A Burden On My Heart: In many churches today it’s not so much that we’re preaching a false gospel as that we’re preaching an incomplete gospel.
- Quite a while back, God began to point out to me a lot of references throughout the NT to a particular truth (and I’ll get into what that was here in a minute) that we almost never mention. This was not something that was a peripheral issue, but something that would be at the core of the message of our faith. So, I began to do a lot of heavy lifting and deep digging into the Scriptures, taking lots of notes and trying to put together all the pieces.
- What I found was that we are indeed, in my opinion, failing to preach the whole gospel. We have allowed our repetition of a certain way of talking about salvation to blind us to what the Bible says is the whole gospel message.
- This is not some big conspiracy. I just think it’s because of a number of straightforward reasons, the most obvious of which is that we get lazy in studying our Bibles. We’re too quit to accept what everyone says is true without doing the deep digging into the priorities and focus of the Scripture.
- In the end, what I was looking for and what I found don’t come from some hidden corner of Scripture or some secret interpretation of some obscure passage. It comes from the entire first half of the greatest theological book in the Bible - the book of Romans.
- It was, once I saw it, hiding in plain sight. In fact, it made me wonder how in the world we could so regularly and frequently miss it. And yet, we do.
- In fact, at one point in my digging, I looked up how the three biggest names in evangelical circles talk about salvation by going on their websites and looking up their gospel presentations. All three concentrated on only one of these and only one even mentioned in passing more than one of these.
The Whole Gospel:
[start with point 2 because that is what is preached, even though the order is right in the outline]
2. We can get right with God through faith in Christ.
- Highlights: Romans 3:21-24; Romans 5:6-8.
- The Whole Story: Romans 3:21-31; Romans 4:1-25; Romans 5:1-21.
- Key verses:
a. Romans 3:21-24 - Righteousness of God through faith in Jesus.
b. Romans 5:6-8 - Christ died when we were without merit.
1. You have to repent of your sins.
- Highlights: Romans 1:18-19; Romans 2:1; Romans 3:9-10.
- The Whole Story: Romans 1:18-32; Romans 2:1-29.
- Key verses:
a. Romans 1:18-19 - Everyone has sinned.
b. Romans 2:1- You’re guilty too.
c. Romans 3:9-10 - No one is right before God.
- This is essential for two reasons:
a. You cannot understand the Good News (Jesus died to save you and give you new life) unless you understand the bad news (you’re a sinner in need of salvation).
- Gatens/Osteen story - At Gatens for the Christmas memorial service, I asked Chad who I was replacing (because I’d been called only a week before). He joked, “Joel Osteen.” I said, “It’s a good thing then, because you need someone who preaches the whole gospel.” Someone asked me about that (it turned out he’d gone to Osteen rallies) and I said, “He only preaches happy stuff and the thing is that you can’t understand the Good News until you grasp the bad news.”
b. The other reason it’s especially essential today is that we’ve become so skilled at excusing sin.
- Am I really that bad of a sinner?
- Review 10 Commandments
- No other gods before God.
- Don’t take Lord’s name in vain.
- Keep Sabbath (worship and rest).
- Murder (feel hatred?).
- Adultery (look with lust?).
- Steal (office supplies?).
- Lie.
- Covet.
- How many of those are you failing at?
- Beyond that, what about relational sin? That is, everything that I do that I do primarily to get what I want out of someone.
- Beyond that, what about knowing that Jesus was perfect, so every way that I am falling short of living out the sacrificial love of Christ every day is sin.
- What we’re good at is not avoiding sin, but sin management. We still have our sin, but we work so that we keep it hidden and quiet.
- This is a big problem today because we often don’t preach repentance but instead just preach believe. You can’t really understand grasp what Jesus did on the cross unless you realize you’re a sinner.
- Many today are simply told to believe without being asked if they believe they are a sinner in need of salvation. If you’re not a sinner, what do you need to be saved from?
- In truth, some just want to join the church or just want to tie their name to this nice Jesus guy or just want to call themselves a “Christian,” but never deal with the need to repent of their sins.
3. Now, your old spiritual self is dead and you are a new creature in Christ.
- Highlights: Romans 6:1; Romans 6:5-6; Romans 6:7.
- The Whole Story: Romans 6:1-7:25.
- This is the spiritual truth that I mentioned at the beginning that kept coming up in my Bible reading and yet I knew that we don’t emphasize.
- Key verses:
a. Romans 6:1 - Saved but living like a sinner/cheap grace.
b. Romans 6:5-6 - The old spiritual self is dead.
c. Romans 6:7 - Now we’re freed from sin.
- Analogy in chapter 7 that death makes a wife free to enter into another relationship (instead of being called an adulteress as she would be if her husband was alive).
- How frequently is it in there?
- The “Dead” List: Ezekiel 11:19; Matthew 16:24-27; Mark 8:34-35; Luke 9:23-26; John 1:12-13; John 3:3; John 11:25-26; John 12:24; Romans 5:21; Romans 6:2-14; Romans 7:6; Romans 8:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:31; 2 Corinthians 4:10-11; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:19-20; Galatians 5:24; Galatians 6:14-15; Ephesians 2:1; Ephesians 2:15; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 2:20; Colossians 3:1; Colossians 3:3; Colossians 3:9-10; 2 Timothy 2:10-11; Titus 3:5; 1 Peter 1:23; 1 Peter 2:24.
- That list has passages that specifically deal with the idea of us dying spiritually and having new life in Christ.
- The really bad thing about the fact that we rarely talk about it is that it’s absolutely crucial in grasping what has happened in salvation and what God is going to do as we proceed.
- We will say, “I’m just a sinner saved by grace” and use that as justification for our sinful lifestyles. “What else would you expect?” It’s as though Jesus has saved us but not changed us.
- The Biblical truth is that I was a “sinner saved by grace” at the moment of salvation, but God did something amazing in my life there - He crucified my sin there and made me a new creature. Now I am a new creature in Christ. My primary identity is not who I was (a sinner) but who I am because of Christ (a new creature).
- This not something that will be in the future - it’s something that happened at the moment of salvation. We do still battle with sin (see v. 13) because we’re still in this world, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am a new creature.
4. So, we can walk forward in power, confidence, and insight because now the Holy Spirit is within us.
- Highlights: Romans 8:9; Romans 8:3-4.
- The Whole Story: Romans 8:1-17.
- Key verses:
a. Romans 8:9 - Spirit dwells in you.
b. Romans 8:3-4 - Living out the life God wants us to.
- As we’ve just discussed, there is no doubt that we have Christ because we’ve been given new life in Him, but the point that Paul emphasizes in terms of living out this new life is that we have the Holy Spirit on board.
- Too often we talk about having Jesus in your heart and we only mean it as fire insurance.
- The emphasis here as far as walking forward as a new creature is that you have the Holy Spirit in your heart to provide the resources that you need in order to live victoriously.
- The idea of God within you is one that is mind-blowing. It’s something that the OT believers could only dream of. It is, short of Jesus’ death on the cross, the greatest gift we’ve ever received. And yet we neglect Him.
- Unfortunately, many of us in Baptist circles have neglected to emphasize the Spirit because we don’t want to be accused of being Pentecostal.
- And so we never access the power, confidence, and insight because we don’t know it’s there.
Conc:
- We look around and wonder why we have so many people who claim Christ who don’t live a life that is even remotely like the one that Jesus envisioned. How much of the problem is that we have neglected to tell them about the reality of the death and new life that has happened in salvation and also neglected to tell them about the need to utilize the Holy Spirit daily in order to walk in victory?
- It’s not that we’re preaching a false gospel, but we are preaching an incomplete gospel.
- This is the basic message that is shared in the greatest theological treatise in the Bible: Paul in Romans.
