What Do We Do With The Gospel?
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For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek (Rom 1:16).
As we move forward, we need to remember and keep going back to the fact that the Gospel is what the whole Bible is about, with the death and resurrection of Jesus being the focal point or point of the spear. In fact, Jesus’ death (for our sins) and his resurrection are the main things, with the rest of the Bible being the explanation, foundation, and context for the Gospel. The whole book is about what God has done to have a vibrant and glorious relationship with us his people.
What I mean is Jesus’ actual, physical death and his actual, historical, physical resurrection from the dead is the Gospel. If these events hadn’t happened in history this saying is very true, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” (1 Cor 15:19). That said, without the rest of the Bible, we wouldn’t understand anything about Jesus’ death and resurrection. We wouldn’t know why he needed to come. We wouldn’t know why he came. We wouldn’t know who he was/is. We wouldn’t know anything about the God who sent him. We wouldn’t know anything about how are to live in the light of all these things. And much much more.
But the question before us now, is “What do we do with the Gospel once we hear the Gospel about Jesus Christ?” Remember that Gospel means good news. So, what has happened is someone came to us (or perhaps we went to church or some kind of evangelistic service) and told us about what Jesus did on the cross and why. They said something like, “Jesus died on the cross for your sins and he rose from the dead.” Now what? What do you with the good news you’ve just heard?
The Need for Good News
To answer this question, we need to begin with what you did in order to be in a position where good news was good news. There is a sense in which you didn’t do anything and another sense in which you did plenty. Here’s what I mean.
Most people start out in life simply living. If their parents are Christian, they may hear a lot about God and the things of God. If their parents aren’t Christian, they might hear about God, but it is mostly in the form of cursing and expletives. In either case, small children are just going along, doing whatever pops into their heads. But what pops into their head is always viewed from their vantage point. The lens they see life through is always self-centered. That’s all there is when you’re 9 months old.
Little Johnny, who grow up in a godly Christian family, however, learned very quickly that there is another perspective to life. He learned that God created the world in a particular way, and he isn’t at the center of that world. He also learned that God has placed his parents in the position of being his representatives. With the help of godly parents, Johnny learns that the lens through which he observes life needs to change from his vantage point to God’s.
Little Suzy, whose parents don’t know that God has placed them in the position of representative, gets to live according to her own “light.” As she grows, she continues to view everything through her own lens, and this continues until someone stronger or more powerful comes along and curbs some of her self-expression.
In both cases, however, the Bible tells us that everyone is born self-centered, and self-absorbed. And it characterizes this focus as sinful because God should be at the center, not his creation. And thus, this attitude or identity is sinful, full of sin. This is what theologians mean by total depravity. Sin is being defined here as thinking, doing, saying, and feeling with yourself at the center. From our conception on, because we are people from the beginning, we actively rebel against any and all authority. And God is the highest authority. One of my friends says that babies are simply, “cute little bundles of sin. All they need is the physical ability and an opportunity to sin.” And this is true. The Bible says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23).
Someone might say, “If everyone is doing it, it is normal, so what’s the problem?” The problem is that normal is not normal. Or at least, the normal we observe around us was not intended to be normal. God created people to have fellowship with him and to receive his glory. We see this briefly here, “Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (Jn 14:23). And here, “Everyone who is called by My name, Whom I have created for My glory; I have formed him, yes, I have made him” (Is 43:7). Of course, the Bible says this in many different ways, but as we have seen in talking about the Gospel, the point of the good news is to repair or fix the sinful situation we find ourselves in. Thus, the Good News is good news because our sin causes us to fall short of God’s glory and thus of his presence in our lives.
I would be remiss to fail to point out that besides the passive negative effect of sinfulness (loss of glory), there is also an active consequence of sinfulness. This is summed up in these passages:
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.” (2 Cor 5:10–11)
“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Mt 10:28)
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 6:23)
One thing I haven’t mentioned until now is that not only does the Gospel mean that God has restored fellowship and glory with him, but this fellowship and glory will begin now and will extend into eternity.
What We Do With This Wonderful Information
So, the bad news is that we are all in sin, sinful, sinners and we are in desperate need of being delivered from the presence and consequences of that sin and condition of sin. The good news is that God sent Jesus to take our sins (die in our place) and raised him from the dead to prove that this is what happened. Now what?
Okay, you’ve heard the good news. Do you believe it? Does it all make sense to you? Do you see the need for the good news and desperately want it to be true for you? Are you sick and tired of living with the consequences of your sinful life and want to be saved from it? Are you terrified about the idea of Hell and are convinced that without some kind of outside help, you’re certainly headed there. Here’s a little back and forth conversation that the Apostle Paul had with a Philippian jailer:
And he brought them out and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” So they said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household.” Then they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes. And immediately he and all his family were baptized. Now when he had brought them into his house, he set food before them; and he rejoiced, having believed in God with all his household (Acts 16:30–34).
Before we talk some more about this passage, let me give a little context. Paul and Silas, with Luke, had been on their way to prayer. Along the way, the ran into a girl who was possessed by a demon. The girl was saying all sorts of things about Paul and it irritated Paul such that he commanded the spirit to leave the girl and she was healed of the demon. This all seems like a good thing. But the folks who tended the girl had been using her “gifts” for profit, and now that she didn’t have the demon anymore, they had lost their easy income. Consequently, they became angry with Paul and called the cops, who came, beat Paul and Silas with rods, and finally threw them into jail.
While they were in Jail, Paul and Silas decided to use their time there in an effective way. So, they prayed and organized a psalm/hymn sing. I’m pretty sure they were also sharing the Gospel with the other prisoners and guards.
Then, all of a sudden, a great earthquake shook all the open to the cell doors and the chains fell off all the prisoners. The jailer, who had been asleep, woke up and thought everyone had run away and that he was surely in danger of being tortured and killed. So, he decided to fall on his sword to get things over with. But Paul called to him, informing him that everyone was still there and to not harm himself. Then he called for a light and ran into Paul, fell down at his feet, and said, “what must I do to be saved.”
I mention the context here because you need to know that the question, “what must I do to be saved” came after certain events. He knew something about what Paul had been saying and why he had been imprisoned. Enough at least to know that he needed to be saved and that he wanted it.
But notice Paul’s response, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved…” Wait, that’s it? Just believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Yep. That’s it.
But there’s more to the phrase, “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ” than just believe the words being spoken. Believe, in the Bible means, to have faith in. So, the translators might have said, “put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ…” The word also means trust. So, the translators might have said, “trust in the Lord Jesus Christ…” As we think about each of the possibilities, we see that what follows makes sense. It isn’t that Paul was saying believe on Jesus like we believe that Abraham Lincoln was the sixteenth president; which requires no action as a result. He was saying believe on Jesus like you believe your house is on fire and about to collapse. It is the kind of faith, belief, trust that produces some kind of response. Run away!
In the case of the Philippian jailer, new faith produced listening some more to Paul about what God did for him in Christ, it included being baptized, and it included taking Paul and Silas home to meet the fam and feeding them all. Finally, and not to be missed, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ included his rejoicing with his whole household.
Conclusion
What do we do with the Gospel? We believe it. Responding to the Gospel means believing the Gospel and believing it in a way that produces a response of obedience.
And this ties us all together with the bad news. Remember the reason we needed the Good News? It was because we were self-centered in heart and wanted everything to go our way. We were sinners, sinful, and sinning all the time. And this sinfulness earned us wrath and hell. But part of that was that it caused us to be out of fellowship with God and to miss out on his glory.
Now, after believing, we have fellowship with God and we have joy, which is the part of the glory that has been given to us and will be given to us.
So, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.