The True Gospel- It's not about you!

I'm preparing to start running a Bible club at the school in the Kibera slum where I work. I'll be using a curriculum developed by New Tribes Mission called "Firm Foundations". It's a great method, and I'm just now reading the introduction, which is many pages long. But within this foundational approach is an observation I've never notice but been remiss to fail considering. I'm going to preach on it here.

The author, Trevor McIlwain, was a missionary in several different fields over the years and noticed a consistent problem in the established churches in those fields. This problem was a misunderstanding of where the people got their salvation.

What had happened was that the missionaries had gone, preached the "Gospel" (meaning, God loves you, Jesus died for you, now say this prayer and you can go to Heaven) and then told the people that now they needed to be baptized and go to church and sing hymns, and not commit adultery. Years later when asked why they responded so readily to baptism, one member of a tribe in the Philippines answered, "We would have done anything for that first missionary. If he had asked us to cut our fingers off, we would have gladly done it for him."

So these people were believing in a works-based gospel trying to please God by doing all these great things. It's a lie to tell people that they can DO anything about their salvation. What follows are two quotes from the book "Firm Foundations":

"Many confuse the Gospel, God's work FOR us in Christ, with God's work IN us by the Holy Spirit. the Gospel is entirely objective. The Gospel is completely outside of ourselves. The Gospel is not about the change which needs to be made in us, and it does not take place within us. It was completed in Christ, quite apart from us, almost two thousand years ago. The Gospel is not dependent on man in any way. The Gospel is distorted when we turn people's eyes to what is to be accomplished in them We were not and cannot be involved in any part of Christ's historical, finished, redemptive work. The sinner must be taught to look completely away from himself and trust only in Christ and His work of salvation."

"We distort and confuse the Gospel in people's understanding when we try to present the Gospel using terminology which turns people's attention to what they must DO rather than outward to what God has DONE on their behalf in Christ. We should use terminology which directs sinners to trust in what has been done FOR THEM through Christ rather than directing their attention to what must be done IN THEM. 'Accept Jesus into your heart.' 'Give your heart to Jesus.' 'Give your life to Jesus.' 'Open the door of your heart to the Lord.' 'Ask Jesus to wash away your sins.' 'Make your decision for Christ.' 'Ask Jesus to give you eternal life.' 'Ask God to save you.' These modern and commonly-used phrases confuse people's understanding of the Gospel."

What McIlwain is saying here is that when you give someone something to DO in order to be saved, then essentially you are giving them a part in their own salvation. They stand before God as Judge and say, "I'm saved because I said a prayer," rather than "I'm saved because Jesus paid the penalty for my sins."

And then imagine the confusion in their lives after this. "Did I do it right? Was I serious? Did I really give my heart to Jesus?" The Gospel is NOT about us accepting Jesus as Savior- as the payment for our sins- because WE are not the judge that decides whether that is sufficient. That would be like someone offering to serve a prison term for a criminal and the guilty party agreeing to that. Well, that's great. But unless the judge is okay with the arrangement, there's no deal. The True Gospel is about how GOD accepted Jesus Christ as the perfect and ONLY penalty for our sins over two thousand years ago.

One message, the "accept Jesus into your heart" type, is subjective and puts the emphasis on what a person must do to be saved. But it's not about doing anything, because as Christ cried out on the cross, "It is finished!"

Paul and Silas told the jailer, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved..." and a few verses later it says, "he was filled with joy because he had come to believe in God." Not that he had chosen to believe. Not that he had prayed a prayer, but because he had "come to believe" (that's NIV). The word "believe" in the Greek means "to be persuaded of".

Belief is not something we do. We don't CHOOSE to believe. If we have to choose, then we don't really believe. There's a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass that satirically explains this rather perfectly. The Queen has just told Alice that she is over 100 years old and Alice replies that she can't believe it. The Queen responds, "Can't you? Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eye."

Too many Christians have this opinion of faith. They think that we have to close our eyes to the facts, ignore reality, and believe something. To me, that feels like holding your breath underwater. "I can do it," you tell yourself. "Just a bit longer. I can break my own record. If I believe it, it'll be true." But that's not the point. It's true whether you believe it or not.

A belief forms the basis of your understanding, of your being. A belief affects and alters your world view. But when you CHOOSE to believe, you're not really believing. What you believe (what you are persuaded of) must correlate with what you KNOW, or it will not change your life. I can believe that a gunshot to the head won't hurt me, but I KNOW that's not true, so I'm not likely to put a gun to my head to prove that belief.

However, when I believe that God loves me, that He has the best in store for me, that He gave Jesus as the penalty for my wrongdoing, and that because of this I can be at peace with Him forever, when I believe it and know it, that changes my life!

God is holy and demands perfection. We can't give it. We can't even hope to please this God with our actions. But through Jesus we can be seen as perfect in God's eyes. The Bible equates our sins with "filthy rags" that we wear. But through Christ, we can be "clothed in righteousness". If you are redeemed by Christ, you are no longer a stranger in God's eyes but His own child!

One of my favorite verse is Romans 5:8 where it says, "But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us!" Most people skip over the part where it says "while we WERE still sinners" but this is a powerful suggestion. If we're saved, we're not sinners anymore. We're holy and righteous before God. But if we don't really believe this, then it's not going to change our lives.

And isn't that what "living victoriously" is all about?