Several years ago, I heard a Christian author giving his testimony to a group of kids. Following Jesus, he claimed, had given him a glamorous life. He had not only published popular children's books, he had also made a number of videos. He spent a lot of time in Hollywood, associating with famous people. He was happy and prosperous, all because of his faith in God. The clear implication of his message was, "if you follow Jesus, He'll give you a glamorous, exciting, prosperous life."
A.W. Tozer, writing more than 50 years ago, commented on a similar mind set in the Evangelical churches of his day: "The flaw in current evangelism lies in its humanistic approach. It struggles to be supernaturalistic but never quite makes it. It is frankly fascinated by the great, noisy, aggressive world with its big names, its hero worship, its wealth and its garish pageantry. To the millions of disappointed persons who have always yearned for worldly glory but never attained to it, the modern evangel offers a quick and easy short cut to their heart's desire. Peace of mind, happiness, prosperity, social acceptance, publicity, success in sports, business, the entertainment field, and perchance to sit occasionally at the same banquet table with a celebrity – all this on earth and heaven at last. Certainly no insurance company can offer half as much. In this quasi-Christian scheme of things God becomes the Aladdin lamp who does the bidding of everyone that will accept His Son and sign a card. The total obligation of the sinner is discharged when he accepts Christ. After that he has but to come with his basket and receive the religious equivalent of everything the world offers and enjoy it to the limit. Those who have not accepted Christ must be content with this world, but the Christian gets this one with the one to come thrown in as a bonus" ("The Key to Human Life," in Born After Midnight, p. 22).
This appeal, "come to Jesus; He has just what you're looking for," exists in many forms. The expectations aren't usually as extravagant as those of the author I mentioned. But the claim is that Jesus will give us what we want in this life: success at work, a good marriage, financial security, happiness, emotional stability, ecstatic experiences in worship. The gospel is relevant, from this perspective, because it connects with our felt needs and provides us with a happier life.
But it doesn't seem to be working that way for the apostle Paul. He's writing this letter from prison, and he's following One who, just a few years earlier, was executed by the Roman government. His message to Timothy, in these early verses, is "do not be ashamed." Why? Because, on the surface of things, Timothy is likely to be tempted by shame. In a world that worships power and success, Timothy's mentor is wasting away in prison and His Lord had died in apparent powerlessness and defeat. So, because he knows how easily we become discouraged when things aren't going the way we want them to, Paul reminds Timothy: "do not be ashamed... but join with me in suffering for the gospel."
But Paul isn't just speaking to Timothy. Earlier in his own ministry he had said to the Romans: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (1:16). The gospel is relevant, not because it gives us what we want. The gospel is relevant in every age because it gives us something we desperately need (although we're unaware of that need much of the time). It's a message that's worth suffering for. It may appear foolish and ineffective from the world's perspective, but it is the power of God for salvation.
So Paul tells Timothy, "don't be intimidated." The value of the gospel can't be measured by the priorities of this world. Those who rejected Jesus will also reject us when we speak in His name. Those who value power and wealth and status will see the gospel as foolishness (or they'll try to twist it into something more consistent with what they want). Paul is saying, "don't be ashamed of this seemingly foolish message, and don't be ashamed of your association with me, a prisoner for the Lord – an apparent failure; be faithful in exercising your spiritual gifts in Jesus' name, and join with me in suffering for the gospel." Then, having given this exhortation, he launches into a brief statement of the gospel, in verses 9& 10.
First, Paul reminds us that the gospel is a message of grace. God doesn't come to us "because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace." As we saw at the beginning of this letter, the word translated "grace" is often translated as "gift." The promise of God comes to us in the form of a gift, which both gives us access into God's presence and begins the process of healing the effects of our lostness. Grace brings us into God's favor and begins transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ. Paul says, in Romans 5, that we are standing in grace. Our whole relationship with God is permeated by a sense of givenness; the promise of life comes to us in the form of a gift which sets us free to become the kind of people God created us to be.
The gospel is not rooted in anything we've done. It's not even rooted, primarily, in our need. God is responding to our neediness and guilt, but it doesn't begin with us at all. It begins with Him, with His own purpose and grace. We need to remind ourselves of this, because as soon as we start talking about God's concern for our needs, we're tempted to take over. We live in a consumer-oriented culture, so we know instinctively how things are supposed to work. Service organizations are there to meet our needs. In fact, they compete with one another to provide us with their services (for a fee, of course). If we're dissatisfied with the service we receive from one company, we shift to another. And there's nothing wrong with this. In dealing with service-oriented businesses, there's a sense in which we are in charge. We're paying for what we receive, and if we aren't happy with the results we can pay someone else.
The danger is that we begin to look at God in this way. We begin to see the Church as a service organization that's there primarily to meet our needs (and it doesn't help that so many churches market themselves in precisely those terms). God has graciously responded to our needs, but we're not in charge. He has saved us – rescued us from our guilt and lostness and alienation. But that's not all He's done. He has also "called us to a holy life." God has called us to become the kind of people He created us to be; He's called us to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. The problem is that this process of transformation is difficult and slow, and it's frequently painful. It goes against our natural inclinations. It often means doing without things we want and putting the needs of others first. It means following Jesus in His self-emptying love and bearing with others patiently.
If we're approaching the Church as consumers, as soon as things become difficult or painful, as soon as someone does something that displeases us, we'll want to leave and go somewhere else. "This church isn't meeting my needs; I'll just find one that will." God has graciously responded to our needs, but one of our most desperate needs is to be delivered from our own selfishness. The Church is not a place where we go to have our felt needs met. The Church isn't a place where we go to get something. God has already given us an unspeakably precious gift. The Church is a place where we go to worship God, no matter what is going on in our lives, and where we hear His Word (whether or not it says things we want to hear). And as we worship God and offer ourselves to Him in obedience, over and over for a lifetime, we are transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. God, in His grace, has saved us and called us to live a holy life (whether or not we find that idea appealing). The gospel is a message of grace, and that grace both gives us new life and sets us free to become the people God created us to be.
Second, Paul tells us that the gospel is rooted in a Person. This grace that we receive was "given us in Christ Jesus." We don't receive grace by following a formula, but by coming to Him. A friend told me that several years ago a well-known children's ministry called him and wanted to speak in the church that he pastors. The representative said: "children are more likely to respond to the invitation to receive Jesus as their Savior, then, whatever else happens in their lives, we at least know they are going to heaven because they've been saved." This is the gospel of Jesus Christ reduced to a formula: accept Jesus Christ as your Personal Savior at some point in your life, then you're at least assured of going to heaven.
It's interesting that those who use this formula talk so much about a "personal relationship with Jesus." The truth is that we all, as creatures made in God's image, have a personal relationship with God. Our relationship with Him may be negative: we may be resisting His lordship, or denying that He even exists. But our relationship with Him is personal, because it's impossible to escape the fact that we live in His world as people created in His image. The gospel doesn't offer us a ticket to heaven that we put into our wallets and forget about until we need it. The gospel reconciles us to God. It heals our broken relationship with our Creator. We receive grace "in Christ Jesus," not apart from Him. It's only in coming to Him, and remaining in Him, that we have life. He is the source of our life.
Paul calls Him "Christ": the anointed, chosen One of God, who fulfills all the promises of the Old Testament. All the promises point toward Him, and everything now either looks back on what He did in the past or forward to what He is going to do in the future. But He's not only Christ; He's "Christ Jesus." The promise of life is fulfilled in this particular man, the Son of the Virgin Mary, who grew up in Nazareth, worked for most of his adult life as a carpenter, ministered publicly for three years in first-century Palestine, was crucified under Pontius Pilate and then rose from the dead on the third day. "This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus."
The third thing Paul tells us is that the gospel is a message of life: "Christ Jesus... has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." Death is the one thing we can't escape, no matter what we do. The best efforts of medical science may lengthen our lives in this world, but we still spend all our days living in the shadow of death. The author of Hebrews reminds his readers: "Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death" (2:14-15). Jesus destroyed death by tasting death for us.
The gospel is a message of life to people living under the shadow of death. "Since the appearing of our Savior, nothing could be plainer: death defeated, life vindicated in a steady blaze of light, all through the work of Jesus" (The Message). So many of our efforts to demonstrate that God's Word is relevant for the modern world seem pathetic: "look at all the wonderful gadgets we have; we're really with it; come listen to our great music." Do we really think that the relevance of this message is so difficult for people to grasp? The question isn't whether we are using enough technology in our presentation of the gospel. The question is whether we've tasted the power of this message in our own lives. If we have, then we're able to "testify about our Lord," no matter what our musical preferences are, and whether or not we look like the kind of people who are esteemed in the business and entertainment worlds. And if we haven't tasted the power of this message in our lives, then no amount of technology, no amount of tinkering with our style of presentation, will make up for that lack.
I often think the frantic efforts of contemporary evangelicals to show our relevance to the modern world contradict, in a fundamental way, our identity as the Church of Jesus Christ. We're trying to compete with the business and entertainment worlds on their terms, because we've forgotten who we are. The quest for relevance, in a success-intoxicated society, very quickly leads us away from the truth of the gospel, which is rooted in self-emptying sacrificial love. Listen to these words by Henri Nouwen: "The leader of the future will be the one who dares to claim his irrelevance in the contemporary world as a divine vocation that allows him or her to enter into a deep solidarity with the anguish underlying all the glitter of success and to bring the light of Jesus there" (In the Name of Jesus, p. 22).
The gospel is a message of grace that transforms us into the kind of people we were created to be, that restores us to peace with God and leads us into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ, and that promises unending, abundant life. To people who believe in this message, Paul says: "do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, relying on the power of God." This is a message that's worth suffering for. The problem isn't that this message is irrelevant; the problem is that people don't believe it's true (maybe because we don't act like we believe it's true); or, they reject it because it doesn't give them what they want; or, they reject it because they're not willing to be humbled before God as needy sinners who come to Him with empty hands. We're not in charge, and neither are those who come into our churches demanding to have their needs met. The gospel is rooted in God's own purpose and grace. He knows our real needs better than we do, so the place to begin is listening to Him and submitting to His wisdom. In His mercy and grace, He has "destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." Because this is true, we can say with Paul: "I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith."
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