by Jacob Ninan
There have never been so much of evangelistic activity and starting of new churches. The Bible has been translated into so many languages of the world that people can read it in a way they are most familiar with. Television and electronic media have made preaching of the Gospel and teaching of God's word accessible widely. Smartphones have made text and video available with a few clicks. At the level of statistics many people seem to be accepting Jesus. What we should be seeing is lives being transformed, which, in turn, are impacting societies (1Cor.1:18). Yet, all over the world, less and less people are showing a real transformation of their lives through the power of the Gospel. Marriages are breaking down between 'believers'. Teenagers and young adults are leaving their faith in many Christian families. Church people are looking more and more like the others in the world in the way they dress, talk and behave. Churches are trying to become more 'seeker friendly' (open the gates of the kingdom of God wider and lower the walls of the holy city) in order to make it easier for people to join. In trying to reduce the number of people who are leaving the churches, the leaders are trying to make the church more relevant to the culture and the changing trends.
Is this what we can expect from the Gospel? In trying to understand what has gone wrong, people come across many different factors, each of which needs attention. But my heart is pained above all by what I believe to be something that has changed in the core of our understanding of the Gospel and the way we present it. This is one major factor among all others that has caused the decline of the effectiveness of the church.
In order to understand the Gospel, the first thing we need to understand is our need for the Gospel. The Gospel is the good news about our salvation that God has prepared. The thirsty man in the desert longs for water and is willing to spend the last bit of his energy in order to run towards water. In the same way, those who realise how badly they need salvation are impressed by God's offer to consider it as good news. So why it is that many people are not running towards Gospel is because they do not really see their need for it. Nobody has told them. Let us now try to understand what our real need is, and then look at God's salvation. It will be only then that we can know how to announce this salvation to other people.
The fall of Lucifer
The Bible does not describe explicitly how Satan and his demons came to exist. But from what is given in the Bible, many are convinced that Lucifer was the chief of the angels at one time, and that he rebelled against God and drew many other angels with him. Lucifer became known as Satan or the Devil after that, and the other fallen angels became demons or evil spirits. (Lucifer is Latin for 'morning star' as in Isa.14:12). My aim here is not to describe what happened, but to learn from how it happened that the chief of angels became Satan."How you have fallen from heaven, O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High'" (Isa.14:12-14). The same event is described by Ezekiel also. "Thus says the Lord GOD, 'Because your heart is lifted up And you have said, "I am a god, I sit in the seat of gods In the heart of the seas"; Yet you are a man and not God, Although you make your heart like the heart of God--Behold, you are wiser than Daniel; There is no secret that is a match for you. By your wisdom and understanding You have acquired riches for yourself And have acquired gold and silver for your treasuries. By your great wisdom, by your trade You have increased your riches And your heart is lifted up because of your riches--'" (Ezek.28:2-5).
What we see here as the reason why Lucifer fell is that he wanted to be like God. He was already above every other created being in beauty, wisdom and power. Yet his problem was that he had to be subject to God. He could not do whatever he wanted. What he wanted when he wanted to be like God was to be able to have independence, sovereignty and no one else who could question him.
If he was a lowly, nondescript creature, probably he would not toyed with this idea. But he was an outstanding being, and the pride he entertained as the result of considering his greatness and uniqueness prompted him to consider aspiring for the status of the only One above him. If he could be like God, he would not have to always be restricted by what God decided, and he could do what he wanted. But that made him unfit for the role God had allotted to him, and he was thrown out of God's presence.
The fall of man
"Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, 'Indeed, has God said, 'You shall not eat from any tree of the garden'? The woman said to the serpent, 'From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat; but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, "You shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die."' The serpent said to the woman, 'You surely will not die! For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate" (Gen.3:1-6).The major attraction for Eve was that the forbidden fruit would make her like God. Even though she and Adam were highly intelligent people who were yet unblemished by sin, she could not see through the logical fallacy of Satan's proposal, that she could become like God by disobeying God! When we hear about becoming like God, we usually think of becoming loving, kind, patient, etc., like God, in His character. But for Eve, it was different. By offering the knowledge of good and evil in themselves, apart from a relationship with God, what Satan was promising was actually independence from God. In other words, they could become their own masters, deciding what to do. Can we see the similarity between the fall of Adam and Eve and the fall of Lucifer?
The key to salvation
Salvation is God's way of saving us from the predicament we are in and restoring us to the long-term relationship He wanted to have with mankind. We have seen that the root of all the problems we face now is sin. It is not always because of our personal sin. Others sin against us, and we also face the consequences of man's sins over the years such as sickness, natural calamity, chaotic weather, pollution, etc. Many people are, naturally, looking for release from having to suffer from these consequences. But the truth is that even after we have received forgiveness for our sins from God, we are not going to be free from their consequences as long as we are here on earth. God has set it up like this in order to give a warning to us as well as to the others who watch us, that we should avoid sin in the future (Gal.6:7).But there are many people who try to cater to man's desire to have a comfortable life even while they are unwilling to give up sin. That is the reason for the attraction of the other gospels like the health and wealth gospel, etc. But the consequences of sin can disappear only when there is no more sin, and that is going to happen only after God has placed His children on the new earth under the new heaven (Rev.21:3,4). But now the offer of the true Gospel to us is that God is willing to forgive all our sin, and to help us to live an overcoming life. That is salvation, beginning with justification and going on to sanctification and glorification. The blessing of salvation is not just that our sins will be forgiven and we can live forever, but also that the direction of our life will change from living for ourselves to getting closer to God every day and walking with Him. He will start changing our values, goals and desires, and giving us power to do His will in every part of our life.
Since there are many forms of gospels that are being preached today, even if we think that we have heard the Gospel and responded to it, we cannot just take for granted that all is fine! There are good chances that we have not heard and experienced the true Gospel or that we are not experiencing all of God's salvation. That is why it is important to understand more about how God's salvation works, and see how we can receive it more fully.
When we realise that sin started from Lucifer, and Adam and Eve, wanting to be free to do what they wanted, apart from God, certainly our entering into salvation will depend on our returning to God, and choosing to live under His rule in every part of our lives. God makes salvation open to all people, but we have to make the choice to return to Him. There are different levels of choice we have to make. Believing that there is a Living God to whom we are accountable, and that Jesus, the Son of God, died in our place to bear the punishment for our sins is one choice. The second choice is to acknowledge ourselves as sinners who deserve eternal judgment from God. Then we ought to make the choice to ask God for forgiveness because our sins have been paid for through Jesus' death. Finally we choose to live the rest of our life giving up our sinful ways and in obedience to God in everything. This is how we repent and turn back to God in whole. How seriously we take each of these will determine how much of salvation we will be able to enjoy.
When we look around, what we see is that people want 'freedom' which they think means a situation where they can do whatever they want to do without anyone limiting them. Some people say they want their own space. But what they do not realise is that if they did whatever they felt like, they would become slaves to their desires! What God has done is to draw a moral boundary around us, within which we will be happy and safe. He tells us to do certain things because they will be good for us, and He tells us not to do certain other things because those will hurt us and cause us eternal damage. But people think that to remain inside God's moral boundary will be a bondage! That is where Satan has deceived everyone and everyone has gone away from God. Salvation offers us freedom from this deception and gives us an opportunity to get back to God, submitting to Him.If we truly present God's Gospel, all the choices people need to make will become clear to them. Unfortunately, in an attempt to make the way of salvation simple and to make it possible for more people to come into its experience, many preachers present an easy path to them. For example, they quote, "if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom.10:9). It looks so easy and simple, and then they accuse that those who preach repentance are taking people back to the time of the Law of Moses when people had to obey God in order to earn blessings from Him. But when we read the whole Bible, we will see that confessing with our mouth Jesus as Lord has to come from our heart. It is not just saying something with our mouth. To believe that God raised Jesus from the dead implies knowing what the death and resurrection of Jesus means to us in terms of our salvation. There cannot be any proper faith in Jesus without a resulting repentance. And a proper repentance means to turn back from living for doing what we like to submitting to all that God tells us.
Many times it happens that this turning back to God may occur in steps rather than in a single moment. Some people come to Jesus for healing or solving some problems. They also think they believe in Jesus. But this belief does not give them salvation, but only healing! How many people are living under a false assumption like this where they imagine they believe in Jesus and have become children of God! But sooner or later they must recognise their sin, repent and put their trust in Jesus as their Saviour. Only then they will be saved.
The theology of the cross
Many who have come to experience forgiveness imagine that it is all there is to salvation. But as we have seen before, we need to immediately enter into sanctification through which we can be set apart for God more and more and become increasingly free from the power of sin in our life. If that does not happen, we will go on sinning, as before, and keep coming to Jesus for forgiveness. But then we will not be transformed in our life to become more like Jesus.Two aspects of the cross on which Jesus died are relevant to us in our salvation, related to our justification and sanctification. Most Christians are familiar with how the death of Jesus on the cross is what brought us forgiveness of our sins. Here the just demand of God that our sins must be punished was met, when the sinless Son of God died in our place and bore our punishment. This is the way God Himself paid our debt. Now we stand justified before Him, with the righteousness of Jesus credited to us. This is what God has done for us, and it is for us to receive as a gift through His undeserved favour towards us. We receive this through our faith (Eph.2:8.9).
The second aspect of the cross is that when Jesus died on the cross, we 'died' with Him. Just as in the way Jesus identified with us by bearing our sins on Him on the cross, we can now receive the benefit of His death that gives us His life, after having our old life crucified with Him. "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me" (Gal.2:20). "But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal.6:14). Recognising this and living our life on this basis is what will lead us to be set apart for God. We identify with our old life having been crucified. After we have been born again from God through our faith in Jesus, what we testify through water baptism is that our old life is dead and buried with Jesus (Rom.6:4). We will see this in reality when we receive the new life from God, and we have less and less in common with our old way of life and also the ways of the world.
When we die with Christ, we also become 'dead towards the Law'. "Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God" (Rom.7:4). The way of life under the Law was that those who obeyed God would be blessed while those who disobeyed Him would come under a curse. In Christ we become dead to the Law because we acknowledge that no one can become acceptable to God based on keeping the Law, and that our acceptance is based upon His grace towards us. The Law has no more hold on us to threaten or condemn us (Rom.8:1).
Another thing that happens to us when we are crucified with Christ is that we become 'dead towards sin' (Rom.6:1,2). This means that the old inclination in us which prompted us to do whatever we liked irrespective of what God thought about it has been replaced by a desire to always do what is pleasing to God. This happens when God gives us a new heart and a new spirit (Ezek.36:26,27). With this new attitude towards sin, now we must learn to walk in the newness of life. This is very important for us to participate in our sanctification.
Our practical life now
After God has forgiven our sins and given us a new heart that wants to be pleasing to Him always, we have to learn to walk daily, denying our own desires that come up from our old nature in order to do the will of God (Lk.9:23). Earlier, when we used to want our own way, we allowed our desires to direct our paths. Now, we have to learn to deliberately choose to present ourselves to God at all times in order to know what He wants and to do it (Rom.6:12,13). This is how we will be able to experience victory over sin in our life (v.14).Conclusion
Generally these two things are missing from the preaching of the Gospel. The first is to emphasise our sinfulness in front of God and to tell us to repent. The second is to tell believers that after they have been born again, now they need to deny themselves daily and follow Jesus in order to partake of His divine nature. I hope now it is clear what we need to do in order to participate in the full blessing of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us pray that the true Gospel will be allowed to work in our life, and also that we will begin to preach the full Gospel to others. Then we can hope that the power of the Gospel will begin to be seen in the lives of all who hear it.