Are You Really Believing God's Gospel?
Have you ever wondered how it is that there are so many people that claim to be in right standing with God, but when all these folks are taken together and considered as a whole, you find they believe so many different and contradictory things?
This is of course the age old question since the inception of Christianity: is there really only one way to God: faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, or some other way?
In the ninth chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul addresses this question as part of a larger thought about how God has provided for the salvation of mankind. In his commentary on this part of the New Testament, Richard Lenski has provided some great thoughts on verses 30-33 (shown below) that I wanted to share.
In discussing how the Jews missed God's salvation because they pursued it by human effort at following law (not just the Mosaic law but all such law), and how the Gentiles actually apprehended salvation because they went about it as God commanded (by faith), Lenski offers these comments in answer to the question: "Why did Israel fail?" (my comments underlined).
Obviously this has great meaning for those that do not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, but it is equally as important for those that are 'saved', as we call it inside the church.
Why?
For the same reason that it was important to the Christians at the church in Galatia. They started off so well under the instruction of Paul, but along the way other people came along and interjected a different gospel: not a gospel of grace and their responsibility of a faithful response, but instead a gospel that included 'faith' alongside human works toward following the Jewish law. This included all areas of Jewish observance, including circumcision. The Apostle, but more importantly the Holy Spirit through Paul, had some strong words for those allowing themselves to be pulled away from the bona fide gospel:
This is quite stern, isn't it? After all, Paul is writing this to true Christians - to people that have believed and received the Spirit (Galatians 3:1-3). Listen to how important it is not to accept a corrupted Gospel. Listen to the consequences the Holy Spirit points out through Paul:
v. 2 "if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all." If Christ is of no value, that means no salvation through Christ - for this is the value that Christ provides.
v. 4 "you who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace". How horrible. To be separated from Christ is to be outside of His saving power. To have fallen away from grace is to be separated from the saving effects of that same grace.
In v. 2 Paul calls out in a specific exclamation: 'ide!' - pay attention! take notice! Or as it is rendered in the NIV: 'Mark my words!'. These things are critical to the attainment or loss of eternal life and Paul wants them understood as such.
Paul is telling these Christians that if they allow themselves to be circumcised in order to pursue a relationship with God, that Christ will be of 'no value to them at all'. Consider the Greek phrase that underlies this translation - the wording is so strong: 'ouden ophelesei'. 'Ouden' is a negating term. It means 'no', 'not at all'. In fact, it is so strong that it removes any possibility of doubt and it excludes any exceptions at all. It is 'no' in the strongest, most absolute terms. 'Ophelesei' means 'assistance', 'help', 'aid', 'profit', 'benefit'. If they step away from salvation by faith and only by faith, they lose the benefit of Christ completely.
In v. 4 Paul warns them that if they seek justification from the law rather than on account of Christ, they have been 'alienated from Christ' and 'fallen away from grace'. Consider the Greek under this translation - it is chilling: 'katergethete apo Christou' - 'katergethete' means 'to cause something to be unproductive', 'to use up or exhaust something', 'to cause something to lose its power or effectiveness', 'to invalidate something', 'to make something powerless', 'to abolish', 'to wipe out', 'to set aside'. Paul is saying that if these Christians do these things, they will be totally and completely removed from the power and effectiveness of Christ. 'Exepesate charitos' - 'exepesate' means 'to fall away from a favorable condition', 'to lose something'. 'Charitos' in this context means God's saving grace. It means 'a beneficial disposition towards someone', 'gracious care', 'gracious favor', 'goodwill', 'the practical application of all these things: favor, goodwill, care, a precious gift'. 'Grace' is all of these things. In essence, it is being willing to love and applying love.
For these Christians to be circumcised in the Jewish manner for the Jewish reason (to enter a covenant with God) means that the benefit they had from Christ by faith would be totally and completely nullified. This portion of Scripture isn't talking about people that merely professed faith in Christ. These are people that truly are 'saved' and are in danger of losing their salvation by falling away from Christ and His grace. One cannot fall away from something one does not possess. Paul isn't talking about the loss of opportunity to be saved through Christ, but the actual loss of salvation in Christ one already possesses. This isn't talking about some external force snatching these Christians from God's hands, that is impossible. This is talking about people in God's hands deciding to jump by accepting a different gospel. There is no part of Scripture that indicates God holds on to people against their will.
This is how important it is to protect the integrity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ at all costs. It is the only way to God that He has given for anyone to be saved. To deviate from God's plan of salvation by and only by Jesus' completed work on the Cross is to either not attain to salvation at all, or to lose it having once possessed it.
The modern church, at least in the West, is awash in counterfeit 'gospels':
If you can envision a corruption of the gospel, it surely exists out there somewhere. All of these other gospels claim to be genuine, but in one place or another they contradict what God has clearly said.
The only Gospel God has provided is one that is truly 'out of' faith, first to last. Faith first exercises itself in repentance (agreeing with what God says about our sin and being willing to turn from it - this is faith exercised as trust in what God says about our sin), and after this it accepts Jesus' work on the cross as its own. This is true faith exercised as active trust in God's words concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. And this faith has to be *your* faith. God has to enable it by making His promise (which He has done), but you have to exercise it once its possibility is born in you. Only you can do this. No one can repent for you, and no one can give you to God. Those actions must be your own.
The idea of forgiveness from God that is applied only to those that believe His promise is found all throughout God's word. In the Old Testament it is found in the sin offering, the whole burnt offering, and the offering given on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The sacrifice of Yom Kippur, for instance, was for all of Israel. God provided it so that any and all sin could be forgiven, and the one sacrifice given for all was sufficient to do so. But the benefits of the sacrifice were only applied to those that truly repented and believed as God indicated they should: with a whole heart and with all their soul. If this wasn't done, the benefit of the sacrifice that could have been theirs was lost, left on the table because of an unrepentant and disbelieving heart. In the cross of Christ, we have that offer of salvation made universally to all mankind, and any and all who will accept it will be rescued, for all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
My hope for you is that you find the little gate that leads to the narrow path of salvation. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the only salvation that God has offered. Before it's too late, allow His words to convict you of your sin, repent (change your mind and turn away) from what God shows you, and turn to Him in trust to save you.
This is of course the age old question since the inception of Christianity: is there really only one way to God: faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, or some other way?
In the ninth chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul addresses this question as part of a larger thought about how God has provided for the salvation of mankind. In his commentary on this part of the New Testament, Richard Lenski has provided some great thoughts on verses 30-33 (shown below) that I wanted to share.
Romans 9:30-33 (NIV)
(30) What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith;
(31) but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it.
(32) Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the “stumbling stone.”
(33) As it is written: “See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”
In discussing how the Jews missed God's salvation because they pursued it by human effort at following law (not just the Mosaic law but all such law), and how the Gentiles actually apprehended salvation because they went about it as God commanded (by faith), Lenski offers these comments in answer to the question: "Why did Israel fail?" (my comments underlined).
"Why not?" (verse 32): Why did Israel fail? (The Greek word) 'Diati' asks for the reason; (had Paul meant to explain the 'purpose', as if God had Himself caused or decreed their fall, he would have had to use the Greek word) 'hinati - from hina', the express Greek term which asks for purpose rather than observed consequence.)
Paul gives the answer in a nutshell with two phrases which need no verbs in the Greek although, when translating them into English, we must supply something. Both are 'ek' phrases (Greek word meaning by, out of, sourced from, originating from) like the one found in v. 31 and point, not merely to the means employed, but to the source, the fountain, the starting point, which goes deeper than the idea of means (typified by the Greek word 'dia': means, mechanism, etc., but not source).
The Jews refused to let God, His Word, and even their law teach them that 'from faith' alone righteousness before God comes, and they obdurately persisted in the fiction that it comes only 'from works'. (Here Paul does not include the Greek article. Had he done so he would have meant 'the' Mosaic law, i.e. the Jewish law. In Greek when the article is omitted the author means essence, substance... something qualitative and not pointing out a specific instance thus the idea here is of any law that might make one acceptable to God. The Jew's great blunder was that they refused God's word and instead tried to pursue salvation by human effort as typified by pursuing laws of righteousness, be they the Mosaic law or the less specific, general moral laws recognized by all of humanity.)
The more Jesus tried to teach them that faith in God's promise was the only source, the more they clung to works and fought faith.
The fearful difference between faith and works is the fact that 'faith', being trust, relies on complete dependence on another, on God, on Christ, on the promise and the mercy (which is what Romans is all about), while 'works' repudiate such dependence and rely on man's own ability and attainment.
Faith permits God to put it wholly and completely under obligation to Himself; works not only repudiate this obligation to God but insist on putting God under obligation to the man who does the works, and the Jews tried to obligate God by means of even false works.
Here we have additional light on v. 11: "not from works (obligating God ) but from Him Who calls (letting God obligate us by His call of grace)." Here is light, too, on the promise and the mercy, both of which obligate us because both are graciously extended without obligation to us on the part of God.
(What Lenski is saying is this: There is indeed an obligation placed upon God as regards salvation, but it is an obligation that no man can place on Him. It is instead an obligation that God has placed upon Himself. In His love He truly wishes to save everyone, but the demands of His holiness and justice must be met less God Himself become guilty of sin: sin demands a price, and no forgiveness could be given until that price was addressed. So out of His love He obligated Himself to meet His very own justice by placing Jesus on the cross as payment for our sin (He carried them in His own body), and then crushing Him to satisfy the demands of His own holiness and justice. This obligation God placed on Himself being accomplished (the price being paid), He then was able to take on the obligation of saving all those who accept His work by faith.
There is also an obligation laid upon us by God, but it has nothing to do with the work of salvation. He has reserved that for Himself. The obligation that He has laid upon us is simply the obligation of trustful response. In His Sovereignty, this is simply what God has decided to do. God promises to do this, and thus obligates Himself, and He has made the condition of salvation the simple act of accepting His power and promise as true and doing so personally. When a person truly does this, God comes to live inside of them and He begins to change them to be what He wants them to be: one who follows God's law, not by effort-full striving, but by pure nature. Holiness and righteousness are what we lack, and they are the goal of our salvation. Any ideas of 'God's salvation' that omit or dismiss personal holiness and righteousness are not from God.
At the end of the day, rejection of the promise and reality of Christ takes two forms: either outright disbelief that God saves people only through faith (which is calling God a liar), or outright rejection of salvation by faith as nonsensical (which is calling God ignorant and irrelevant).
The only valid obligation placed upon us is the one God Himself gives us by the very offer of His promise of salvation. When we try to save ourselves by our own 'good' behavior, we are in essence seeking to place an obligation upon ourselves to be 'good enough' for God to save us. God says this way can save no one - it is impossible. The only valid obligation we have is to simply believe and accept the promise God has made)
The further the Jews went with their 'works', the farther they got away from God who is reached only by faith, and when they had fully hardened themselves in the falsehood of 'works', God's punitive and judicial hardening set in. Having sealed their own doom, God too sealed it for them.
Paul clothes this thought in Scriptural language: "They stumbled against the stone of the stumbling", and then follows this with the Scripture itself. The Greek is stronger than the English: "they struck against the stone of striking against" or, "they smashed", etc. And 'proskomma', with its suffix -ma, indicating results (see Robertson's Greek grammar, section 151) equals the accomplished smashing.
This is not a stone over which one may merely stumble and recover oneself but one against which one runs with his entire body and smashes it entirely; it is like knocking one's brains out. The stone itself is of such a size, and its very character produces such a dire result. The fact that Paul has Christ in mind is beyond question, Christ in His effect on unbelieving workers of law.
--R.C.H Lenski - "Interpretation Of Romans" pp 636-637
Obviously this has great meaning for those that do not have a saving relationship with Jesus Christ, but it is equally as important for those that are 'saved', as we call it inside the church.
Why?
For the same reason that it was important to the Christians at the church in Galatia. They started off so well under the instruction of Paul, but along the way other people came along and interjected a different gospel: not a gospel of grace and their responsibility of a faithful response, but instead a gospel that included 'faith' alongside human works toward following the Jewish law. This included all areas of Jewish observance, including circumcision. The Apostle, but more importantly the Holy Spirit through Paul, had some strong words for those allowing themselves to be pulled away from the bona fide gospel:
Galatians 5:1-7 (NIV)
(1) It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
(2) Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all.
(3) Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.
(4) You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
(5) But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope.
(6) For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.
(7) You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth?
This is quite stern, isn't it? After all, Paul is writing this to true Christians - to people that have believed and received the Spirit (Galatians 3:1-3). Listen to how important it is not to accept a corrupted Gospel. Listen to the consequences the Holy Spirit points out through Paul:
v. 2 "if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all." If Christ is of no value, that means no salvation through Christ - for this is the value that Christ provides.
v. 4 "you who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace". How horrible. To be separated from Christ is to be outside of His saving power. To have fallen away from grace is to be separated from the saving effects of that same grace.
In v. 2 Paul calls out in a specific exclamation: 'ide!' - pay attention! take notice! Or as it is rendered in the NIV: 'Mark my words!'. These things are critical to the attainment or loss of eternal life and Paul wants them understood as such.
Paul is telling these Christians that if they allow themselves to be circumcised in order to pursue a relationship with God, that Christ will be of 'no value to them at all'. Consider the Greek phrase that underlies this translation - the wording is so strong: 'ouden ophelesei'. 'Ouden' is a negating term. It means 'no', 'not at all'. In fact, it is so strong that it removes any possibility of doubt and it excludes any exceptions at all. It is 'no' in the strongest, most absolute terms. 'Ophelesei' means 'assistance', 'help', 'aid', 'profit', 'benefit'. If they step away from salvation by faith and only by faith, they lose the benefit of Christ completely.
In v. 4 Paul warns them that if they seek justification from the law rather than on account of Christ, they have been 'alienated from Christ' and 'fallen away from grace'. Consider the Greek under this translation - it is chilling: 'katergethete apo Christou' - 'katergethete' means 'to cause something to be unproductive', 'to use up or exhaust something', 'to cause something to lose its power or effectiveness', 'to invalidate something', 'to make something powerless', 'to abolish', 'to wipe out', 'to set aside'. Paul is saying that if these Christians do these things, they will be totally and completely removed from the power and effectiveness of Christ. 'Exepesate charitos' - 'exepesate' means 'to fall away from a favorable condition', 'to lose something'. 'Charitos' in this context means God's saving grace. It means 'a beneficial disposition towards someone', 'gracious care', 'gracious favor', 'goodwill', 'the practical application of all these things: favor, goodwill, care, a precious gift'. 'Grace' is all of these things. In essence, it is being willing to love and applying love.
For these Christians to be circumcised in the Jewish manner for the Jewish reason (to enter a covenant with God) means that the benefit they had from Christ by faith would be totally and completely nullified. This portion of Scripture isn't talking about people that merely professed faith in Christ. These are people that truly are 'saved' and are in danger of losing their salvation by falling away from Christ and His grace. One cannot fall away from something one does not possess. Paul isn't talking about the loss of opportunity to be saved through Christ, but the actual loss of salvation in Christ one already possesses. This isn't talking about some external force snatching these Christians from God's hands, that is impossible. This is talking about people in God's hands deciding to jump by accepting a different gospel. There is no part of Scripture that indicates God holds on to people against their will.
This is how important it is to protect the integrity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ at all costs. It is the only way to God that He has given for anyone to be saved. To deviate from God's plan of salvation by and only by Jesus' completed work on the Cross is to either not attain to salvation at all, or to lose it having once possessed it.
The modern church, at least in the West, is awash in counterfeit 'gospels':
- the gospel of material health and wealth
- the gospel of name it and claim it: the gospel of make a wish, any wish
- the gospel of works first to last: earned salvation
- the deterministic gospel where God doesn't really desire to save everyone. He only desires to save a few and He saves them not by influence (revelation) and response (conviction and active trust), but rather He imposes faith via cause and effect by 'regenerating' them. Not so that they will be merely enabled to trust Him, but in a way that they will trust Him of necessity. The regeneration is prior to faith and is a saving act in and of itself because it leads irresistibly to faith. This gospel says that the unregenerate sinner is outside the power of God's revelation and conviction until they are reborn in regeneration. I might be wrong but it seems to me that this gospel presents a less than omnipotent God, it seems to me that it slanders His character in that it claims He says one thing but means another regarding who He truly desires to save, and it definitely places the new birth prior to the personal exercise of faith. It is not a gospel of salvation by faith first to last, it is a gospel that says salvation is to or towards faith, not sourced from faith.
- the gospel of initial faith but salvation maintained by works
- the gospel awash in the 'means of grace', namely the Roman sacraments - meaning that it is through these physical actions that God bestows His grace, rather than by simple, childlike trust in God's promise.
If you can envision a corruption of the gospel, it surely exists out there somewhere. All of these other gospels claim to be genuine, but in one place or another they contradict what God has clearly said.
The only Gospel God has provided is one that is truly 'out of' faith, first to last. Faith first exercises itself in repentance (agreeing with what God says about our sin and being willing to turn from it - this is faith exercised as trust in what God says about our sin), and after this it accepts Jesus' work on the cross as its own. This is true faith exercised as active trust in God's words concerning sin, righteousness, and judgment. And this faith has to be *your* faith. God has to enable it by making His promise (which He has done), but you have to exercise it once its possibility is born in you. Only you can do this. No one can repent for you, and no one can give you to God. Those actions must be your own.
The idea of forgiveness from God that is applied only to those that believe His promise is found all throughout God's word. In the Old Testament it is found in the sin offering, the whole burnt offering, and the offering given on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). The sacrifice of Yom Kippur, for instance, was for all of Israel. God provided it so that any and all sin could be forgiven, and the one sacrifice given for all was sufficient to do so. But the benefits of the sacrifice were only applied to those that truly repented and believed as God indicated they should: with a whole heart and with all their soul. If this wasn't done, the benefit of the sacrifice that could have been theirs was lost, left on the table because of an unrepentant and disbelieving heart. In the cross of Christ, we have that offer of salvation made universally to all mankind, and any and all who will accept it will be rescued, for all who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
My hope for you is that you find the little gate that leads to the narrow path of salvation. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. He is the only salvation that God has offered. Before it's too late, allow His words to convict you of your sin, repent (change your mind and turn away) from what God shows you, and turn to Him in trust to save you.
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