The Internet Monk Archives

The Gospel: Jesus Instead of Us

By Chaplain Mike

It was my plan to review Trevin Wax’s book, Counterfeit Gospels: Rediscovering the Good News in a World of False Hope, here today.

However, we are traveling in Chicago this weekend and other events prevented me from being able to complete my full review. I will post it tomorrow afternoon instead.

For today, I will give you a foretaste and something worthy of much contemplation. The following is a strikingly beautiful passage from Wax’s book about the substitutionary death of Jesus.

This is the act that lies at the heart of the Gospel:

“Jesus died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures.” (1Cor 15:3, ESV)

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Gal. 3:13)

“God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8)

“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God…” (1Pet 3:18a)

• • •

The essence of Adam’s sin was that he put himself in God’s place. The essence of Christ’s obedience is that He put himself in our place. Because of his life in our place, and His death in our place, we are freed from our sins.

When the Romans crucified criminals in the first century, it was customary for them to nail an accusation list to the cross. The list informed people why this person was being crucified. When Jesus died, God took the accusations that Satan brings against us — all our failures and mistakes, our willful rebellion, and our constant inability to keep God’s law — and God nailed those accusations to the cross of His Son. So Jesus Christ died there on Calvary, bearing your sin and mine; the accusations that should be hurled against us were hurled against Him instead.

Because Jesus was filled with horror and cried out, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” we are filled with wonder and cry, “My God, my God, why have you accepted me?”

Because Jesus said, “I thirst,” we can drink from the fountain of living water and never thirst again.

Because Jesus said, “Woman, behold your son,” and felt the pain of separation from His earthly family, we can experience the blessing of being united with a heavenly family.

Because Jesus cried, “It is finished!” our new life can begin.

Because Jesus committed His spirit into the Father’s hands, God commits His Spirit into our hearts.

Jesus is the Passover Lamb — the substitute that protects us from the wrath of God. He experienced the curse of God, the punishment for sin, the hellish torments of eternal damnation — all for the glory of God and the salvation of His people.

• Trevin Wax, Counterfeit Gospels, p. 97f

A Hymn for Ordinary Time (10): A Great (the Greatest?) Gospel Hymn

By Chaplain Mike

From The Center for Church Music, here is the story of today’s hymn, perhaps the greatest hymn about the evangelical conversion experience ever written:

Charles Wesley, founder of the movement known as Methodism with his brother, John, was ordained as a priest in the Church of England in 1735. However, three years later, the evening of May 21, 1738, reportedly after prolonged Bible reading he wrote:

“At midnight I gave myself to Christ, assured that I was safe, whether sleeping or waking. I had the continual experience of His power to overcome all temptation, and I confessed with joy and surprise that He was able to do exceedingly abundantly for me above what I can ask or think.”

Another writer states that he recorded in his journal:

“I now found myself at peace with God, and rejoiced in hope of loving Christ. I saw that by faith I stood.”

Two days later, his journal reported that he had begun writing a hymn. This hymn was likely “And Can It Be” because of the vivid testimony of stanza four. This hymn and “Where Shall My Wondering Soul Begin” were the first of the 6000 plus hymns that he wrote….

Tiffany_UCCMontclair_The_release_of_Peter — The Release of Peter, Tiffany Window UCC Montclair

AND CAN IT BE?
And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Savior’s blood?
Died He for me, who caused His pain—
For me, who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
Amazing love! How can it be,
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

’Tis mystery all: th’Immortal dies:
Who can explore His strange design?
In vain the firstborn seraph tries
To sound the depths of love divine.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore,
Let angel minds inquire no more.
’Tis mercy all! Let earth adore;
Let angel minds inquire no more.

He left His Father’s throne above
So free, so infinite His grace—
Emptied Himself of all but love,
And bled for Adam’s helpless race:
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!
’Tis mercy all, immense and free,
For O my God, it found out me!

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray—
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

No condemnation now I dread;
Jesus, and all in Him, is mine;
Alive in Him, my living Head,
And clothed in righteousness divine,
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.
Bold I approach th’eternal throne,
And claim the crown, through Christ my own.

Text: Charles Wesley
First Published in Songs and Hymns, 1738
Usually sung to the tune SAGINA, by Thomas Campbell

iMonk Classic: The “Absent Gospel” Series (2)

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Series from Nov, 2009

As part of our “Gospel Week” emphasis, we are reviewing Michael Spencer’s series on “My Strange Experiences with an Absent Gospel” from November of 2009.

Today, parts three and four.

• • •

My Strange Experiences With An Absent Gospel: Gospel Articulations (Part 3)

I’ve been trying to emphasize the Gospel as the foundational content of the Christian life for many years. While I’ve worked at fresh articulations of the Gospel, there are a lot of familiar articulations of the Gospel that show up in my preaching and teaching with high school students and the adults in chapel and in my classes.

For example, these are four different Gospel articulations that I’ve used repeatedly in speaking and teaching. They are not definitions or creeds. They are articulations that summarize and balance the content of the Gospel as I understand it. It’s language I want my hearers to hear frequently. Sometimes in phrases. Sometimes in whole sermons or lessons.

Announcement: The Gospel is the glad announcement that God himself, through Jesus, has done everything necessary to rescue his broken world and save its broken people from judgment and ruin. All persons are invited to believe this glad announcement, to be forgiven and to become a disciple of Jesus who is King and Lord.

God: In the Gospel, God shows us that he is the loving and gracious Father revealed in Jesus Christ his Son. This is the face of God that the Christian will look upon for all of eternity. In our Father, there is no condemnation or rejection for his Son or those who belong to God in him. Everything the Bible says about God is true, but for the Christian, God is Jesus in our experience. The Glory of God is the majesty and Glory of Jesus in the incarnation, his sufferings/resurrection and the scriptures.

Jesus: Jesus is our salvation. We say with Simeon: “My eyes have seen your salvation” as he held the infant Christ. Jesus is the one mediator between God and man. He lived a life we could not live and and died a death in our place. He was raised to make us right with God and give us life in God’s Kingdom. By his life, death and resurrection, Jesus has defeated the power of Satan, evil and condemnation. Jesus rules the universe today as the one true King and will return to rule over a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus commands all persons to repent and believe in him.

Kingdom: The Kingdom of God was announced and established by Jesus and it continues in human history by his authority and power. Salvation comes into history as the Kingdom of God takes root in the world. The Kingdom of God is the beginning of the new heaven and the new earth where God’s righteousness lives and salvation is experienced. Jesus invited all persons to come into this Kingdom, to live in its new realities and to work for its inevitable triumph.

This is some of the “foundational content” that should underlie whatever applications we make and whatever we say that reflects on the Gospel.

It doesn’t seem that it would be particularly difficult to put the Gospel in a place where, for example, if we talk about God without Jesus or the culture war without reference to the Kingdom or salvation without reference to the person of Christ, it would sound wrong.

So why doesn’t it?

(By the way, I’m not offering these articulations for theological autopsy. This is how I talk and unless you are an ordination committee I’m seeking to get past, don’t treat me like my articulations are up for theological pinata practice.)

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: The “Absent Gospel” Series (2)”

Saturday Ramblings 8.27.11

This is the “batten down the hatches” edition of Saturday Ramblings. If you are living on the east coast from North Carolina upwards, read this quickly, and then go get ready for the big blow. And let us know if you are in the path of this great storm. We will be praying for your safety. (That includes you, JoanieD, and you, Ted in Maine.) For the rest of us, let’s ramble.

Sigh … here we go. Rocky Twyman, founder of the Pray at the Pump movement and the Pray Without Ceasing political party, has come out to declare the earthquake along the east coast this week is a warning from God for the president and Congress to create more jobs. Of course. How silly of me to have missed that sign in the Bible. Now where was that? Oh yes, the book of 2 Opinions.

Meanwhile, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. suffered several million dollars in damages thanks to the earthquake. The church has been in a financial crunch for some time, and the damages were not covered by insurance. Perhaps Rocky Twyman can convince the president to start his jobs program by fixing up the National Cathedral.

Continue reading “Saturday Ramblings 8.27.11”

iMonk Classic: The “Absent Gospel” Series (1)

Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
Series from Nov, 2009

For the next two days, we will review Michael Spencer’s series on “My Strange Experiences with an Absent Gospel” from November of 2009. The original series was in four parts, but we will condense our replay into two posts.

Today, we look at parts one and two together.

• • •

Misplaced, Taken For Granted and Ignored: My Strange Experiences With An Absent Gospel (Part 1)

In a recent sermon, I said that I was deeply concerned about the understanding of the Gospel that I hear among adult Christians and especially preachers. I was not just making noise. With every passing year, I’m amazed that the level of Gospel understanding seems to be lower and lower among Christian adults. This isn’t just a failure to hear the Gospel in the terms and definitions I prefer. No, it is an ever lowering articulation of the Gospel, a replacement of the Gospel with other concerns and, perhaps most distressing of all, a replacement and confusion of the Gospel-centered mission itself.

I expect that this emphasis on my part will not endear me to some people, mostly on grounds that I am failing to see the significance of things like moral issues, behavior change and political causes. I’ve come to the point that I realize a discussion of the Gospel is going to have a predictable shape:

We all know the Gospel. It’s basic.
Once you’ve preached or taught the Gospel, then you need to deal with other things.
If you are constantly trying to bring the Gospel to the forefront as the main concern, you’re missing the importance of things like behavior change and obedience.

Or,

Any message on any Biblical text is “the Gospel.”
You’re trying to push your theology over basic things like obedience and behavior change.

Or,

The point is to get people to accept Jesus into their hearts, not turn people into theologians.

In my own tradition as I experience it in several hundred sermons a year, the Gospel is rarely articulated with Biblical priority or in Biblical balance with the rest of scripture. Good ideas from the Bible are common. Concerns of preachers and church leaders are heard every week. Frustrations with the decline of society or poor behavior of individuals is constant. Some form of the Gospel will frequently pass through these sermons in a place where the truth is seen, but it is also not uncommon to hear generic deism, pure moralism or behavior modification based on “Biblical principles.” Vague ideas like “living for God” or “being a good witness” are frequently referenced. As my readers have often heard, sermons without reference to Jesus are so common as to no longer be that shocking.

One of the most frustrating aspects of this decline is how often in 18 years of ministry I have addressed this topic of the Gospel specifically. Never underestimate the power of preaching to make little impact on deeply held beliefs. Clearly, this displacement of the Gospel is not perceived to be particularly problematic. Of course, these are people who have not been exposed to the Gospel-centric emphasis coming out of various places in evangelicalism or reformation traditions today. There is a reason so many of my good friends don’t emphasize the Gospel: to them “Gospel” is a word in front of singing. At most, it references a four step evangelism outline. It is not the central concept in the Christian life. Something like “Holiness” or “obedience” seems far more practical.

In the second post, I will share some of the ways I’ve tried to consistently articulate the Gospel over the years.

Continue reading “iMonk Classic: The “Absent Gospel” Series (1)”

The Gospel: My Personal Testimony

By Chaplain Mike

Though evangelicals of most stripes disdain the word “traditions,” they like all people have many of them. One salutary Gospel tradition they maintain is that of the personal testimony. In the churches and groups I have been involved with, every believer was encouraged to have one. Each Christian should be able to tell the story of what Jesus has done for him or her personally.

The Bible certainly encourages this. “Let the redeemed say so!” exhorts the Psalmist. From recounting God’s saving deeds in the midst of the congregation to declaring his glory among the nations, Scripture encourages an outpouring of verbal praise and thanksgiving as we tell the story of what God has done for his people. The word “Hallelujah!” is in actuality an imperative, a command. The Bible commands us over and over again to “Praise the Lord!”

There are problems, for sure, and many things we could critique concerning the personal testimony, but I don’t want to focus on them today. We will save that discussion for another time. For right now, let us agree that it is helpful for a person to be able to articulate his or her faith and personal experience of God’s grace and salvation. Not only is it helpful to that person’s own spiritual formation, but it can be an encouragement and witness to others of the saving love of Jesus Christ.

In this post, I will share a personal testimony of my own in two forms. One is my “short form” prose testimony; my basic story. The other is a more literary form of the same story.

As I have written in other posts, I have had questions over the years about how to interpret this experience. Was it my “Damascus Road” conversion from darkness to light à la Paul? Was it a “turning back” to the God who had met me in my childhood, even though I did not then grasp his presence? These days I tend to call this an “awakening” rather than “getting saved.” The more I have contemplated, the more I believe and see evidence that God was with me in some sense from the beginning. As with David and John the Baptist, I believe God knew me from my mother’s womb.

But this is all extraneous to the point of this post. When God meets us personally and opens our eyes in fresh ways to his grace and mercy in Christ, no matter what we call it we can tell the story and point to him.

Here are two of my own attempts to do that.

Continue reading “The Gospel: My Personal Testimony”

The Best College Application

This really has nothing to do with anything of importance, and you would probably be better off re-reading Chaplain Mike’s excellent discussions so far this week on the Gospel. But seeing as it is back-to-school time, and seeing as I thought we could all do with a bit of a laugh, and seeing as I have nothing else to write about, I offer this to you—the very best college application of all time. Enjoy.

“In addition to the information on this application form, what other factors would you like the committee on Admissions to consider in evaluating your candidacy? Feel free to include some of your important accomplishments, your goals, or ideas about education.”

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The Gospel: What the Torah Says about Faith vs. the Works of the Law

By Chaplain Mike

“Then [Abraham] believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:6, NASB)

“…Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws.” (Genesis 26:5)

“But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, ‘Because you have not believed Me, to treat Me as holy in the sight of the sons of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.'” (Numbers 20:12)

• • •

One of the great themes of the New Testament is that of salvation by grace through faith. This theme is often developed in the context of theological conflict, of apostles like Paul with Jewish opponents of Christianity, false teachers (sometimes called “Judaizers”) who were trying to impose Jewish practices on Gentiles for inclusion in the faith, or with Jewish Christians who were trying to work out the implications of faith in Christ as Messiah.

These conflicts often boiled down to a discussion on the relationship between “faith” and “the works of the Law.”

This is a huge subject and it cannot possibly be developed in a single blog post. All I want to say today is that this debate about how people become part of God’s community, maintain good standing in that community, and relate to others in that community is not a New Testament issue alone.

In fact, part of the Gospel message that the Old Testament (for our purposes here, the Torah) presents is that inclusion in true covenant relationship with God is by faith and not by works of the Law.

I believe that the Pentateuch is in agreement with these NT affirmations: “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight,” (Rom 3:20, ESV), and “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28).

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The Gospel: The Message of the Torah (1)

By Chaplain Mike

The teacher to whom I owe my deepest debt of gratitude for giving me tools to help me read the Bible and for opening my eyes to its Gospel message from beginning to end is Dr. John Sailhamer. He was my professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School back in the 1980’s.

Dr. Sailhamer is an expert scholar on the Torah, also known as the “Pentateuch” (the five-fold book). These are the names given to the first five books of the Bible (Genesis-Deuteronomy) that we sometimes call “The Law of Moses.” In reality, these five books form one cohesive, coherent work. Though in English we often refer to this part of Scripture as “the Law,” in Hebrew the word “Torah” refers to a father’s instruction, not legal stipulations. More about that in another post.

I remember Dr. Sailhamer asking us the question, “If you were to put a title over the Pentateuch to describe its message, would it be ‘Law’ or ‘Gospel’?” In the final analysis, does the Torah represent Law — God’s demands for his people? Or does it represent Gospel — God’s provision of salvation for his people?

He went on to demonstrate that the Torah is Gospel, teaching that the Law cannot save, but that God will save his people and restore his blessing to all nations by grace through faith in a new covenant inaugurated by the promised Seed of Abraham.

For example, the message of the entire Torah is portrayed in the story told in its first chapters.

In Genesis 1, God, the creator of all, prepares a good land for his people, places them in it as his royal, priestly representatives, and gives them his blessing.

In Genesis 2-3, we learn what happened to God’s people in the good land he provided for them.

God provided all they needed.

God gave them his commands and urged them to choose the way of life, not death.

They, however, chose to seek to live by their own wisdom rather than God’s.

As a result, they were sent into exile from the good land God had given them.

God, however, in his grace, gave them a means of covering so that they could remain his priests in the world.

God also gave them a promise that the Seed of the Woman (a child born of Eve) would one day triumph over the Seed of the Serpent (Gen. 3:15)

Continue reading “The Gospel: The Message of the Torah (1)”

The Gospel: Its Biblical Context

nicodemus-john-lautermilch — Nicodemus, Lautermilch

By Chaplain Mike

One challenge in communicating the Gospel concisely lies in squaring its simplicity with the fact that it is contained in the Bible — a vast library of 66 books that is a complex work, composed of ancient materials.

One can find, for example simple summary statements of the Gospel like 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 eternal life.”

Now that is simple, succinct, clear. However, when you read the context in John 3 carefully, you discover a complex conversation in which Jesus talks with a renowned Jewish teacher using terms and examples from the story of Israel, prophecies of the New Covenant, and explanatory comments from the author using his own unique theological language.

What Leon Morris once said about the Gospel of John, can be appropriately applied to the subject of the Gospel: “It is a pool in which a child may wade, and an elephant may swim.”

Therefore, one can describe the Gospel simply and succinctly, or one can try to express something of its fullness by putting it in the context of the entire Biblical story.

I found something helpful in Bruce Waltke’s An Old Testment Theology, something I will use in my teaching and talking about the Gospel in its complex context. I think it helps explain how the Old Testament provides the context for Jesus and the Gospel in a way that is both easy to understand and fairly comprehensive. I have adapted it somewhat, but the heart of what I say here reflects Waltke’s analysis.

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