The truth is that you and I are much worse than we think we are… and the gospel is far more powerful and breathtaking and radical than we think it is.
The good news is a message that flattens us. It destroys all theories of human enablement. It obliterates the pride of self-determination. It devastates all notions that we can make the slightest move toward God apart from His intervention on our behalf.
There is absolutely nothing about us that deserves to be saved by God. It is all of grace that it might be all of God. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can contribute to our own salvation (except the sin that makes it necessary).
The gospel is where the greatest unworthiness is embraced and delivered by the greatest love.
The gospel is where the greatest weakness, need, and imperfection is sustained and upborne with the greatest strength, help, and perfection.
The gospel is where the deadest deadness is resurrected by the sovereign King of Life.
The gospel is where the darkest sin is covered and cleansed by the purest holiness.
To truly understand the gospel is to be bereft of all human attempts to earn God’s favor. As long as the natural man imagines that he can somehow incline himself toward God apart from God’s sovereign enablement, he is deceiving himself regarding the depth of his fallen state.
Those who preach and communicate as evangelists and as pastors must guard against the popular notion of asking the lost to “do something†in order to be saved.
The gospel is not a message about what we must do to get to God. Nor is it a message about what God has done that we must decide to cooperate with in order to be saved.
The gospel is the unconditional message about what God has done by His own power and the absolute freedom of His will to bring His people to Himself according to His own sovereign purpose and for His own good pleasure.
He enables the spiritually dead to come alive to Him.
He does this work through the preaching of the Word, which is crystallized in the gospel. The gospel is not a ‘help wanted’ sign inviting the sinner to come and help poor God; the gospel is a ‘help available’ sign to raise spiritually dead people to new life in Christ.
As long as we tell people they must physically do something in order to be saved (walk an aisle, answer ‘yes’ to a series of questions, make a decision, pray a ‘sinners prayer,’ fill out a card, etc.) we have eclipsed the very truth that is magnified throughout Scripture. Not to mention the fact that none of these American ideas are associated with salvation in Scripture.
God alone can save a sinner. Sinners cannot save themselves. They cannot decide apart from God’s enablement (Jn. 6:44; 6:65). They cannot incline themselves toward God by their own free will. The fallen will of man is naturally bound in sin and dead to God; it never chooses God until He raises that sin-bound will to new life through regeneration by the gift of faith.
So the gospel is not a message about what you and I must do to be saved. It is a message about what God has done on our behalf by sending His only begotten Son to die for the sins of all who would ever believe on Him for eternal life.
Christ died for His sheep. He paid the price for the sins of His people and no individual for whom Christ died will ever perish, but all of them will ultimately come to repentance (Jn. 6:37).
They come as the gospel is preached. God uses His Word to redeem His elect and to convict the world of sin. Therefore, preaching the Word is the greatest evangelistic act on the planet.
May God make His Word known to you and through you!
For His Glory,
Pastor Kevin