish and all to
know him. This too is a new thing.

Don’t you see how much you have changed?

I will give you a new
heart and put a new spirit in you. (Ezekiel 36:26a)

When the Holy Spirit came into your life the
change in you was like night and day. It’s like you were given a heart
transplant. Your old heart, which was captive to desires of the flesh and
enslaved to sin, was replaced with a new heart with new desires and appetites.
Your new heart beats with new passions and they are the passions of the Holy
Spirit. This is why John can say outlandish things like this:

No one who lives in
him keeps on sinning.
No
one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
(1 John 3:6)

Before I understood what was new
about me, I used to look at verses like this sideways.
No one keeps on
sinning?! John, have you lost touch with reality?
In a manner of speaking I
think this is exactly what happened. John understood that there is no
comparison between the life we had in Adam and the new life we now have in
Christ. Sinning is characteristic of Adam’s nature, not Christ’s. For us,
sinning is a part of that old reality that died with Christ on the cross. It
does not describe our new reality in Christ.

“But Paul, are you saying we
won’t ever sin? Now
you’re
starting to sound like you’ve lost touch with
reality.” Maybe I have. Maybe I have traded the flawed and false reality of my
old life for the better and truer reality of his.