What is the Gospel?
Why did God create anything outside of Himself? God did not need anything. God was not bored. God did not even need to create persons in order to experience love. He already had a perfect community of love within the Trinity — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So why did God decide to create the world and all the people in it? The biblical answer is that He did it for His own GLORY. This is more than just the right Sunday school answer. But I do not want to assume that we all know what that means. Let me explain.
God Made All Things to Speak About Himself
“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). This is what I mean by saying that God made everything to speak about Himself, or glorify Himself — to tell everyone how wonderful He is. That may seem self-centered at first glance. Indeed when we human beings draw attention to ourselves, we rightly consider that to be a moral defect. This is not so with God. If our souls were really designed to be happy in our Creator, then it is better for us to behold more of Him. Consequently God is the only being in the universe for whom self-centeredness is others-oriented. Like plants receiving their nourishment from the sun’s light, so our souls were made to “run on God,” so to speak. He cannot be for us if he does not exalt himself above all. God’s glory is the first good news.
God Made You to Speak About Himself
Now if we were to go back to Genesis, during those six days of creation, we may notice that six times God looks at what He was making. He keeps saying the words, “It is good,” and then God made something that especially reflected His glory on Day Six.
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27).
When God created the first man and woman, He was making something a little like Himself. IMAGE means a copy or reflection or picture. Except that we image-bearers are motion pictures. While everything in creation speaks of God, human beings are made to do this in a way that is unique. Unlike stars or mountains or trees or horses, we are persons with souls: minds that can think about God’s worth, emotions that can move us within toward God, and wills that can act outwardly on the stage as if we are for or against God’s script. We have been designed to find ultimate happiness in Him. This is what God requires of us. When Jesus was asked what is the Greatest Commandment, He answered in this way,
The most important is, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” The second is this: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” There is no other commandment greater than these (Mark 12:29-31).
Every part of us was made to move in a way that says something great about God.
God is Good and Only Does Good
If God is good and made the world to reflect His own character, then it stands to reason that creation is good. And so it is. Skeptics often bring up the problem of evil at this point. If a good God made the world, then why has it gone wrong? There is an answer. However there is also an important truth to the question that we do not want to so quickly gloss over. The ultimate thing that God has done, and is continuing to bring to completion, is absolutely good. We will come back to evil and suffering. But for now we must see that God’s ultimate good design will not be frustrated. God has always been fully committed to all the works of His hands: “The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11).
That there is evil and suffering in the world seems to argue for defect. And indeed there is a defect—but in what? It begs the whole question to assume up front that the world ought to be more like such and such when no other such world exists, and which, if there is no God, then there is no ultimate good standard by which to measure either this world or that other alternative. We begin, then, with the goodness of God excluding any defect of any kind in himself.
At the very least that means that God must be both holy and loving. We cannot say that He is only one and not the other. Many people say that if there is a God then He must love us unconditionally, that He must forgive us, that He must only do good to us no matter what we do. After all, God must be “bigger” than other beings that take offense at wrongdoing. I would like to ask anyone who shares that sentiment only one thing. Would you say the same of a much smaller human judge? In other words, what kind of a judge would sentence the guilty to exactly what they deserve? The answer is a good judge.
The one true God is both holy and loving. That means that He exercises justice and mercy, but that He is under no obligation to have mercy. We will have to come back to that as well. He says, “be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44) and “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). This is what we ought to do. This is what God deserves. But do you know anyone who has ever pulled off that perfection? Have you? God’s standard is not perfection because He is mean. His standard is perfection because perfection is His own character.
Now what is wrong with the world? If a good God made it, then how has it become filled with so many horrors? How come we die and why are there so many disappointments for the short time we are here? You may know the story a little. The Bible tells us that our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell from God’s paradise, sentencing the whole human race to sin and misery. But what is sin? There are three very important things we need to know about it. SIN disobeys God, distorts us, and destroys everything else. That is what is wrong with the world and with you and me.
Sin Disobeys God
The Apostle John gives us what may be the most concise definition of sin anywhere in the Bible. He said that “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). Sin is legal because God is the ruler of all things. He is the rightful King and no matter where we go, we are in his kingdom. That means that God’s law stands over all things. So when the Bible says that, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), we can be sure that sin is no innocent mistake. And there is also no such thing as a “little sin.”
There is a passage in James’ letter that clues us in on why it is so evil to break God’s commandments: “For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ also said, ‘Do not murder’ (2:10-11). There is a “He” behind the commandments. A person of infinite worth has been dishonored when we violate any of his commandments. That is why no matter how trivial a wicked deed might seem to us, in reality it deserves the wrath and curse of God.
So DEATH is the legal consequence of sin — first spiritual death, then a resulting bodily death — “The soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4) and “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). When Adam became separated from God by the abuse of his own image, he shattered that image for everyone in his line. That is, all of his descendants who were yet to be born, which is everyone, since God “made from one man every nation of mankind” (Acts 17:26). As the old New England Primer paraphrased it to Puritan children, “In Adam’s fall, we died all,” or in the words of Scripture, “in Adam all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Paul says it most clearly in this place,
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Romans 5:12).
So whose sin causes my death according to the Bible? Answer: Adam’s and mine. Adam’s sin was the ultimate cause in history and mine is the material cause, yet just as real and more of my concern. We cannot declare independence here. Think about it. When Adam and Eve rebelled, the distortion of their souls reshaped the race born to them, and all their children became natural-born sin-factories. Now what product does a sin-factory produce but sin? Therefore we are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners. It is in our nature. We can do no other. The Psalmist confessed: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). That is what is wrong with the world — the one staring at each of us in the mirror.
Sin Distorts Us
Being made in God’s image, all of us are worshiping something.
Has a nation changed its gods, even though they are no gods? But my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water (Jeremiah 2:12).
Sin is irrational. I do not mean that we do not use our reason when we sin. What I mean is that it causes us to go insane: to lose touch with God’s reality, including even ourselves. The biblical story of the Prodigal Son is a good picture of this. We exchange the glory of God for the lowest of his creations (cf. Romans 1:21-23). If we remember that God has designed us to find ultimate happiness in Him, we will see that our trouble is not that we want to be happy. Our trouble is that we are not very serious about it. Here is how C. S. Lewis once put this.
It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased [1].
Sin makes us ever-withering pleasure-seekers. The way that the Bible puts together the concepts of sin as lawlessness and sin as insanity is under the heading of idolatry.
One Christian pastor has said that an IDOL is anything less than God that, if you lost it, would devastate you. Do you have such an ultimate good? Has it not become a cruel master with no lasting benefits to show? We are miserable rebels, striking out against a gracious heavenly Father who gives us all we need, and yet making ourselves all the more miserable trying to get a stronger dosage of the corruptible desires that are passing away (cf. 1 John 2:17).
We can see that sin has a domineering power over us. Jesus said that “everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34) and Peter wrote in his letter that “whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved” (2 Peter 2:19). Now that is ironic. From the very first lie in the Garden of Eden, the devil has persuaded mankind that sin is freedom and that God’s commands are bondage.
The problem goes all the way down to the depths of the heart, to a place that no mere mortal has ever even seen of himself: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
Sin Destroys Everything Else
Now remember how we saw that the glory of God is the happiness of human beings. Consider what falling short of God’s glory does to others. Our failure to glorify God is the height of selfishness. It is utterly hateful because if God is really what makes the soul happy, and if my life denies to others that very source, then whatever shallow notions of love I may have, my sinful actions are petty and causing great harm to the human race. Sin is selfishness.
Now look at the world. It is an utter mess of every kind. At first we wanted to blame that on God. But this idea of blame, where does it come from? Where do we get off calling the world a bad place if there is no such thing as “the way things ought to be”? Do you see the problem with our moral outrage against God? All of our negative moral pronouncements really depend upon the very law of God that our sin wants to deny. Our consciences are informed by a moral memory, a sense of the way things ought to be and a longing for it to return.
What about all of our religion? Can it fix the problem? The prophet says, “all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment” (Isaiah 64:6). What about all of our good intentions and seeking after God? The Psalmist says,
The Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man, to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God. They have all turned aside; together they have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one (Psalm 14:2-3).
Now given the goodness of God and the depth of our sin, the Bible understands salvation to be a real dilemma. We moderns may not. We may be asking, “How could a good God possibly send anyone to hell?” Yet the biblical authors asked the very opposite question: How could a good Judge acquit anyone who has done what we have? We have committed treason against the King of all goodness, we have wrecked our souls and the life He gave us on loan, and in so doing we have made a mess of everything else. In the biblical view, there is no way out and nothing we can do.
Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice, that he should live on forever and never see the pit (Psalm 49:7-9).
If such a deep problem is to be solved, God will have to do something for us that we cannot and will not do for ourselves.
Lewis once also said that “religion is what man says about God, but Christianity is what God did about man.” So what exactly did God do about this impossible situation? Well one thing He did not do is sit back and watch the world burn itself out. Nor did He wait to see if anyone down here would ever get things right and start over. In fact He did not even wait until the punishment took effect to begin making a way back to life.
Before the man and woman even left the Garden, the Lord made them a promise. It is first seen in the curse read to the serpent:
I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel (Genesis 3:15).
One from among the children of men and women would deliver them from the evil one and their own bondage to sin. The promised child to come would be the Prince of the sovereign King of all things and therefore He would be the rightful heir of this world. He would accomplish all of this in a battle against the serpent. Jesus would become for us all of those things that we needed to do but could not.
Jesus Obeyed the Law of God For Us
Quick review. God made us to be like Him and to do as He does. Adam failed. Israel failed. And each and every one of us fail. But God sent his Son to start things over. He was “born under the law” (Galatians 4:4). Jesus lived the life that we should have lived. His obedience to God was designed to count for our obedience. Those who put their trust in Christ are treated by God as if we did what Jesus did: “by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19)
There is nothing arbitrary about this. If a holy God and sinful man are to be reconciled, then someone who perfectly represents both parties will have to satisfy the terms of living together. This is what Paul had in mind where he wrote that, “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). A MEDIATOR is someone who represents two hostile parties. That Jesus was fully God means that He could represent God’s side of holiness perfectly. That Jesus was fully man means that He could represent man’s side of obedience required perfectly. It means not only that He stood in our place legally, but that He faced what we face psychologically. Think about that for a moment!
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
That Jesus was our mediator means that He became our substitute: in life and in death. He puts Himself in the place of us, both positively and negatively. All the good we still owe God and all the curse God still owed to us. There is nothing in life or in death that we need more than such a Substitute!
We need two things for salvation to occur. We need to have every single one of our wrongs made right, and we need someone else who is perfect to start over again for us and succeed till the end. A kind of double exchange is going to have to occur.
Jesus Was Punished By God For Us
The cross was not first and foremost an ethical example or moral influence directed at our hearts, nor even a victory over the powers of darkness. Although the cross was those things too. But this is not the first thing Jesus accomplished by his death. The cross was first and foremost an atonement for sin. The primary aim of the cross was not toward any part of the creation at all. Its primary effect was heavenward. One theologian, Leon Morris, described it in this way,
Clearly it is God’s demand that we live holy lives that is the root cause of the problem. As long as he is angry with the selfishness, the disregard of the needs of others and the general attitude of lovelessness that the Bible calls sin, the attitude of God is going to be an important factor, indeed the important factor … There can be no fellowship between God and man as long as God is persisting in a demand to which men are indifferent [2].
There is a divine dilemma. A good God cannot simply forgive sinners by joining them in their dishonor. He cannot agree with the sinner that his glory is no big deal, and so sweep sins under the rug of the universe. Instead the Son of God absorbed the wrath of God for us. He took the hell we had to pay. He satisfied his own justice. He spent it on his own Son instead of on us. Paul says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no greater demonstration of love and no greater security for the beloved: “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
So Jesus gets all of our sins and we get all his righteousness. There is a great exchange: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). So it is not by our external works, nor by our internal will power, but by Christ’s performance alone that we are accepted by the Father.
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 3:9).
Jesus Rose to Newness of Life For Us
No one would ever believe that someone’s death had killed death itself if they themselves remained under its power. So in Peter’s sermon he claims that in this emptying of a tomb Psalm 16:10 was fulfilled: “For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.”
At first it may seem that the Resurrection of Christ is only related to salvation somewhat indirectly. Sure it vindicates Jesus, but what does it do for us? Paul’s theology of the believer’s union with Christ continues from Good Friday to Easter Sunday and beyond. He asks his readers in Rome:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Romans 6:3-5).
That is the idea. Those whom God has placed into his Son have been placed into the work of his Son. His destiny becomes our destiny. This is not only Paul saying this, but Jesus Himself,
All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:37-40).
Jesus rising from the dead does something to us right now. Remember that we said the problem in our hearts was double. In Christ, as the hymn says, there is a double cure. If by the cross Jesus killed our old man, then by the resurrection Jesus raised us by his Spirit to a new life which begins right now. The great hope of the resurrection is complete when our bodies and souls are united in the consummated new creation. But the good news is better still. It also means that we are even now beginning to see the killing of the old man of sin and the growth of the new man in righteousness. As the Reformers put it, we are made acceptable to God by faith alone, but not by a faith that stays alone. Through faith the Holy Spirit begins to give birth to new desires in us. We start to see our sin for what it is and hate it. We start to see the promises of God for what they are and love Him for it. “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Jesus Reigns Over All and Restores All Things For Us
The plan of God revealed in the Bible comes to a head in the reign and rule of his Son. The Father wanted all the rulers of the earth to listen up when He promised the whole universe to his Messiah,
The LORD said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel (Psalm 2:7-9).
The Bible adds to all of this good news that all who believe in Christ share in his inheritance. We inherit the whole world in fact (cf. Romans 4:13). God’s good creation will be even better than the first time around. Paul even gives a kind of poetic foretaste of the new world and the new race looking together for the ultimate dawn.
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:22-23).
In the end God is going to bring an end to all evil and the new world will be one of never-before-experienced love and joy and peace. “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Revelation 21:4-5).
Repentance and Faith
What we have seen so far is that we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in the performance of Christ alone. We have also seen that God gives to His people a whole new creation where sin’s debt to the law, dominion over our hearts, and devastation to the world are all wiped away. All of it is the free gift of God in Christ. So there are really two basic ways to relate to God. One is on the basis of our performance (works) and the other is on the basis of God’s promise (grace).
This is very often misunderstood even by we Christians. Sometimes we speak of the unconditional love of God. Of course if what we mean to say is that God’s decision to save a people is unconditional — that nothing we did could ever put Him in our debt; no condition on our part could ever be met — then, yes, of course that would be true: “For 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” (Ephesians 2:8-9) and “if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Romans 11:6).
GRACE means God’s undeserved favor. But just because something is given to us unearned, that does not mean that it comes cheap. And I am afraid that this “cheap grace” is what is often meant by the saying. Just as surely as God’s promise still required a perfect performance (Christ did that for us), so his word calls us to live new lives that tell his good news. It matters how we live.
Turn From Idols to the Living God
The Apostle Paul opens up one of his letters by saying, “For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because … [of] how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Thessalonians 1:4, 9). That is actually a much longer passage. But the punchline to Paul’s confidence that these believers were the real deal was how they turned from idols to the living and true God. What does this mean? It does not primarily mean what you wear or what you watch or what you listen to. Although any of those can be idols. The issue is always your heart.
This is what you will want to ask yourself. Have I really come to love the Lord and despise all that would tear me away from Him? The best picture of this that I know of is that parable of Jesus that takes up one verse: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). Who and what is my treasure? What is my final answer? If all else should be stripped away, what would be my security, my hope, my source of good? Now it is true that we cannot see into each others’ hearts, but life and death do look very different from each other. Over time, we can see that difference. The man in this parable was not begrudgingly putting away his idols. He did not go and sell his earthly goods out of fear or guilt. Jesus said he did it out of joy. This is what becoming a Christian looks like.
Earlier in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus had said that “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (6:21). It is no coincidence that Jesus spoke so frequently about money. The point is not that money is inherently good or bad. What matters is how easily our treasures reveal whether we are alive in Christ or still among the dead. Either way, we are worshiping. We are always worshiping something.
Repent and Believe is a Way of Life
When Jesus preached the gospel, He said things like “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). To REPENT means to have a total change of mind and therefore a change of direction. Some may say that all that is required is the change of mind. The new desires and decisions are not important. But we must ask what kind of mind-change this is that desires nothing new and does nothing different. We are talking about a total “180” here.
To BELIEVE just means to trust God about what Jesus did for us, to take Him at his word. We could think of the “repent” part as the turning away from the idol and the “believe” part as the turning toward the one true God.
When Jesus calls us to follow Him, this thing called “repent and believe” is not simply a door to pass through once, but a life-long path. Luther once said that the Christian life is “a life of repentance.” Is this biblical? Well, let me ask it in this way. Do you think you will continue to sin? Those sins (even the slightest) — do they dishonor God and corrupt you? I think we will have to admit they do. If you are a genuine believer, will you hate those sins? If you understand the good news, what will you turn to in order to feel loved by God? The answers to those questions can only mean one thing. Repent and believe … today … tomorrow … and the day after that too. As one Christian author put it, we should preach the gospel to ourselves every day.
“Wait a minute,” someone might say, “I thought it doesn’t matter what we do! There isn’t anything we can do! Are you not adding works back into the equation?” The answer is No — not at all. And by the way, I never said anything like “it doesn’t matter what we do.” What we do earns nothing in God’s court of justice, but what we do plays a key role in God’s theater of glory. The very same Paul that says we are saved by grace, in the very next breath, says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Our new life matters.
Repent and believe and preach the gospel to yourselves every day until the day you die — that doesn’t mean you need to be saved over and over again. Quite the opposite! As you realize what a great sinner you are, you’ll learn afresh what a great Savior you need. And as you get deeper into the gospel, a funny thing will happen. You will find deeper levels of assurance that you are saved. But good works and deeper awareness of sins, and therefore deeper grace, will all rise together.
What Do You Do Now?
God is personal. That means that when you are restored to Him, you will quite naturally communicate with Him. How do we communicate with other people we know? We use words. And hopefully we also speak from our hearts. This is even more the case when it comes to communion with God. That is what PRAYER is. And while we certainly do not want to turn prayer into a magic mantra where we simply get what we want from God — including the most important good that we have been talking about, which is eternal life — still we should pray that God would forgive us for all of our sins because of what Jesus has done for us. Consider praying in this way,
Father in heaven, I confess that I am a sinner.
I have not lived with a thankful heart and have not cared about your glory.
I have done more selfish things than I can count and I have wasted the life you’ve given me.
But I have heard from your good news that you sent your Son to take my place.
Please make his life count for mine, and his death wash away my sins.
Please forgive me. Please make me new. Please give me your Holy Spirit.
I want to follow Christ and be more like him every day.
I want to live in his kingdom and for your glory alone.
I ask you all of this for his sake and in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Now I do not want to tell you that “if you repeated those words after me, then you have been born again.” Salvation cannot be reduced to a formula like that. And the modern church has made many a false convert by putting everyone’s focus on quick decisions and merely mouthed words. On the other hand, the Bible promises that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). And Jesus says, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). So trust in the promises of God and live!
Now if you do repent and believe, there are some things that God has designed for you to walk out your new life in Jesus. You will want to trust God for these things too because He is a loving and wise Father. These things are sometimes called things like “means of grace” and “spiritual disciplines.” But whatever you call them, they are the ways that the Holy Spirit begins to strengthen your soul for the exciting work ahead.
Resources for Spiritual Growth
First and foremost, get into God’s word.
I recommend the English Standard Version (ESV), but if you already have an New International Version (NIV), New American Standard Bible (NASB) or New King James Version (NKJV) those are also very fine translations. The important thing is that you begin to nourish your soul with the story of God: his laws and songs and teachings and visions of the future. The words of God are compared to “bread” (Matthew 4:4) and “pure milk” (1 Peter 2:2) and “imperishable seed” (1 Peter 1:23). So feed your soul on his word.
Second, keep the fires of prayer burning.
God doesn’t make us fit for heaven overnight. One of the things you will experience in the early going (if you haven’t already in our conversation) is that you will still sin. The enemy of your soul will try to overwhelm you with shame and doubt in these moments. But your Father is still there and Jesus is still praying to Him for you about this very thing! The desires of the Spirit inside you will make war against your temptations. So keep praying.
Third, find a church that believes God’s word and loves Jesus.
Please do not buy into the notion that you can be a lone ranger at this. Even our grasp of truth, from the Bible, was designed to operate within community. The most basic thing the church does is worship. This is what we were made for. It is true that your new brothers and sisters in Christ will often disappoint you. But we do not go to church as if it were our Savior. We go to church to worship Him together, and that happens primarily through hearing the word preached, being baptized, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper on a regular basis.
Fourth, get to know all those “one anothers” of the New Testament church.
Everywhere in the apostles’ letters to the churches, we find instructions such as to welcome one another, love one another, confess our sins to one another, comfort one another, serve one another, outdo one another in showing honor, and bear each others’ burdens. And a few other “one anothers” that could be mentioned. Even those spiritual disciplined already mentioned, such as reading the word and prayer, ought not to be conceived as an isolated activity. There is of course private meditation upon the word and praying in secret, but God gave competent teachers and interceding for each other for good reason (Ephesians 4:11-12, 6:18-19).
In other words, do not go to church only for what you think you can get out of it, but for what God will empower you to do for others: “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them” (Romans 12:5-6). No, a church cannot save you. Yes, the church will disappoint you. But the church is God’s design — a hospital for sinners, the school of Christ, and the sender on a great mission that awaits. You will need this good news for the whole journey ahead, and it is in God’s house that you will find it and grow in it.
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1. C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) p. 26
2. Leon Morris, The Atonement (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press 1982), pp. 137-138
