“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” ~ John 8:31-32, ESV
"The truth will set you free," has become a truism but very few people fully realize what Jesus meant by it because they quote Him out of context. What is the truth, and how will it set me free? Jesus says if we abide in His word as His disciples then we will know the truth. Only when we know the truth can it set us free. The gospel message is that we can be saved by faith in Jesus Christ. Here is the problem: what is the gospel, what do we need to be saved from, what is faith, and who is Jesus Christ?
Many well meaning but misguided Christians' best defense of their beliefs is, "Just believe." A popular song by Christian rock band Fireflight insists,
Sometimes it's hard to just keep going But faith is moving without knowing
Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot believe in what you do not know. Jesus taught we must know the truth before it can set us free. The Old Testament prophet Hosea put it this way,
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. ~ Hosea 4:6, ESVThe problem with much present-day Evangelical Christianity is that faith is preached so disproportionately to anything else taught in the Bible is that many Christians no longer know what they believe, only that they will be saved if they believe in Jesus. When I served as a youth pastor I decided to ask the youth one day what they would say if an unbeliever asked them, "What do I have to do to be saved?" I was met by blank stares. I had at expected them not to have trouble explaining why they believed, but they could not even articulate what they believed. These teens were not stupid, but they had never been taught to explain or defend the gospel. I immediately began teaching them Christian apologetics. I hope it sunk in, though by now I am no longer a youth pastor and I attend a different church.
Jesus commanded His disciples to Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. To do this effectively, we must know what we are talking about. In fact, if we do not know what we are talking about then how do we even know that we have the truth? We will never be free until we know the truth.
My purpose in starting this blog is to defend the idea that Christianity (the faith founded on Jesus' word) is the truth, and that by knowing the truth and applying it to our lives (discipleship) we can be free. I do not claim to know all the answers, but I do know enough to tell you what I believe and why I believe it. I am a seeker of the truth, I have managed to find what I believe is the most important Truth. I hope my readers will join me in my quest for truth.
So in conclusion, what is the gospel, what do we need to be saved from, what is faith, and who is Jesus Christ?
The gospel is that humanity rebelled against their creator and condemned themselves to a cursed life on earth and eternal torment in hell. In order to rescue humans from their own self-destruction God took on human form as Jesus of Nazareth about 2,000 years ago in Roman occupied Palestine. Jesus was concieved in a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit and lived a sinless life. He wandered Galilee and Judea teaching and performing miracles. He was crucified, died, and was buried for three days, but on the morning of the third day He rose and appeared to many people alive from the dead. After 40 days He ascended to heaven and will return one day, judge all humanity, reward the righteous, and punish the wicked. He will then set up His eternal kingdom in new heavens and a new earth. In the meantime, His Spirit indwells all who believe in Him.
Salvation means we are rescued from the curse of sin and death we brought on ourselves when we rebelled against God.
Faith is trust in God; we must trust that He exists, that He rewards those who seek Him, and that Jesus Christ's death and resurrection paid our ransom from the curse.
Jesus Christ is God in human form.
This is what I believe. If you want to find out why I believe, pay attention to this blog for future posts.
Cool opening post. To get at some issues that you might want to address as you continue writing. I find that the reason that there is such an emphasis on "just have faith" in Jesus and an inability to articulate anything else is because of modern evangelical's strange obsession with penal substitutionary atonement. In which the primary problem of sin is that it is disobedient not that it is inherently destructive. And what we need to be saved from therefore is God "just" punishment of our disobedience. Christ pays that penalty for us us so long as we have faith in Him and so we need not really change or have evidence of change, we just need to have faith that Christ took the bullet for us.
ReplyDeleteThe irony of this situation is that churches often don't want to talk about God's wrath on sin either. So what you have left is just believe in Christ and you will be saved...period...end of story.
So personally I find the knowledge barrier about the gospel to be a gross understatement of atonement plus avoidance behavior of the very limited view of atonement the church is even willing to teach. Jesus is recorded as preaching the gospel, "repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand". If we don't even constructively approach the issue of the kingdom of God as part of the gospel (which the "Jesus saves us from hell" gospel does not) than what we are preaching is hardly the gospel at all.
Also a last point of interest in the post is that you say Jesus saves of from the curse of sin (which is death) but then also seem to affirm an eternal hell? For Jesus saves us from God theology, eternal hell can make some sense. For Jesus saves us from the curse of sin, not so much, unless you simply mean God's wrath when you say the curse of sin but that isn't quite biblical.
Looking forward to your posts to come!
Hi Scott! I actually agree with much of what you said. My main disagreement with your comments an an eternal hell. I don't think Jesus saves us from God. After all, God (the Father) so loved the world that He sent His one and only son as John 3:16 says. Rather, I would frame it as salvation from the just consequences of our sin. God is not willing that any should perish, but to simply overlook sin would be unjust. Someone had to pay the price so the Father sent the Son; God Himself took human form and paid our ransom with His own innocent blood. However, this ransom must be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, since He could then pass over sins--but not willy nilly just because He felt bad for us, rather because the Son served as our Passover Lamb who took away our sin. This enabled Him to be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus--and no one else (Romans 3:21-26, my own paraphrase). Also, I would say that salvation from God's wrath is perfectly biblical if we are to believe Romans 5:6-11 is to be believed (especially verse 9). You are right to say this is only a part of the gospel.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I am understanding your distinction. Jesus does not save us from God, but from the "just punishment of sin". But unless God is subject to some higher moral order than Himself this simply reverts back to Jesus saves us from God. The classical view of the church fathers in Christ Victor or ransom theory was that Jesus set us free from the captivity of sin, death, and Satan (a ransom being a price paid to set free a captive). There was no real view of Jesus as being one who is saving us from God's necessity to punish us which I think is what moves salvation away from living for the kingdom of God (being set free) and into the territory of getting out of jail free. Even the Passover metaphor you mentioned is a bout identity and not substitution. The angel of death did not kill a lamb instead of the first born child, but the blood of the lamb marked who belonged to God's covenant. In the same way identifying ourselves with Christ covers our sin, not Jesus taking the punishment for our sin.
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