Gospel

What If It Were Today?

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

What if today were the day that Jesus calls his believers home? How would this change how you lived out this day?

I, for one, know that I would feel “unready” to say the least. There are so many things in life that I had always intended to do for God, that I have never gotten around to doing. 

There are so many people that I’ve never talked about the gospel with—people of other faiths that I care about and would want to be included in the family of believers before it’s too late. 

You might then ask why I don’t simply get it together and talk to these people now, while there’s still time. 

That’s a very good question. Perhaps it’s fear that’s stopping me—the anxiety of possible rejection on their part. 

What about you? What would you do differently today to prepare for Jesus’ return? Whatever it is, make plans to go ahead and do it while you still can.

The truth is, no one knows when Jesus will come back, and we all have a list of things we could work on before that time comes.

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. 

Matthew 24:36

Not even Jesus knows when He is coming back!

Much of your to-do list probably revolves around relationships—righting neglected relationships or forming new ones in the furthering of the gospel and creating goodwill within our community.

So, maybe we should just act like Jesus is coming back today. We would certainly accomplish more for the gospel than we currently are. 

Living our lives like it could be anytime would revolutionize our faith and turn many people around us onto the gospel.

Today is a great day to start living like that.

Are There Two Different Gods?

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

If you only read the Old Testament of the Bible, you might end up concluding that God is mean and wrathful toward His creation. 

Admittedly, there are many instances in the Old Testament where God exacts some form of punishment. Throughout its narrative, Israel is constantly sinning and making God angry.

Up until the time I accepted Christ as a teenager, I had read Genesis more than any other book of the Bible. 

The reason is because it is at the beginning and you always start reading a book at the beginning, right? Every time I would decide to read the Bible, I would open it at the beginning, Genesis. 

Consequently, my view of God was strongly shaped by what we find in the book of Genesis. I naturally grew up seeing God as a stern authoritarian.

While God is certainly all about law and order, there is also much more to Him. He is full of love and compassion for His people. Over and over, he forgives the Israelites for their sin and helps them out of predicaments they get themselves into.

For the most part, it is more difficult to see God’s love in the Old Testament, but it is there. You just have to look a little harder to see it. 

Of course, it’s easy to recognize God’s love when we read the New Testament. References to His love for His creation are abundant, with the crucifixion of His son depicted as the epitome of this love.

It is almost as if there are two different Gods — the stern God of the Old Testament and the loving God of the New Testament. 

There is of course just one God, the one Creator of the universe. The two testaments of the Bible emphasize different aspects of the nature of God. To get the true picture of God, you have to read both parts of the Bible.

In fact, the New Testament completes the image of God that is begun in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament., the law is given, and in the New Testament, we see how it is impossible for man to keep the law and that there must be a penalty for his sin.

Christ’s death and resurrection satisfy the penalty of man’s sin.

With the two sections of the Bible taken together, we get the full picture of God and His plan for mankind. You have to read the Bible in its entirety to understand God’s love and see the full scope of His plan.

So why is God seemingly presented so differently in the two testaments of the Bible? I don’t have a good answer to this question. 

The Jewish people, of course, only recognize and read the Old Testament. Does this skew their perception of God?

As a Christian whose Bible-reading time focuses more on the New Testament than the Old, I can’t help but think that the answer is yes.

I believe that as a believer in Christ, we are supposed to read the entire Bible. Doing so will help us develop our faith and become the people that God wants us to be. 

If we read only one of the two testaments, we will not end up with the right foundation. 

We have to see the judicial side of God depicted in the Old Testament so that we can fully appreciate the loving side of God that the New Testament gives us. Christ’s death and resurrection complete the law and put the believer in right standing with God.

As we’re told in Matthew 5:17, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”

The Father’s loving nature shines through in this verse, as He provides a way (the ONLY way, in fact) for us to become righteous in His eyes.

He loves us so much that He gave His Son Jesus as the once-for-all-time sacrifice for our sins.

Love doesn’t get more intense or deeper than that. 

And if you read only the Old Testament, you’ll never even begin to grasp the idea of this love.

However, if we don’t have the foundation of God’s justice laid in the Old Testament, we’ll never fully understand and appreciate how wonderful a gift it is that through Jesus’ sacrifice we stand forgiven in God’s eyes.

The two parts of the Bible work together to give us the full message from God. This message is that He loves us and has provided a way for us to spend eternity with Him.

All we have to do is use our free will to accept this gift by asking Jesus to be our Lord.

And that is the simple truth of the gospel.

The Christian’s Advantage

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

Romans 8:28

If you are a Christian, you have an advantage over non-believers. That’s right, the above verse says so. 

Christians are what this verse refers to as the called. So if we’ve chosen to follow Christ and we love God, we can rest in full assurance that everything that happens to us in our life is working out for the best. 

We don’t have to wonder if the future will work out, as we’ve been guaranteed that God Himself is at the helm of our lives, making sure things go exactly as He has planned.

Now, it may not always feel like things are working out for the best. We will have days when it seems that everything is going downhill. 

However, these are the times when our faith must kick in. We must have faith that God is still in control, no matter what the circumstances look like.

As James tells us, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,  for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.”

Not only can we rest in faith, knowing that God is working everything out for the best, we can also count on the trials we face to cause our faith to grow. 

The next time we find ourselves in an unwanted situation, we’ll have that much more faith to stand firm during the trial.

The person who has never accepted Christ into their life does not have any of these assurances. 

When they face the trials of everyday life, they really have nothing to fall back on.

As Christians, we have the assurance that God is on our side—every day, all the time.

Does this make you want to share the gospel with someone you know?

The Essence of the Gospel

/ Clay D. / Leave a comment

OK, here’s your tough question for the day…

What is the true essence of the Gospel? What is it all about anyway?

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Perhaps the Good News is about forgiveness. If we have placed our faith in Christ, then we know that we have forgiveness for our sins. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” 

His death and resurrection atoned for our sin (a fancy way of saying that He paid the price for our sin).

Or, we could say that John 15:12 sums up the Gospel: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Surely, if we don’t have love, then we don’t truly have the Spirit of Christ living in us. 

We are even told in Matthew 22:37-40 that “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

So, love is definitely a big part of the Gospel.

But so is salvation. We learn in Romans 10:9 that, “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

We have to conclude, therefore, that the Gospel is about salvation.

However, that’s not all. In arguably one of the most famous and often-quoted verses in the Bible, we are told that, “For God so loved the world

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that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Eternal life is a key part of the Good News for sure.

So, what then is the essence of the Gospel?

Simply put, it’s Jesus. He is the “pioneer and perfecter of faith,” as Hebrews 12:2 is rendered in the NIV. The NKJV calls him the “author and finisher of our faith.”

So, yes, the Gospel is about all those other things. However, it is undeniably, unmistakably about Jesus our Savior, the One sent by the Father to make us right in His eyes.

All we have to do is believe.