Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Birth of God Incarnate

Luke 2:1-20 (NASB)

1Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. 2This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. 4Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. 6While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. 7And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

8In the same region there were some shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. 9And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. 10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12“This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”

15When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.” 16So they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger. 17When they had seen this, they made known the statement which had been told them about this Child. 18And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. 19But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.

Monday, November 23, 2009

The Gospel of Jesus Christ

by Bruce Mills

In my last post, I said that I would explain how a person avoids God’s wrath and eternal condemnation. What follows comes from a recent funeral service I conducted for the mother of a close friend. He specifically requested that I present the gospel to those who attended, and this is the gospel message I gave. I have only edited it to remove specific, personal references to the deceased.

That lady was just like every other person on the face of the earth—she was a sinner. She wasn’t perfect—she struggled and suffered the natural outcome of sin’s impact in her life. Every one of us does. Death itself is the ultimate and most obvious consequence of sin, as we are told in the Bible in Romans 5:12 where it says that “just as through one man—Adam—sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.”

So, every one of us is a sinner and some day, if Christ doesn’t return first, we are all going to die. And that means that we have a problem. In fact, it is the most serious problem that anyone will ever face. Our problem is that God is absolutely holy and righteous. He cannot allow sin into His presence. In fact, His required standard for anyone to enter heaven is absolute perfection. In Matt. 5:48, Jesus put it very bluntly when He said, “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And since none of us is perfect, that means we are all unrighteous, and that means we all justly deserve God’s eternal condemnation in hell.

In fact, the Bible tells us that over and over again. In 1 Cor. 6:9 it says, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” And in Eph. 5:5 it says, “For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man, who is an idolater, has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God.” So then, none of us is perfect. So the question is, how can we be certain that we will go to heaven. Well, the answer has nothing to do with Jeanne. It has everything to do with Jesus Christ.

You see, Jesus Christ was not merely a man—He was God in human flesh. That’s who He claimed to be. He said, “I and the Father are One” (John 10:30). He said, “He who has seen Me, has seen the Father” (John 14:9). As C. S. Lewis put it, you cannot call Him a good teacher or a great prophet or a good man, but deny that He is God. You must decide whether or not He was telling the truth when He claimed to be God. If you conclude that He was not God, then you are saying that He was either a liar or a lunatic. If He was a liar, then He wasn’t a good man. If He was a lunatic, then He cannot be considered to be a great teacher. But if He is who He claimed to be; that is, God in flesh, then we owe Him our every allegiance and all obedience.

And so God sent His Son, Jesus, to the earth and He took upon Himself the sins of every person who would ever believe and He died to pay the penalty for those sins. Those sins deserved eternal judgment, and so only someone who was absolutely perfect could pay that penalty. And Jesus was the perfectly righteous God-man who paid the price for sin. And then He rose again, defeating death and sin. And now He offers forgiveness from sin and eternal life to everyone who repents of their sin and trusts in Him as the only mediator between God and man.

Once again, Jesus left us with no other options. He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6). That is a very exclusive claim. But again, if we believe He was who He claimed to be, then He has every right to make such a statement.

And in Acts 4:12, we are told that “there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Jesus Christ is the only way to God. That’s not something I came up with; that’s what God Himself says.

And those who come to Jesus through faith alone in Him find that God forgives all their sin, and credits the righteousness of His perfect Son to their account, so that when He looks at them, He sees the perfection of Jesus and no longer sees their sin. And that makes them eternally acceptable to enter and live in heaven forever and ever.

It was that gospel which my friend’s mother came to understand and believe. And because she placed her faith and trust in Jesus Christ alone for her eternal salvation, she is at this very moment, in the presence of her Lord and Savior.

And I am convinced that if she could be here with us today, she would tell you, “Believe in Christ. Turn your back on your sin, and turn to Jesus Christ and trust Him and Him alone for your eternal salvation. That is the most important decision you will ever make.”

She would want everyone to recognize their sin for what it is—an offense against a holy and righteous God. It is the corruption that separates man from God, and which destroys everything that is good. And as long as a man or woman remains in their sin, they are dead spiritually.

And she would tell you that the only way to receive forgiveness for your sin is to come to Jesus Christ, repenting of that sin, and place your complete trust and faith in Jesus Christ alone for your salvation. And she would tell you that when you do that, Jesus will cleanse you and forgive you, remove the penalty of eternal death, and give you the free gift of eternal life in heaven with Him.

And then, when that day comes—as it does for all of us—that you pass through death’s door, you will find Jesus there, along with every person who has placed his or her faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation from sin and death.

Now, someone might say, “But I’m too old for that stuff. I’ve wasted my life. It’s too late for me.” Let me just urge you to consider the claims of Jesus Christ, regardless of how old you are or how you have lived your life. Age or the trials and struggles and sinfulness of your life should never be an excuse. In fact, those who come to faith late in their lives are simply demonstrations of the greatness of God’s grace and His willingness to forgive sin and bring peace and hope into one’s life.

I hope anyone who reads this who does not know Jesus Christ will repent of their sin and turn to Him in saving faith. That is the only way that anyone will avoid God’s wrath and eternal condemnation, and enjoy eternal life in heaven.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Dead Men Walking

by Bruce Mills

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1). In those nine words, there is perhaps no clearer statement in Scripture on the sinfulness of man apart from Christ. In the original Greek text, it literally says “And you, being dead in your trespasses and sins.” In other words, man does not become spiritually dead because he sins; he is spiritually dead because by nature he is sinful. Except for Jesus Christ, that is the condition of every human being since the Fall, including every believer before he is saved. It is the past condition of believers and the present condition of everyone else.

Now contrary to most modern thinking, including such esteemed theologians as Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil, man’s basic trouble is not being out of harmony with his heritage or his environment, but being out of harmony with his Creator. His principal problem is not that he cannot make meaningful relationships with other human beings, but that he has no right relationship to God, from whom he is alienated by sin.

His condition has nothing to do with the way he lives; it has to do with the fact that he is dead even while he is alive. He is spiritually dead while being physically alive. Because he is dead to God, he is dead to spiritual life, truth, righteousness, inner peace and happiness, and ultimately to every other good thing.

One of the first indications of physical death is the body’s inability to respond to stimulus, no matter what it might be. The simple fact is that a dead person cannot react. He no longer responds to light, sound, smell, taste, pain, or anything else. He is totally insensitive because there is no life in him.

That is the way of spiritual death as well. A person who is spiritually dead has no life by which he can respond to spiritual things, much less live a spiritual life. No amount of love, care, and words of affection from God can draw a response. A spiritually dead person is alienated from God and therefore alienated from life. He has no capacity to respond. Apart from God, men as spiritual zombies, the walking dead who do not know they are dead. They go through the motions of life, but they do not possess it.

This is the primary reason why I am convinced that Calvinism is correct and Arminianism is wrong. According to what this passage says, men and women are “dead in…trespasses and sins”—they cannot possibly respond on their own to the Gospel apart from the work of God to raise them to spiritual life.

But Arminianism teaches that the fall of man was not total, maintaining that there was enough good left in man for him to will to accept Jesus Christ unto salvation.

Arminians believe that election is based on the foreknowledge of God as to who would believe. Man’s “act of faith” is seen as the “condition” or his being elected to eternal life, since God foresaw him exercising his “free will” in response to Jesus Christ.

The founder of Arminianism, Joseph Arminius, held that redemption was based on the fact that God loves everybody, that Christ died for everyone, and that the Father is not willing that any should perish. The death of Christ provided the grounds for God to save all men, but each must exercise his own “free will” in order to be saved.

He also believed that since God wanted all men to be saved, He sent the Holy Spirit to “woo” all men to Christ, but since man has absolute “free will,” he is able to resist God’s will for his life. He believed that God’s will to save all men can be frustrated by the finite will of man. He also taught that man exercises his own will first, and then is born again.

He even said that a man cannot be saved by God unless it is man’s will to be saved, and a man cannot continue in salvation unless he continues to will to be saved. In other words, he can lose his salvation.

In other words, man’s salvation depends on his own ability and will to stay saved. I find such teachings to be absolutely incompatible with this passage. Before we were saved, we were like every other person who is apart from God—“dead in…trespasses and sins.”

The Greek case indicates the sphere or realm in which something or someone exists. It tells us where we were before our salvation. We were in the sphere of being dead in trespasses and sins. We were not dead because we committed sins, but because we were in sin.

A person does not become a liar when he tells a lie; he tells a lie because he already is a liar. He does not become a thief when he steals; he steals because he already is a thief. And so also with murder, adultery, covetousness, and every other sin.

Committing sinful acts does not make us sinners; we commit sinful acts because we are sinners. Jesus confirmed this when He said, “The things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders” (Matt. 15:18-19).

Now, someone might ask, "Do you mean that because all men are equally dead in sin that they are all equally corrupt and wicked?" No; twenty corpses on a battlefield might be in many different stages of decay, but they are uniformly dead. The manifestation of death occurs in many different forms and degrees, but death itself has no degrees. Sin manifests itself in many different forms and degrees, but the state of sin itself has no degrees. Not all men are as evil as they could be, but all fail to measure up to God’s perfect standard.

As a state of being, a sphere of existence, sin has more to do with what is not done than with what is done. God’s standard is for men to be perfect just as He Himself is perfect (Matt. 5:48). God has never given any standard for man but perfect holiness.

It is because of that perfect standard of holiness that men apart from God cannot be anything but sinful. Because he is separated from God, he cannot do anything but fall short of God’s standard. No matter how much good he does or attempts to do, the standard of never doing or never having done evil at all is unattainable.

Because I live on the Gulf of Mexico, let me give you an illustration I have used many times. Let’s suppose that all of us decided we would go down to the beach, and we all lined up and took turns trying to jump across the Gulf of Mexico. Some of us might jump only a couple of feet, but others might jump 8 or 10 feet out before we landed in the water. Even if we brought in a professional broad jumper, he might be able to jump 25 or 26 feet. But no one would be able to jump to the other side of the Gulf. Our degrees of success would vary only in relation to one another, but in relation to achieving the goal, we would all be equal failures.

That is the same way it is with attempting to achieve God’s holiness. Every unbeliever is an equal failure. That’s why the morally good, helpful, kind, considerate, self-giving, generous person needs salvation as much as the serial killer on death row.

The person who is a good parent, a loving spouse, an honest worker, and a civic humanitarian needs Jesus Christ to save him or her from the eternal condemnation of hell just as much as the drug-addicted prostitute or the heartless terrorist. They do not lead equally sinful lives, but they are equally in the state of sin, equally separated from God, and equally estranged from spiritual life.

Jesus once said, “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same” (Luke 6:33). On another occasion He said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” (Luke 11:13). What He was saying is that a person apart from God can do humanly good things.

But as the Lord points out in both of those statements, the person is still a sinner, still evil by nature, and still operating on a motive less than that of glorifying God. A sinner’s doing good is good, but it cannot change his nature or his basic sphere of existence, and it cannot reconcile him to God.

There is one more passage which states this principle, which I personally think is the most frightening passage of Scripture in the Bible. It’s found in Matt. 7:22-23. Jesus is concluding the Sermon on the Mount, and he tells the listening crowd what it will be like at the Great White Throne Judgment, and He says, “Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’”

In other words, there will be many people who will stand before the Lord and try to justify themselves on the basis of their wonderful works of power, and their wonderful teaching done in His name, and He will send them to hell because they never had a personal relationship to Him.

Being good and kind to other people pleases God. You might even say it is a step in the right direction. The only problem is that 100,000 such steps cannot bring a person any closer to God because it is a sinner’s condition of sinfulness and not his particular sins that separate him from God, his particular acts of goodness cannot reconcile him to God.

So, man is in an impossible situation. He is spiritually dead and entirely unable to extricate himself from that situation. How then, is he supposed to have a relationship with God? How will he ever be able to avoid God's wrath and just condemnation to an eternal hell? We'll examine the answer in our next post.