Page II
Whenever I have read through the story of Jesus' birth, I am struck with
the simplicity and profundity of the
Christian gospel. You can see it from the
very beginning. It's right there in what the angel said to
Joseph, "You
shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their
sins" (Matt. 1:21).
When the Father gave the incarnate Son a name, He proclaimed His rescue
mission in no uncertain terms. Jesus,
the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew
name Joshua, means "Savior." Now, "there is salvation in no one
else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by
which we must be
saved" (Acts 4:12). Jesus is the Savior-that's been the
joyful news from the start.
But you might ask the question: "A Savior to save us from what?"
That's certainly a fair question. The word
savior implies that we need to be
saved from something. Saved is a synonym for rescued or delivered.
It implies
there's some kind of threatening condition, a dangerous, desperate, or deadly
condition from which
we need to be rescued. The question is, from what?
If you listen to the way some preachers speak about the gospel,
quite frankly, the condition of unbelief
doesn't sound so grave. You get the
idea that humanity mainly needs to be rescued from its lack of fulfillment.
Maybe your marriage hasn't worked out according to plan; or your child isn't
turning out to be tomorrow's
Copernicus or Einstein; or your dream career has
turned out to be a dead end. You look at the
travel brochures;
you really want a month in
see the in-laws. Life just doesn't
deliver.
According to the gospel some are preaching, Jesus will take care of all that.
Jesus will fix your marriage; He'll
help you raise confident kids, brimming with
self-esteem; He'll help you climb that corporate ladder or
breathe new life into
your business. The only danger from which you need salvation is the shattering
of all your dreams. Everything you've longed for has turned out to be a
nightmare, and that's the way it's going
to end. But Jesus will take care of
it-He'll rescue you from your unfulfilled life.
I've also heard people presenting the gospel as if the great hope of
salvation is relief from debilitating habits.
Jesus has come to enable you to
get control of your life. He's the step stool, the boost you need to
get out of
the hole you've fallen into. That salvation is especially attractive to a
society like ours that is
overcome by lust and passion. Many are enslaved by
sinful habits: drinking, smoking, pornography, even overeating.
Obesity is on
the rise in many countries-in
tempers destroy homes
and relationships. Sexual sin, both homosexual and heterosexual, plagues the
entire
world-AIDS ravishes entire continents. But Jesus will come along and fix
all that. He'll pluck you out of the
flood of dissipation by saving you from
your drives and desires so you won't destroy your life.
Will the gospel deliver you from an unfulfilled life? From enslavement to
debilitating habits? Absolutely, but
that needs to be qualified. There is a
sense in which the gospel secondarily makes an application to those
things. When
you are genuinely converted, you belong to God and the Holy Spirit takes up
residence in your
heart. You do have a new reason to live; you have the hope of
eternal life and the promise of heaven. That has
a dramatic effect on the lack
of fulfillment in life. And when you experience the power of the Holy Spirit to
change
you, you'll see victory over the debilitating habits and passions that
your sinful nature generates. That's all true. But
those are not the primary
issues in salvation.
Finding fulfillment and overcoming bad habits cannot be the most important
concerns of the gospel.
Why not? Because not everybody in the world is
unfulfilled. In fact, I think this idea of lacking
fulfillment is a byproduct of
our western culture. Throughout the world, there are many who live expecting
very little out of life. They don't experience a lack of fulfillment-there's
nothing to fulfill. On the other
hand, many people are very content with their
present condition. They've got all the wine, women, and
song money can buy. And
not everyone is driven to a point of desperation and disaster by their passions
either. There are people who have a certain measure of self-control. So those
things cannot be the universal problem.
The real problem is sin and guilt. That's the issue. God sent Jesus Christ to
rescue us from the consequence
of our sin, and everybody falls into the category
of sinner. It doesn't matter whether you're among the
haves or the have-nots,
whether you have great expectations or none at all, whether you're consumed by
your passions or exhibit a degree of self-control and discipline-you are still a
sinner. You have broken the
law of God. Unless something
happens to change your condition, you're on
your way to eternal hell. You need
to be rescued from the consequences of your
sin. Those are the principal issues
the gospel solves.
The truth is, even when you are delivered from the ultimate danger of God's
wrath against sin, you might
never realize your dreams. When you come to Christ,
the Lord realigns your thinking so that all you
ever wanted, all you used to
strive for, you count as loss, waste, garbage (as did Paul in Phil. 3:4-8). Coming
to Christ means the end of you. Also, though you'll experience the power of the
Holy Spirit to gain victory
over sin, you may never attain total dominance over
your drives and passions this side of heaven. Like
Paul, you will strive with
sin to your dying day (Rom. 7:13-25). Issues of fulfillment and sinful
passions will be dealt with, in the Lord's time and in the Lord's way.
WE need to get back to remembering that God sent His Son into the
world to save His people from
their sins. A proper presentation of the gospel
should focus on that. The angel told Joseph: "He is the one
who will save
His people from their sins. That is why you must name Him Jesus."
Humanity's real
destroyer is sin, and the guilt for sin is a real guilt, a
God-imposed guilt that damns to eternal
hell. That is why people need to be
saved, rescued, and delivered. That is what people must
understand in the
gospel, and that is what we must proclaim.
Widely known for his thorough, candid approach to teaching
God's Word, John MacArthur is a fifth-generation
pastor, a
popular author and conference speaker, and has served as pastor-teacher of Grace
Community
Church in Sun Valley, California since 1969.
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OUR Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done
on earth as it is in
heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive
those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil. Amen.
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Two ladies that were neighbors for many years
past away this last year. One of them was just past ninety-four
years, and the other one would soon have been ninety-four. They were way up
there in years, but those were sweet
old ladies, just precious people. One of them had the testimony that she had
given her heart to the Lord when she was twelve
years old and had lived for God right on up through the years, eighty-two years
for God! Isn’t that a wonderful record? If you
young folks and children have started living for God, just keep right on and
maybe you will live eighty-two years for God. If
you haven’t, get started now so you can live what time you have left for God,
in His service, doing good and helping save
somebody else. God wants to save you to serve Him, working for a good cause and
maybe helping other people to find
salvation. He needs you, He needs young folks. Young folks can fill places older
folks can’t fill. They have the
energy, strength, etc., to go out there and do, where older folks aren’t able
to. I don’t class myself as old, but I can’t
go like I used to go. If you would just get in the harness and get going, get
busy doing what God would have you to do,
and remember Christ's grace is given freely to anyone who will accept it.