The Importance of the Gospel

by Bruce Mills

Apart from the gospel, nothing else matters. 

Don’t read that statement and make the assumption that I am just using hyperbole.  I am not.  No human achievement of any kind will matter when you stand before God.  The only thing that will matter is who is going to pay for your sins.  It will either be you—by spending eternity in the everlasting torment of hell, away from the presence of God—or it will be paid by Jesus Christ, who alone is able to satisfy God’s holy demands and provide the righteousness you so desperately need.  Only He is able to bear both the responsibility of perfect obedience to the Law and the weight of God’s just wrath against you.

Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.  He didn’t come to save the self-righteous and those who don’t consider themselves in need of help.  He didn’t come to save those who believe they can satisfactorily obey His Law through their own ability.  No, He came to save sinners; those who recognize their sin and their own inadequacy to satisfy God’s holy and righteous standards, who place their faith and trust in Him and Him alone for forgiveness of their sins and for eternal life.

Make sure you communicate that truth clearly to your children, your family, your friends, and anyone who will listen to you.  That is the primary responsibility of Christians.  It is our job to boldly go into a dark, hostile, God-hating, Christ-rejecting world and share the good news that Jesus Christ is mankind’s only hope for eternal life. 

There won’t be very many who receive that message.  In fact, most will reject it and will persecute those who proclaim that message.  But that doesn’t change the fact that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the truth and the only way by which anyone can have an eternal, personal relationship with God.

Apart from the gospel, nothing else matters.

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.

Evangelism and the Depravity of Man

by Bruce Mills

I listened to a sermon recently which really got me to thinking about our modern day assumptions about the nature of man and the impact of those assumptions on our evangelism. The modern psychologically-driven concept is that man is basically good; that he loves God, and that his evil deeds are aberrations rather than the inner desire of his heart. To the contrary, Scripture is clear that man is not basically good. Rather, he is corrupt to the core. There is nothing about him that desires, seeks, or does anything that is good, righteous, or worthy (cf. Romans 3:10-18). That is not to say that man is incapable of doing things which are "good" within the context of human relationships, but that even man's righteous deeds are filthy to God (cf. Isaiah 64:6). Thus, man is not the good person he considers himself to be.

This understanding has tremendous implications for our evangelism methods. Many modern day evangelicals have adopted the world's viewpoint that man desires that which is good and genuinely seeks to know God, so they think that if they can craft their presentation of the gospel in a particularly persuasive way, those who hear will be convinced of the truth contained in it and will thus turn to Christ.

But when we recognize that man is not basically good and does not seek after the things of God, we will understand that our presentation of the gospel, no matter how clear and convincing it may be, is incapable of convincing anyone to turn from his sin to Christ. Unless the Holy Spirit is working in the human heart to draw a man to the Lord, no one will ever seek after God on his own.

This takes the pressure off of us in presenting the gospel. When we realize that salvation is entirely the work of God who sovereignly elects those who will believe and then draws them to Himself, granting them the faith to believe the gospel, we will recognize that it is not essential that our presentation of the gospel be persuasive and convincing. We are only called to be faithful to present the gospel. Yes, we must include important issues such as God's holiness, man's sin, the need for repentance, and saving faith in Jesus Christ alone, but we are not responsible for the response of those who hear. That is God's sovereign work. He has ordained those who will come to faith, and He has ordained the means by which they will hear. The Holy Spirit takes the truth of the gospel, applies it to the heart of the hearer, and then draws those who will believe to Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sin.

So the next time you present the gospel to someone and they don't respond like you prayed that they would, don't beat yourself up later, telling yourself, "If only I had said this..." or "If only I had said that..." If He chooses to do so, God is able to take the most stumbling, inarticulate presentation of the gospel and draw the hearer to Himself. In fact, Paul discusses this whole issue in 1 Cor. 1:18-31 where he talks about the foolishness of the gospel message and how God chooses the weak and foolish things of the world to shame the things that are wise. So don't worry about how stumbling and disjointed your presentation of the gospel may have been; just be faithful to Him by presenting the gospel and then trust that He is able to accomplish that which He desires in the hearts of those whom He intends to save.

The Law and the Gospel

by Bruce Mills

I have been studying Romans 7:7-13 in preparation for teaching in my adult Sunday School class. As I have dug into this passage and read what great Bible teachers such as John MacArthur, Leon Morris, James Montgomery Boice, and Douglas Moo have written in their commentaries, I have been struck by the gravity of what Paul has to say in this passage as it relates to the gospel that is typically presented in our contemporary culture.

Romans 7:7 states, "What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, 'You shall not covet.'" Paul clearly states that man becomes aware of the gravity of his sinfulness through an examination of the Law. So it would seem that using the Law as a means of evangelism is extremely important.

I think we would agree that the typical attitude that most people have about their spiritual condition is to sort of shrug off any question about it with an answer such as, “Oh, I do some bad things but God couldn’t send a good person like me to hell. I think my good things outweigh my bad things. I’m very religious, I try not to do things that hurt or harm others,” and so forth. You’ve heard it all.

But when a person comes face-to-face with the full reality of God’s moral Law, sin is seen for what it really is, and that is what is absolutely necessary to drive a person to salvation. For evangelism, preaching, teaching, or witnessing to be effective, you must bring people under the tyranny of the Law. What leads to true salvation is an understanding of the absolute righteousness and utter holiness of God. And the Law of God expresses His perfect righteousness and holiness and puts a demand on every soul that if you break this Law in one place, you’re damned. What leads to true salvation is an overpowering, frightening sense of the implications of breaking the Law. Truth about righteousness and holiness and sin and judgment is what awakens the slumbering sinner.

You can’t just go to people sitting out there thinking they’re pretty good and say, “By the way, Jesus would like to come into your life and make you happy.” That’s the wrong approach. Long before you talk about what Jesus is prepared to do for the sinner, you’ve got to talk about the sinner’s situation.

Salvation is not about making you happy, salvation is about delivering you from the consequence of violating the Law of God. And the language of evangelism is the language of Law and sin and guilt and curse and judgment and fear.

Let me say it this way: the most necessary and the most successful evangelism is that which aims at a radical conviction of sin. And sinners will not become concerned about their sins until they are face-to-face with God and His holy Law. The great Bible teacher, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones stated, “The sinner is a monstrosity in God’s universe and he needs to be aware of it.”

Why is anybody going to change his life if he has no fear of God? We have to alarm the sinner. We have to activate his conscience by informing him about the truth; not by letting him have a conscience that responds only to a watered down morality that he has been taught by the world.

We have to take the sinner, turn him face-to-face with the Law, hold it up like a mirror, and make him see the standard of perfect righteousness. Jesus said, “You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). We have to preach righteousness and Law. That’s how people understand the awfulness of their sin, and they understand the consequence of their sin, and the helplessness in which they exist. When conviction of sin is absent, conversion is usually false.

We need to recognize that the initial objective for evangelism is not to get people to be attracted to Jesus. The initial effort in evangelism is not to get people to be attracted to the happy life of a Christian. Salvation doesn’t come that way. The objective is to bring upon the sinner a fear of the judgment of God upon him for his violations of God's holy Law that are going on all the time in his life. What we want to do is convict that person by the work of the Spirit and the Word through us so that he comes to a place of such conviction and fear and dread of divine wrath that he desires to flee to the rescue available in Christ.

And then, after a person comes to saving faith in Christ, the on-going, continuing exposure to the holy Law of God through the pages of Scripture is what drives the saved person toward sanctification. So I am convinced that we must preach the Law. We must preach the Law to bring sinners under conviction that they might be saved, and we must uphold the Law to bring Christians under conviction so that they might pursue the path of sanctification.

The whole effort of the Law comes down to this: it is to bring men to a sense of their sin so that they know they need to be saved and they know they need to be sanctified. As John MacArthur has stated, "It is to produce in them a permanent beatitude attitude in which they mourn over their sin and feel inadequate, unworthy, and weak."

Preach the Law to the lost. Preach the Law to the saved. It is the Law that drives the lost to justification. It is the Law that drives the saved to sanctification. Where there is absence of conviction, there is absence of repentance. Where there is absence of repentance, there is no salvation and there is no sanctification.