The Fundamental Blog

We often-times hear the word, “Gospel,” thrown about as though it is universally understood by all. It is not! The Gospel of Jesus Christ is what we need to believe in order to be saved but to a dying world, a world that has not the slightest hint that they are in mortal danger, the term Gospel carries only slightly more meaning than Latin to a three year old.

Any Christian who has received the gift can tell you all about the Gospel, right? I struggle with the ability to even define the Gospel of Christ, in a way that is meaningful to anyone outside the church. There are a couple of things to consider when trying to witness to others about our faith. We need to know the message, understand the use of language and consider the ability of the hearer to receive the words we speak.

Most of us have little trouble with the language because we know all the words that are required to discuss Christendom - within Christendom. The problem comes when we attempt to discuss these things outside of Christendom. Perhaps a part of the reason that the world shuns our message is because we have so many, “shun-s,” in our message. We have salva-shun, justifica-shun, sanctifica-shun, redemp-shun, propitia-shun, resurrec-shun, ascen-shun, elect-shun and more, “shun-s,” besides! These words are used to convey lofty images and ideas and are extremely important for us to be able to discuss the workings of the kingdom of God, but they also can send our listener to the dictionary trying to decipher our meaning. If you have ever been on the receiving end of a discussion that was filled with language that you didn’t understand, you know that it doesn’t require too many trips to the dictionary before you decide that the message must not be meant for you. We need to try to be reasonably certain that what we say, and the way that we say it, is going to be able to actually be, “heard.”

Jesus never had to, “dumb-down,” the Gospel. He spoke the truth of God to everyone and those who were given the ability to hear it, did! “Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.” Where it seems that we have the most trouble is in distilling the message. We may only have one chance to get the Gospel out, and the person listening may not be able to afford you more than a few minutes; what is it that they must know in order to have any hope of being saved? It doesn’t sound like all that hard of a question, but can we answer it? Is it enough to walk around wearing a sandwich board that reads, “Repent! The End is Near!”? What, exactly, is the Gospel? Romans 1:16, “[The Gospel] is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth;…” Yeah, that ought to do it! What is this salvation thingy and, to everyone that believeth… WHAT? This is the part that can get sticky.

OK, we must believe in God, that’s a good place to start. Then we have to believe that we need to be saved. Saved from what? Why? What did I do? We must believe that Jesus died so that we can be saved, from something, and nobody else’s death could have done it for us because Jesus is the perfect Son of God; something else we must believe, or is that the main thing to believe? We need to understand that without intervention we were headed to Hell and that in order to get into Heaven we must have faith. Great! Heaven, Hell, faith - anything else we have to believe in? OK, so if I’ve got it straight: There’s this God guy who, because of some fruit that I didn’t personally eat, is blaming me vicariously of something called sin and is allowing me to go to a bad place called Hell that I’m not sure I understand but it’s alright because He had a Son, who He allowed to die this horrible death to pay the price of His wrath, again vicariously, to let me into a really nice place called Heaven, which I can’t quite understand either, and the only way I can get into the park is to believe something about this Son, Jesus, and everything will be fine, or not, in which case it won’t, right?

Doesn’t really make you all that anxious to sign up, does it? There has to be a better way, and there is. The Bible gives us reason to believe that the salvation of others will not be because of the degree of eloquence used in delivering the Christian precepts, nor the conclusiveness of our logical arguments; rather, the Gospel has within it, a sufficiency capable of melting the hardest hearts. For us to claim the victory of winning a soul to Christ is ridiculous. Even with perfect doctrine, it is impossible for any imperfect human to make a perfect discourse to convince another imperfect human. Matthew 19:26 tells us, in relation to the salvation of men, “With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.” We need to get the Word out, and if it is the right time for that person to have their heart softened enough to receive the Word, then it is all to the glory of Christ.

But we do have the responsibility to speak the Word. Since we are trying to convey the message that we need to be saved, and that we can only be saved by faith, we can look to Scripture to provide our confidence. Romans 10:17, “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” Also, Isaiah 55:11, “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Here we can see that we have assurance that faith is by the hearing of the Word and that the Word will do what it was sent to accomplish. Our job is to be faithful in giving out the Word of God and then let Him do the convicting by His power in the Holy Spirit. This leaves us with the initial problem though of determining how much information is required to be considered the, “Gospel of Christ.”

What does the word of God say? Well, for starters, it says that God is holy and we are sinful, and that because of this we are separated from him. It says that God must punish sin. We are told that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die in our place on the cross at Calvary to pay our sin debt and give us a way back to Him. The Bible tells us that there is no way back to God, from our fallen state, except by faith in Jesus Christ. So long story short…

We are sinful by our human nature and before God deserve punishment.

Jesus Christ came as deity incarnate to serve that punishment for us.

All we need to restore our position with God is to believe that Christ did this.


The good news part of all of this is that God, having once punished our sins in the body of His Son Jesus Christ, can never punish again for those sins, forgiveness is ours! A just God could never punish twice for the same sin. Because Jesus was obedient to death on the cross by the will of God, the Father, our sin debt has been cancelled; we are truly free because the Son has set us free.

There is no shortage of doctrinal topics to explore, nuances to learn and divine nature to be understood, but there is time enough for all of that once the justification is accepted and the work of sanctification begins. We need to be Faithful to the message and let God determine who will be made able to receive it and direct their further growth. God may decide that we should mentor the new seeker and may allow him to ask us questions to better understand and take him deeper into the mysteries of God. God may decide to use us in some other capacity, but in either case, the grace which saves is entirely His own and directed by His will. Charles Spurgeon was fond of stating the Gospel thus… “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved; believe not and be ye damned.” There it is in a nutshell; clear, concise and as basic as I think I have ever heard.

We can make the best apologetic arguments on the planet and never win anyone to Christ. We can debate doctrine until we are blue in the face without affecting the cause of Christ for the kingdom of God. Nobody have ever been argued into the grace of God, nor have any come by losing a fight. The only time anyone ever accepts salvation in Christ is when God acts on them by His Holy Spirit and un-stops their ears, opens their hearts and shines the light of Christ into their lives.

We are mere farmers. We sow the seed that another may water, but we must never lose sight of the fact that only God causes the growth. The seed we sow is of the finest quality but unless the soil is prepared, (the providence of God), and unless the seed is actually placed in the ground, (our assignment from God), no growth is possible. We need to do our part and then get out of the way so that God can do His. The Gospel of Christ is simple, if we let it be simple. We must not encumber it with so many unnecessary trappings that it gets lost beneath the doctrine. The grace we have been freely given, we are commanded to freely give so let’s do just that. Let’s take our seed sacks and start sowing the good seed. But as we go, let’s also keep a smile on our face, a tune in our heart and a spring in our step because we know that this thing we do is…



All for the Glory of Christ

Here’s an expression that we hear so often that it makes one wonder if there’s anything to it. Has this become a mere platitude that rolls too easily off the tongue, or is there a sincere wanting, a profound ability, to actually give it up? If we say that we are going to place a concern in the Lord’s hands, and then continue to worry about the outcome, have we denied the power of Christ? And how do we overcome our human nature and allow ourselves to not worry? If you think that this is going to be an instructional guide on how to accomplish such a task in 3 easy lessons, think again!

If a particular situation is out of your control to begin with, how can you give that situation to God? How do you give away something that you do not have? Perhaps, even though the situation itself is out of our control, our tendency to worry about it can be given up. The problem I have in my personal life is that there seems to be a world of difference, an unbridgeable chasm, between my desire to release the worry and my ability to actually do it. I find that the depiction Paul gives of his personal condition in Romans 7:19, applies all too much to myself. “For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

When we are faced with a problem concerning an unyielding adult child, an inevitable certainty or a personal limitation, we oftentimes resign ourselves and say, “I have to give it to God.” Then we spend the time between that decision and the eventual outcome, worrying about the very thing we were supposed to have given away. Even the phrasing of the statement, “I have to give it to God,” shows our obstinacy and reluctance to release control. To, “have,” to do something smacks of not wanting to do it. We are saying that we are compelled to do it because we have run out of options, we have no recourse to accomplish a given task on our own. But we wish it weren’t so.

The providence of God is such, that nothing that occurs is outside of the scope of His permission. That which God does not directly cause, He ordains that it should be allowed to occur. Even in the severe testing of Job, Satan first had to receive God’s permission to afflict him, and in that permission restraints were set. So with the knowledge that God is our Father, and that He wants what is best for us, (even if we sometimes can not see how the situation will benefit us), and knowing too, that He will work all things to the good for those who love Him and are called to His purpose, why should this be so hard? Jesus tells us that we are not to worry using the birds as an example. Matthew 6: 26 “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”

Maybe it’s just me, but I find it extremely distressing that there are others who know me better than I seem to know myself. We are blinded to many of our own faults but our friends see them. God knows us better than anyone, but He’s God! He get’s a free pass on that sort of thing. But Satan? How is it that he gets to know me so much better than I know myself? He knows exactly which strings to pull and which buttons to push to drive me nuts. In our most devoted moments of prayer we can know that God will do the thing that is best for us and yet, no sooner than we speak the, “Amen,” we find a voice saying, “But what if He doesn’t?” How little is the faith that thinks that it wears the whole armor of God, and yet finds Satan’s arrows, seeming to piercing right through?

I know it can not be true, but sometimes it sure seems like Lucifer had a hand in our creation. God gives us a heart with an immense capacity for love, a brain capable of understanding deep wisdom and unfathomable knowledge and then Satan says, “But lets make the neck so narrow that the information in the head has a hard time becoming experience in the heart and any experience that should develop in the heart will find an impossible path to the head.” It is far easier for me to acquire a head full of Godly information than it is for me to incorporate that knowledge into emotional conviction in my heart. Similarly, I feel and experience all manner of emotion while finding that I don’t understand the reasons behind them. I can be angry, tearfully weepy or even giddy without a clue why I should be feeling that way, but just as easily, I can be in a situation that could be expected to generate a particular emotion and find myself at the other end of the spectrum.

It occurs to me that if I truly am the odd duck in realizing these things, I may have just lost all credibility as a writer, but I can’t worry about that; I have to, “give it to God.” I find comfort in God’s Word. Ecclesiastes teaches us that there is nothing new under the sun, that all experiences in this human existence are common to man. If even an Apostle could see his own failings, (as did Paul), though set apart by God, I have hope that the challenge of surrender to the power of Jesus Christ is attainable. Though I may go kicking and complaining though the halls of grace, I know that I am being grown by the trial.

We are to thank God that we have been found worthy to be subjected to the trials in our daily lives. Our growth comes through the afflictions we face and in realizing the victories that Christ wins in us. To release our supposed right to worry over things that, for the most part, are out of our control is difficult because it seems un-natural. The world has conditioned us to think that when we reach the end of our rope we should tie a knot and hold on; God wants us to simply let go and trust that He will be there to catch us. Even though this seems to run contrary to common sense, it is only our imperfect, human concept of common sense that is getting in our way.

When I was in school, I took part in a class that exposed me to trust exercises. The thing that I remember the most, out of all that we did in that class, was the falling exercise. We were to stand with our backs to our partner and, with our arms slightly outstretched to the sides, fall backward off our heels. The sensation of falling with your legs locked was extremely un-nerving. Can I trust that that my partner will catch me? How badly will I be hurt if they don’t? These questions raced through my mind in the few short seconds that made up the seeming eternity before I felt the grasp of my catcher. As anxious as I felt at the anticipation of spilling my brains on the floor while I was falling, the relief of feeling the catch was immeasurable greater.

We can not know the relief of falling into the hands of God unless we are willing to surrender to the fall. Does this mean that we won’t be apprehensive the next time we are called to be tested? Maybe not. But the repetition, the practice of falling and being caught time after time, will gradually build in us a level of trust that increases with each trial. My logic says this is so but in practice, (and honesty), it is still something that I struggle with. This is what I think discipleship is all about, putting it out there so we can see ourselves in those around us; admitting our various failings, so that we can encourage one another to a stronger walk in Christ.

If you are anything like me, you know a lot more of God’s truth than you are able to live. I think that this is the situation we all find ourselves muddling through. This is also why it is so important that we get into God’s Word and make God’s Word a part of us. Only by immersing ourselves in the truth, which is the Lord Jesus Christ, can we grow stronger and become more obedient. We should all have, as a goal, the desire to be able to hear the whole world say that we can’t; hear Christ say, “Yes, you can,” and believe the Lord over all. If I am allowed to fall so that the glory of God might be displayed in His catching me, then I pray that I can fall…


All for the Glory of Christ