The gospel, that Jesus took all our sins and swapped it with His perfection, in the church nowadays "resembles a man o'war that has stuck fast on a reef. It is still capable of defending itself and will if necessary go down with all guns blazing, but it is not able to make any further progress and is afraid that if pulled off it will begin to sink below the waves. The reef in this case is the doctrine (double swap) to which we cling in sermon and song but which we no longer truly believe in our hearts."
This knowing and not believing is not a matter of not knowing fully every detail of what it means to be forgiven, for everyone knows that "Jesus died for my sins", yet why do we feel guilty or surprised when sin happens again?
Do we fail to see our current state clearly?
That God, the Son came down because no one in the history of all humanity could pay for what Adam brought upon all humanity except a perfect being. Perhaps you might feel so bold to say that had it been you in the garden you would certainly (or probably) not have made the same mistake, or you might be so pointless as to just fester in blame towards Adam as a distraction from what the solution is.
What Alastair is saying is that for whatever personal reasons, we cling to the knowledge of Christ having died for our sins, but we do not believe it in our hearts.
We know the gospel, we hear the gospel, we desire the gospel, and we are grateful for it, but it is something we cling to like stale toast. Stagnant and unchanged. Burnt. Waiting for something to happen after the gospel rather than within the gospel.
Waiting for circumstances to change, healings to occur, people and relationships to transform, money, comfort to come, peace of mind, maybe we are waiting for something to happen as we do our best to keep a tight grip on the gospel, lest we fall away from it and perish in the sin we know crouches at the corner of our lives.
Oh my gosh, the gospel is deeper! Richer! More beautiful! Higher and so much more than words or minds could ever fully comprehend with only 90 or so years! It would take forever to experience all that the gospel gives us.
We all know the infamous john 3:16, that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son to die for us so that whoever believes in Him would have eternal life.
Eternal life.
What is life? If it's an eternity of what I had prior to the gospel than I don't want that!
Life is hard! Life get boring, it gets frustrating and so much hurt and fear lurks in life. God would not give up His child to give us a sub par eternity. So it can't be that...it can't even be money or comfort or healing...those are all great and well, but even that...if you think about it, let's say you got all the money in the world, your cancer was gone or you grew that missing leg, .....there are still the next x amount of days you will be living, which if you're honest you must admit will likely still consist of a new set of problems and issues.
So what is this "life" that the gospel opened for us?
Heaven? That's pretty much another word for life except without end of time.
It's not some mystical magical idea made real with abstract ambiguities of a big fat sign saying "THIS IS NOT HELL" or "HAPPY ALL THE TIME FOR NO REASON"
Maybe your mind would prefer to dwell on one of those signs as the heaven you look forward to after death whether due to fear or confusion, but it's what makes man (or woman) cling to the knowledge of the gospel as their lives run a saddening and staling course like a man clenching onto a reed amidst the vast ocean.
Oh the gospel is far too amazing just to know in full yet not believe! It is letting your hands loosen from the reed, facing the waves and soaring with wings! Bounding with speed and laughter, letting your toes glide above the waters and diving below to let the waters be calm or rapturous as you move about it. It is crying with an overwhelming fullness of love and mystery that both silences and causes praise -in forms of song or dance, words or expressions, or something- to rise from within and burst forth like a million excellencies--surprising you, your friends, and strangers. The gospel is not a reed to be clenched, it is life eternal made exceedingly beautiful by belief.
This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent — Jesus Christ.
-John 17:3
The relationship we get with God! To talk to and be met with an actual response, to question and spend time with, to interrupt and be interrupted by, to joke and laugh and be known by, accepted by, comfortable with, --but most of all to fall in love. Fall in love with Him that knows love best in that He is love in constant action. God is love, not loving. To be loving implies a chance of being unloving. God is love. He is always in action and that action is love.
Yes He really did die to take away all your sins!
Yes that really means you are seen by Him as perfectly sinless even when you sin!
Yes it's free. (Because if it wasn't there'd be no chance for anyone to earn it! You'd have to be the fourth person of the Trinity to earn what only a God could afford!!!)
Yes it's free.
Yes it's free.
Yes He knows you still sin, and yes it's still free.
You feel guilty and ashamed in your sin? That indicates the difficulty in you to believe what you know.
You're sins are forgiven. For free.
Because Jesus died as God who never sinned, paying the blood price with His life. His life is THAT expensive since He is God. Only He could do for us what we never could, and He chose to lay down His will and leave His kingdom and perfect joy and became like one of us. He became less than a God in order to meet us where we are only to be met with sneers and cruelty. But Jesus went to the cross and with His perfect life died a humiliating and tortuous death so that by His pain and by His lowering of Self, that though He was rich, He became poor, so that through His pain and poverty we might believe in Him and see how amazing the love of the Father is for us!
He took our place! He is our substitute for the penalty we were all condemned to pay. Pay because of sin. Through one man, Adam, we all inherited sin, but through one Jesus we all inherit perfect righteousness.
Yes it's free.
No it doesn't mean you have to try harder or work to keep what was free.
Yes it's very crazy and unbelievable.
But believe it! Believe in Jesus!
Do nothing.
And get your wings.
When you and God are super close like that....everything else is seen in the light for what they are and they are stiff, stale, and uneventful.
This is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and the One You have sent — Jesus Christ.
John 17:3
Heaven is about everything God can do, give, be, and create for those that know Him in a deep and beautiful personal relationship.
Heaven starts now.
Perhaps...
Perhaps, like me not too long ago, you cannot now believe because you don't think your sins deserve to have you crucified. You don't want to accept that there's nothing you can do. You don't want to accept that the real villain deserving death was yourself! That is unbelievable to you. You sin but your sins don't deserve to be killed! Maybe to you Jesus is more of a role model or example of what "good Christians" live like--not what a perfect man who is also God lives like, you think you can live like Jesus?? Like a God? Perhaps you see the cross as less of a punishment and more of an inevitable setting right of the consequences of sin. Or you see the cross as your restoration and healing. You see the cross where you don't look that bad. It's a "yea, of course" to you as if Jesus had to do it without no ifs ands or buts because Adam screwed things up. That would be true if....what? If we were loved? If God were just?
And what about our sins that we are probably well aware of at this point in life. Those are just minor mistakes? Then what God's holiness in that sin must be burned in hell because of it? Do you know who God is? Do you know about God? What defines Him? Which is more honest, that you're doing okay right now in terms of living righteously before God's perfect law (who is by title the only One who can create the Law of life since He knows best as the Creator of it)? Or to say you're struggling and it's so hard!?? The law was never intended to save you. It was there to show you sin. You fail utterly. Maybe that's hard to accept. But the truth will set you free as it did for me.
We have so much slack for ourselves and as such we also blur the atrocious punishment demanded from our sins. Jesus isn't an example that we try and mimic to be "good", Jesus was a perfect Son of God that became a criminal nailed to a cross with our sins as the crime demanding punishment. Your life's crimes were punished already. Just because you didn't pay for them doesn't mean someone else didn't.
The next time the guilt and shame of your sins weigh heavy on you, look at the cross where Jesus substituted Himself for what you did wrong. This all because of the deep unquestionable love for you. If you were the only human being on the earth who screwed up, He would still have died. That kind of sacrifice isn't about the quantity of people, it's about the immeasurable depth of the Father's love for you.
Everyday is seen from that love within and suddenly every second is saturated with God's grace!
Jmegrey
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