The Gospel in Ten Words (9 page)

The
gospel of your salvation was underwritten by the most precious commodity in the
universe; the blood of the Lamb. Jesus paid a high price for your redemption.
The problem with asking you to do anything for Jesus is that it can leave you trusting
in what you have done instead of resting in what he has done. “I turned from
sin, therefore I must be saved. I avoid wickedness, and do good works,
therefore I must be
really
saved.” No, no, no! That’s old covenant
thinking. It’s mixing faith in what he’s done with faith in what you’ve done.
It is setting aside grace. Jesus didn’t do most of it; he did all of it. Trust
him alone.

He saved us, not
because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. (Titus 3:5a)

Jesus is the author
and
the finisher. He doesn’t just get
you started; he completes what he began.
This is why old
Christians need the gospel just as much as young sinners. Grace is for
everyone. Grace saves you at the beginning and it keeps you through to the end.
This was something the Colossian Christians needed to be reminded of.

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to
live in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were
taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:6
–
7)

How
did you receive Jesus? By faith. How should you continue to live in him? By
faith. It’s faith in his all-sufficient grace from first to last.

But
now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present
you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation—if you continue
in your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the
gospel. (Colossians 1:22–23a)

This
sounds like a conditional statement, as though you are saved for as long as
“you continue in your faith.” It sounds like you can lose your salvation. As we
will see in the next chapter, that is simply not possible. When you were born
again you became something new; you were put into Christ. If you are faithless,
he remains faithful for he cannot disown himself (2 Timothy 2:13). Once you
have been born you cannot be unborn.

Here
in Colossians Paul is talking about falling from grace and coming back under
the influence of carnal religion, or what he calls “hollow and deceptive
philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this
world rather than on Christ” (Colossians 2:8). He is talking about any teaching
that promotes trust in self rather than Christ. The point is not that God
changes his mind but that we can change ours. We can go from trusting to trying,
from resting to striving. When that happens
God remains as gracious as ever, but we no
longer experience his grace. We become distracted and, as far as we are
concerned, cut off from grace. We begin to doubt our identity and we stop
acting like who we really are.

How
do we avoid falling from grace? How do we continue in the faith? We have to
hold fast to the “hope held out in the gospel.” We need to take care that we
are not seduced by the false hopes offered by grace-less religion.

Religion
will tell you that you are incomplete and in lack and that you have to work to
get what you don’t have. But the gospel Paul preached declares “you have been
given fullness in Christ” (Colossians 2:10). In him you don’t lack a thing. Religion
says God may forgive your sins if you play your cards right and behave, but the
gospel declares “he forgave us all our sins” already (Colossians 2:13).
Religion says God relates to us through grace when we’re good and through the
law when we sin: But the gospel says he canceled and nailed to the cross “the
written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed
to us” (Colossians 2:14). God doesn’t relate to us on the basis of grace some
of the time but all of the time. He never changes.

The
gospel of heaven is infinitely better than the religion of earth. Manmade
religion would have you trust in yourself dooming you to certain failure. But
the good news of grace inspires trust in the Lord who has already won and who
therefore can never fail. Why is it that those who see this are overflowing
with thankfulness? It’s not because we have learned to be grateful for the little
things like the grass and sunshine. It is because Jesus is supremely good at saving
us:

Therefore he [Jesus]
is able also to save to the uttermost (completely, perfectly, finally, and for
all time and eternity) those who come to God through him, since he is always
living to make petition to God and intercede with him and intervene for them. (Hebrews
7:25, AMP)

Jesus
is our Great Redeemer and our only Savior. He is the One who stills the storms
and calls us to dance with him upon the waves.

And
this brings us, finally, to the lifeboats.

The
lifeboat gospel
is the idea that salvation is all about avoiding hell and gaining heaven. The
problem with this gospel is that it has sidelined entire generations of
believers by telling them the earth is nothing more than a waiting room for
eternity.

Afraid
of being left behind, Christians with a lifeboat mentality have opted out of
the game. They want nothing to do with this filthy world lest they end up
entangled in it. “Forget the arts, forget politics, forget science. This world
is destined for the fire anyway, so why bother.”

Lifeboat
Christians are hands-off Christians. Yet their passivity, which is really
unbelief, means they regularly get steamrolled by the circumstances of life.
When this happens it only confirms their belief that “the ship is sinking—you’d
best get off.”
[30]

Selling
a gospel of salvation-
later
robs people of the benefits of salvation-
now
.
The word most commonly translated as “save” in the Bible,
sozo
,
literally means to deliver, protect, heal, preserve, and make whole.
[31]
It covers not only salvation in eternity, but healing, deliverance, and
prosperity today.

When
God created the earth, everything was good. There was no sickness, oppression,
or poverty. All that bad stuff came later as a result of sin. If the Savior’s
sacrifice is the once-and-for-all-time cure for sin, surely his salvation is
the cure for all the effects of sin, otherwise his work remains unfinished.

During
his time on earth, Jesus revealed the gospel of salvation through signs and
wonders. When he healed the sick, he
sozo
-ed them; he made them
whole. To be saved literally means to be made whole. Jesus said those who
followed him would do what he did. He said this not to put pressure on you—we’re
under grace, remember—but to call you and me to the abundant life that is ours
by right. We who are saved for eternity have been left in the hospice to
release his salvation power to the sick and dying. Salvation is not for the
distant hereafter; salvation is for now. Today is the day of salvation; now is
the time of God’s favor.

Therefore,
my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now
much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and
trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his
good purpose. (Philippians 2:12–13)

When
you first put your faith in Jesus, you crossed over from death to life. Eternal
life is already yours and you are one with the Lord. But in this life we face
many challenges. Working out your salvation means receiving, by faith, the
grace you need to get through today. God has already given you the gift of
salvation—it is within you—now work it out. Take that gift and use it to bring
change to your circumstances. Instead of living in reaction to doctor’s
reports, bills, and problems at work, learn to live in reaction to what God has
said and done. This is what it means to walk in the spirit. It’s walking by
faith rather than sight. It is trusting in his all-sufficient grace in your
hour of need.

Why does Paul
encourage us to work out our salvation with fear and trembling? Because faith
is risky. Faith often runs contrary to what our eyes and ears are telling us,
and this is why we tremble. If the doctor says you have a week to live, your
emotions will react with fear and trembling. You will have to strive to enter
his rest in the midst of your trouble. But Paul says do it anyway—fix your eyes
on Jesus despite the fear—“for it is God who works in you.”

Paul
knew something about this for he went to Corinth “in weakness and fear and with
much trembling” (1 Corinthians 2:3). Paul didn’t know what was going to happen
in that pagan city but he went anyway, despite his fear, because it was his
passion to bring the light of the gospel to the Gentiles. And as he began to
preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, the Holy Spirit showed up with a
demonstration of supernatural power (see 1 Corinthians 2:1–5). This is what it
means to co-labor with the Lord. We work out or express what God has put within
us, and he confirms his word through signs and wonders.

Why
are fear and trembling involved? Because learning to walk in the new way of the
spirit can be scary. The first time you offer to pray for a sick person can be
frightening. “What if they don’t get healed?”
What if they do!
Since they
are already sick, what have you got to lose? The first time you pray or write
or speak or stand on your head in the name of Jesus is going to be the hardest.
But you will never experience of the thrill of co-laboring with Christ if you
put fear ahead of faith.
[32]

The
woman who had been bleeding for twelve years risked much by reaching out to
Jesus. As one who was ceremonially unclean, she was supposed to keep her
distance from other people. Being pushy in a crowd was illegal and indecent.
Yet with fear and trembling she risked everything because she wanted healing
and she knew where to get it. When she touched the hem of the Savior’s garment
he turned to her and said, “Have courage, your faith has made you whole.”
[33]
Technically, she wasn’t healed by her faith but by the grace of God. But since
grace only comes to us through faith, Jesus said what he said. We access his
reservoirs of grace through faith.

I
have been in meetings where faith sizzled in the air like electricity and
hundreds were healed. I’ve also been in situations where I was the only one
praying in a room full of skeptics. Can you guess which setting involved more
fear and trembling on my part?

Now
we begin to understand why Paul encouraged the Philippians to go for it “all
the more in my absence.” I’m sure they had a fine old time when the mighty Paul
was in town. How could you
not
get healed when the man with the
miraculous hanky was around (see Acts 19:11–12)? But Paul is not the magic man
and we should be able to do this without him. That’s why Paul tells them and
us, “Learn to do this on your own. You can! You don’t need me or some anointed
guy with flashy white teeth and a suit. It’s your faith in his grace that
releases salvation power. It is God who works in you.”

And
again, lest we get hung up on the faith side of the equation, Paul reminds us
two verses earlier that it’s not about him or us or the anointed guy in the
suit but Jesus under whose name “every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth
and under the earth” (Philippians 2:10).

Salvation,
whether we’re talking about healing, deliverance, or financial breakthrough, is
what happens when our daily needs are made to bow to name of the Savior Jesus.

The gospel of
salvation is good news for a race cursed by sin, for it reveals the power of
God for healing, deliverance, and eternal life. As a believer, your future is
secure in him. Your spirit is one with the Lord, inseparably linked, and
eternally saved. But our bodies and minds still suffer the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, and for the time being the world remains under the
influence of the evil one (1 John 5:19). Life can be hard. But life does not
have the last word for those who choose to walk in the spirit. Bad news may
come, but the good news is that we are more than conquerors through him who
loved us.

The
gospel is not merely a promise of a ticket to heaven and a distant salvation. The
gospel is the power of God to bless you with his saving and abundant life here
and now. That life is found in knowing him and trusting him in the midst of
your circumstances. The good news of his salvation declares that it is not his
will for you to be sick or poor. If you are, don’t blame God. Jesus said it’s
the thief who comes to rob and destroy (John 10:10). God is not making you sick
or broke to teach you character. His will is for you to prosper in all things,
even as your soul prospers (3 John 1:2).

The
gospel of salvation declares that on the cross the Savior made full provision
for your complete salvation. In him you have been blessed with every spiritual
blessing. You don’t have to ask for whatever it is you need; in him you’ve
already got it. You just need to work it out in your life through faith.

When
you understand the good news of his salvation it will change the way you pray.
Instead of asking God to do what he has already done, you will move in the
power and authority he has given you and shamelessly
proclaim
the name of King Jesus over
your circumstances. Instead of talking to
God about your problems, you’ll talk to your problems about your God.

As
you grow in the confidence that he who saves you also keeps you, you will leave
the dubious comfort of the lifeboat and return to the
Titanic
where you
will bring the good news of salvation to others. You will lay hands on the sick
and they will be healed. You will proclaim freedom to the captives and they
will be freed. You will find that supernatural signs and wonders follow this
good news wherever it goes.