Two Questions That Never Go Away (Part Two)

In a recent post I introduced two vital questions that function as the operating system of Christian life and thought. It is as we contemplate these two questions that we grow in our understanding of who Jesus is and what God has given us in Christ.

Those two underlying and inter-related matters inform every other concern in our spiritual lives. Growing in our faith means growing in our understanding of these two questions:

1. What does the Gospel mean?

2. What does the Gospel call for us to do?

The Gospel is the Good News about what Christ has done on our behalf: Jesus invaded human history, lived and taught about the Kingdom, died in our place, rose again, and will return. It is good news – very good news, in fact – that the Gospel is about what Christ has already done, not about what I’m supposed to do.

In a recent post we explored what the Gospel means for us. What the Gospel means in the life of this believer is that I am an adopted child of God and other believers are my spiritual siblings. The Gospel means that God is constantly working to make right what is wrong in my character. The Gospel means that someday God will make all things right not only my life but also in our life together and the even in the natural order.

I want to think now about what the Gospel calls us to do.
 
When I put my faith in Jesus to save me, I also follow Christ as Lord. He said so himself when He asked this very reasonable question: “Why do you call me ‘Lord’ when you don’t do what I say?” (Luke 6:46). We must never overlook the fact that the Gospel carries with it a set of built-in expectations of an adopted son or daughter in the household of God.

So what then does the Gospel call us to do? Let’s start with the obvious one, something that Jesus reiterated even in His model prayer:

1. The Gospel calls me to forgive my offender.

If I am a Christ-follower, I cannot look at forgiveness as some kind of optional extra credit for high achievers. Forgiving others is a nonnegotiable ethical implication of the Gospel.

It was the only part of His model prayer that Jesus felt He needed to emphasize. You remember Jesus’s startling words: “…forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors…. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” (Matthew 6:12, 14-15).

Forgiving people who offend me is part and parcel of receiving God’s forgiveness. I simply don’t have the option of receiving the grace of God with one open hand and refusing to extend grace to my offender with the other closed fist.

Please don’t misunderstand. This is not about the distortions that are often confused with forgiveness: acting as if nothing had happened or unconditionally restoring trust and affection. Forgiveness has a more modest ambition, though it is still difficult. Forgiveness is about letting go of my right to retaliate, it is about not wishing ill on those who have hurt me.

Sometimes relationships are broken so deeply that reconciliation is actually impossible. But if I am a Christ-follower, forgiveness on my part is nonnegotiable.

The Gospel means that I, the offender, stand forgiven before God, so it calls me to forgive my own offenders.

2. The Gospel calls me to persevere.

If I am a Christ-follower, if I have embraced the Gospel, it is always too soon to give up.
 
The Gospel isn’t just about what Christ has done in the past (dying for my sins and rising again), it’s also about what God is doing in Christ now and in the future. What God is doing now in Christ is just as important as what He has already done: He is gathering a people for Himself, the great multitude John saw in his vision surrounding the throne and singing their praises.

Here’s how John describes that glorious moment:

“After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!’ And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, ‘Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.’” (Rev 7:9-12, ESV).

The Good News, the Gospel, is that in Christ, God is building His people toward that future.

In fact, it is the future-orientation of the Gospel that makes it so compelling. Jesus didn’t die merely to restore the status quo. God has promised to make all things new, and Jesus’s death on my behalf means that I don’t get left out of that cosmic renewal of all things. God’s Spirit is constantly about the task of remaking me from the inside, preparing me be a glad participant in that joyous multitude that John saw.

This means that it’s always too soon to give up on myself, notwithstanding my three-steps-forward-two-steps-back progress in becoming like Jesus. And it’s always too soon to give up on what God is doing in someone else’s life, no matter how long and deep his or her struggle and rebellion.

I think this is one of the main things God wants us to get from the biblical accounts of His working with His people – with Abraham, with Moses, with David, with the Jewish people: God is always patiently playing the long game. The Gospel both means that I can and requires that I must put my trust in God, even when the present situation is seemingly beyond hope.

3. The Gospel calls me to give up my old schemes for managing my sin and guilt.
 
Before Jesus saved me, I used a wide variety of methods to manage my sin: I rationalized, I compared, I shifted blame. And my personal favorite: I minimized (I never actually “lied,” though I was occasionally guilty of using a “terminological inexactitude.”)

But the Gospel means that I don’t need to do that anymore. Because of Jesus, I can confess my sin to God and to others whom I have offended. In fact, the Gospel doesn’t just make it possible for me to deal with my sin differently; it requires that I deal with my sin differently.

When I resort to those old techniques of sin management, I am living as if I were still a fearful slave to sin. The Gospel requires that I abandon all those old ways and bring my sins and failures to my Father, trusting in His abiding and steadfast love.

The Good News about Jesus carries with it implications about the way I live my life.
 
The Gospel is the Good News that God redeems me out of slavery to sin and makes me His adopted child. My new status in the household of God brings with it not only privileges but also expectations. I am no longer a slave. Now I begin learning how to act like a child of the King.

But there’s even more good news: the Gospel also means that God’s Spirit is at work in my heart making it easier for me to behave like His child. I am thankful not only for what the Good News about Jesus means but also for the new kind of life He is shaping in me: forgiving as I’ve been forgiven, persevering even when I’m discouraged, bringing my failures to Him instead of hiding them.