Sunday September 9,
2018 23rd Sunday Ordinary
Time
I’ve Got Good News and Bad News
The tie in between
today’s readings: “…by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5)
Today’s readings, Psalm 146, Isaiah 35, and Mark 7, all
focus on God as a healer. Let’s be clear from the start: Jesus does not do
tricks. All of the healing accounts in the Bible actually did happen, but
miracles are not recorded for their own sakes. They are metaphors pointing to
the nature of salvation through the gospel. Jesus pulls this together in Matt 11:4-5, where He associates His healings with the preaching of the
gospel. So what is the gospel? Other than saying that it is the good news, could
you explain it clearly to someone who doesn’t know? Sadly, most of the people
in the pews cannot. I’ve best understood the gospel message by the old line:
“I’ve got good news and bad news.” So, today let’s drill down and get a better
understanding of it by examining the most
quoted verse on the gospel, John 3:16: For
God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
First the good news: God
so loved the world. Stop! Don’t gloss over this. This is a big deal. In our
pride and self absorption, we can easily take God’s love for granted. Why
wouldn’t He love me? I love me! I may not be perfect, but what’s not to love?
The thing is that our sins have made us so odious to the celestial realm that, if
we were to walk into heaven right now, the angels would vomit. We start out as the enemy of God in our sin:
loathsome, pitiful, and hideous. But God
demonstrated His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us (Romans 5:8).
 |
| Google Images |
That He gave His only
begotten Son. That’s the “died for
us” part of the gospel. Jesus came, born to die, as the sacrificial Lamb of God
to take away the sins of the world. This is where the miracle metaphors of
healing, mentioned in the Bible, come in as a sign of our desperate spiritual
condition. Hopeless and helpless like the infirmed, the leprous, the widow, and
the orphan, Jesus rescues us from our plight. We cannot stand before a holy God
in our sins with any hope of gaining heaven. Through the crucifixion, Jesus served as our stand-in. God made Jesus who knew no
sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we may become the righteousness of God in
Him (2 Corinthians 5:21).
That whoever believes
in Him. It’s all done by faith. You can’t earn it. You don’t deserve it.
All you can do is accept it as a free gift from God. But what is this faith?
First and foremost, it’s the assent to the facts of the Bible that Jesus was
crucified and took the punishment of your sin on Himself. His resurrection on
Easter Sunday proves that He was successful in His mission. He offers heaven
and eternal life to all that would receive His sacrifice as substitute for
their sin. But, it’s not just agreeing with the facts alone that gets you into heaven. Satan knows the facts and they’re not
doing him any good. Faith goes deeper still. You have to totally identify with Jesus, which means that you must see yourself up on the cross with Jesus spiritually facing God for your sins. When Jesus rises on Easter Sunday, you also resurrect with Him,
spiritually. You are now spiritually born again to a new life in
Christ. As Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is
no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life that I now live in
the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up
for me” (Galatians 2:20). Saving faith is hard to explain. All I can say is
that you have a “knowing” about it. I examine it in another way in my article
“A Sacramental Illustration of Saving Faith” in the Insights section of this blog. Check it out. Now, get ready for the
bad news.
Should not perish.
That means going to hell. The Bible places you under the sentence of hell right
now. Whatever hell is: a lake of fire, separation from God, death forever, all
the above. It is bad and it is final! God is holy. God will not mark on a curve where He lets you slide into heaven with a
51% good rating. The standard for heaven is sinless perfection. You cannot
achieve it. If there was any other way to escape damnation other than the cross
of Christ, then God would have released Jesus from His passion when He asked
for options at the garden of Gethsemane. But, because He did go to the cross, Jesus
now becomes YOUR option. Take Him as your Savior for: “How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation” (Hebrews
2:3a).
Have everlasting life.
Jesus Christ didn’t come to make bad people good or to make good people better.
Jesus came to make dead people alive! In
Christ, we are born again to a new life here on earth and to eternal life in
heaven. This is the gospel: by faith
take the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as payment for your sins and make God
the master of your new life on earth as you prepare for heaven. Take God up on
His offer of salvation through Jesus, today. “…by His wounds, we are healed” (Isaiah 53.5).
No comments:
Post a Comment