The Power of the Gospel

2007-01-16

God Is Seeking the Lost

God, Creator of heaven and earth and everything in them, from the very beginning wanted a relationship with humankind. When the first people sinned, the entire creation was affected. Since the chosen Image-bearing creatures, which were created to rule the world and subdue it, had fallen, the entire world has been under a curse.

But now God, through His Son Jesus Christ, is appealing strongly through His Gospel. All of humankind has sinned and is helpless before the living God. Jesus died for that sin and rose from the dead. He is returning again to judge the earth and all its inhabitants.

Since the early centuries of the church, there has been a debate over some of the specifics of the Gospel. Did Jesus Christ really die for all of humankind, or only certain people (John 3:16)? Does God really want to see all people to come to repentance, or only a select group (2 Peter 3:9)? Is there an aspect of limited atonement? Does God choose some people to be His elect and some people to go into eternal perdition? Are the lost really lost, or can they earn salvation some way? How we answer some of these questions will show us our view of the urgency to see the lost come to Christ.

The Eternality of God

It is imperative to understand that God is eternal. He exists outside of space and time. He is always the same and never changes (Hebrews 13:8). He is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, and is not dependent on space, time, or matter, for He created them all. In creating all things, God created humankind with volitional ability. Though He did not create the choices they made, He made them to be able to choose, knowing full well the consequences of this. He planted the tree of the knowledge of good and evil so that humankind would have a real capacity to choose to follow God or not. Through the riches of Jesus Christ, He foreknew that humankind could be more than “very good” (Genesis 1:31). God’s vision for a glorified humankind could only be brought about by the work of Jesus Christ; all of the sin of humankind was meant for evil while God glorified His name that much more through the tragedy in Eden. He created and saw the beginning and the end at once; God exists outside of time.

The Salvation Dilemma: Who Chooses, God or People?

But how is one saved? Does God instill the faith in a person, or does one choose to exercise faith? We know that humankind has the inability to please God (Romans 3:10-18), and God is sovereign over all things.

As I referenced above, 2 Peter 3:9 states that God wants all people to “come to repentance.” That is why He gave His only begotten Son to save His people from their sins. He wants all people to be saved. He knew that there was no way that people could save themselves. God gave His Law, which demonstrates His righteous character, to Moses and His people to show them that they were not perfect. Built into the law was a sacrificial system so that people could see that an animal had to die in their place to cover their sins. There were many sins that warranted death, where there was no sacrifice that could be offered. These things demonstrated that the people were helpless before God and that they needed God Himself to rescue them.

From the discussion so far we can conclude the following:

Romans 3:10ff: Humankind has sinned and is helpless before God’s perfect standard.
Therefore, humankind cannot choose to follow God, so the theologies of both Pelagius and Jacobus Arminius are flawed.
2 Peter 3:9: God wants all of humankind to be saved.
Therefore, God will not show partiality as to who gets saved since He wants all to be saved, so the theologies of John Calvin and Augustine are flawed.

So how do people get saved? If God is not going to impute faith on a select few and people cannot choose to follow God on their own, how do the lost come to Christ?

Faith Comes From Hearing

Faith comes from hearing: “So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). When the Gospel is presented in the right context, the Word of God will stimulate faith in the work of Jesus Christ. The Gospel is the power of God’s salvation (Romans 1:16). The phrase “hearing of faith” in Galatians 3:2 and 3:5 also suggests this. It is not by works of any kind, or anything that ever came out of humankind, but the message of the Gospel comes from without and generates faith by this “hearing,” or a clear understanding of the message of the Word of God.

There are many aspects that include the Gospel. One must understand that they are a sinner, helpless and hopeless before God. One must understand that Jesus died for their sin and rose from the dead. But a person may also come with enough personal and cultural baggage that will hinder the Gospel. Do they know what sin is? When they hear about ‘God,’ do think about the Creator ex nihilo, or one being in the midst of a pantheon of spirits and other so-called gods? Sharing the gospel may very well include clarifying some of these issues as well. This is why it is imperative to teach through the Bible chronologically as a part of evangelism in some very remote cultures, teaching some of the Old Testament to lay a foundation for the Gospel. Remote peoples, especially from non-western cultures, never heard about the Creator God who also is a personal God. We start talking about God from the beginning of history in Genesis, and let God’s story unfold from the beginning: the Creation, the Fall, and the unfolding prophecy of what God was going to do in the future. It all takes time and patience, because otherwise the people will not understand.

Preparing the Soil

This is illustrated in Matthew 13:3-9 with the parable of the sower. One must see that the only ones that produce fruit are the final group, the seed that was placed on good fertile soil. For those not from an agrarian society (such as myself), one must not forget the obvious (like I had for a long period of time). One does not intentionally sow seed on rocky soil or with thorns. Who in their right mind would do that? You plant on the good soil so you can get the fruit. But who is to say that the rocky soil could not be cleared and planted like the other? Having to plant grass on a rocky slope in central Missouri, we had to clear the rock away before we laid the seed. Once we did that, we were able to plant grass, and it sure did grow!

The same is with the non-Christian today. I grew up in a society where films and books seasoned with new age science fiction were plentiful. I also grew up in a society where everything is self-esteem oriented and the “you can accomplish anything if you put your heart into it” mentality. After hearing the Gospel somewhat clearly as a teenager, it took years to understand that I really was a sinner and helpless before God, and that there was no God other than the Creator of the universe. I was rocky soil that needed attention before I could be planted with the good news of the Gospel. The Samaritans in John 4:35 were “white already to harvest” because they saw their separation from the real living God and were ready for the Gospel.

The ‘planting’ metaphor is also exemplified in 1 Corinthians 3:6 where Paul is said to have planted, Apollos to have watered, and God to have given the increase. The message of the Gospel comes from without the unbeliever from the Word of God, through which God speaks. The believer is the one who brings the unbeliever the Word of God.

Another example of this pre-evangelizing took place when Paul speaks to the Epicureans and the Stoicks in Athens. Considering their thorough background on Greek philosophy, and believing that the flesh is evil, the resurrection of the dead is going to sound ridiculous to them (Acts 17:31-32). Though some believed, it would take a long time to penetrate their unbiblical worldview to plant churches in such a culture.

Hardening of Hearts: Unique Situations

Now many passages may seem to suggest the contrary, that God chooses some to go to perdition, or that He chooses some to eternal life. Romans 9-11 is usually one argument for this. The focus of this passage, however, is a different situation. The Jews’ hearts were hardened in part so that the Gospel would go to the ends of the Earth. This also is seen when the Jewish leaders were in unbelief in the midst of signs accompanying Jesus’ advent (Matthew 12:31). But hardness of heart always begins with the people, not God. People want to walk away from God so badly that God gives them over to their desires (Romans 1:18ff). This also happened to the king of Egypt in Exodus so that Israel could leave and go to Canaan, but the king’s hard heart started from within himself. In the future, this will happen again, when God must bring this age to a close, He again will send a strong delusion over the entire world that has rejected God (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

The Burden of the Church

God wants all people to come to knowledge of Him. The burden of the church is to walk in the Spirit (Galatians 5:25). If we are resting in Jesus’ grace and continually recognizing our need for Him in our lives, then He will speak through us the words of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. His agenda will be advanced, and not ours. If this is the case, people will hear the Gospel and be saved. If we invest our prayer life and our hearts into the lives of people, then God can appeal through us and people can trust in Him. If we do not have God’s vision for the nations, how will the ends of the earth be reached for Christ?