The Gospel and Its Impact On Everything
The following is a lightly edited transcript of a sermon (plus references) that I preached this past Sunday, April 11, 2021 at my church. The sermon can be watched here.
Last Sunday on Twitter a “progressive Christian activist” tweeted the following: “I’m less interested in what Christians believe about Easter and more interested in how Christians act because of Easter.” So he's talking about beliefs and he's talking about actions—or, you could say, faith and works. And he's saying that he thinks it's more important how Christians act in response to the resurrection than what they believe about the resurrection. I wonder what you think about that. Do you think that's right? And I wonder how many of us would actually have the exact opposite tendency, and we would say that we're actually less interested in how Christians act—what Christians do in response to the resurrection—and we're more concerned with what they believe about the resurrection.
This morning we're going to be in John chapter 3. So as you turn there, let me kind of tell you all where we're going. As Pastor Justin mentioned, he's heading into a miniseries about the core values of our church. And those core values are Gospel Proclamation, Gospel Unity, and Gospel Witness. And what you may notice about those three core values is that the common denominator is the gospel. And there's a good reason for that, because the gospel is the center of everything in the Christian life. The word “gospel” literally means “good message” or “good story.” You could say “good news.” And Christianity is driven by good news. The gospel is what directs and affects everything in our lives. So it would benefit us to take some time as we're heading into this series to look at what exactly the gospel is and what it means for our lives. So, if you would, please stand with me out of reverence for God's Word and we will read from John chapter 3, verses 16 through 18.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” (John 3:16-18 ESV)
Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your Word and your word to us this morning. I pray now you will anoint my lips, anoint my tongue. Fill me with your Holy Spirit so that as I speak, I speak Your message. I pray, Father, that we will understand this passage and everything You have to say to us this morning, with open hearts and open minds. In Jesus’ name I pray that Your power will work here among us. If there's believing hearts or unbelieving hearts, speak to them what You will. It's in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.
Thank you, you may be seated.
The Gospel
Would you consider yourself a good person? Or a bad person? How do you measure up on the question of good and evil?
Well whatever your answer is to that question, I've got good news and I've got bad news. In fact, the reason that the good news is so good is because there is bad news that is really bad. And here in this passage that we've just read, we see both of them—the good and the bad news. So in verse 16 it says that God loved the world such that He gave to the world His Son.
Defining Terms
Ok, let's define our terms. “God.” God is the Creator of all things. Everything that has been created was created by God. He created everything with the words that He spoke, everything into existence. And God is the Authority over all things. So He's the the Creator and the Ruler over everything. Sovereign over all. And God, we learn from the Bible—a glorious mystery—is what we call a Trinity. And what that means is that He is one being (God) but three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Now, this is something that is impossible for us to fully understand. Ok? And that makes sense, because we are finite and God is infinite. And if the finite could wrap their minds around the infinite, then the infinite wouldn't be infinite. So it makes sense that we can't fully comprehend it. But there are ways that we can talk about God that help us get a better understanding of it, and one of those ways is to talk about “what” and to talk about “who.” So let's talk about human beings, for example. Take Pastor Justin, for example. We could ask, “What is Pastor Justin, in his essence?” Pastor Justin is a human being. Alright? Ok, now you can ask, “Who is Pastor Justin?” He is Justin Miles, our pastor. So he's one “what” and he's one “who.” That's true for all human beings. But God is different from that. God is one “what” (that is, God) but three “who”s (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit).
And we see in this verse two of those “who”s referenced here. We see God the Father sends God the Son to the world. So God the Son humbles Himself and takes on the nature of a man; God becomes man and enters into the world (Phil 2:5-8). And why does He do that? It says so that whoever believes in the Son will not perish but have eternal life. So there's two options here, two possible final destinations: perish, or have eternal life.
What is “eternal life”? Well, Jesus answers that question in John 17 when He’s praying to the Father and He says this: He says, “this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3). So, eternal life is knowing God and Christ. It's to have an intimate relationship with God. And so, how do you get that? John 3:16 tells us it is by believing in the Son that you enter into this intimate relationship with God.
Condemned Already
And then it goes on in verse 17, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” That is good news! —because God could condemn the world. But He made a way for the world to be saved from condemnation.
And verse 18 says, “Whoever believes in the Son is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” So without Jesus, every one of us would be “condemned already.” Why? Why are we condemned? Romans 3:23 says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” So we are separated from God, we fall short of His glory, because of our sin. What is sin? Sin is disobedience to God. It's anything we do that displeases Him. So it could be a an action, it could be a word, it could be a thought—but if we do any of these things in such a way that displeases God, that is sin. And why does it displease Him? It displeases Him because it is different from His character. God is perfect; He's morally perfect, and He created the world perfect. And He created us human beings morally perfect as well, but then we sinned; we disobeyed Him and because of that, because God is so perfect He cannot even allow sin, imperfection, to be in His presence (Ps 5:4), and so we were separated from Him. We, by our sin, ruined ourselves. And in fact we ruined the whole world, because God put a curse on the world because of our sin (Gen 3:17-18). So we ourselves were corrupted. That's why we're “condemned already.”
Now let me let me ask you this, to just kind of flesh this out a little bit: Have you ever told a lie before? Yeah, we have all told lies before. What do you call someone who tells lies? A liar. Alright, so you're a liar. Have you ever stolen something before, even something small, regardless of its value? You know, you downloaded a song off the internet without paying for it, whatever it is—have you stolen something before? I’m sure you have. I have too. And what do you call someone who steals things? A thief. That's right. So you're a thief. But you're not only a thief; you're a lying thief. Ok, let me ask you this: have you ever taken God's name in vain before? This is very serious to God. If you use God's name without respect, you use His name in place of a curse word—imagine that: would you use your mother's name as a curse word? Probably not, because that would dishonor her. And yet you take God's name—the One who gives you life, who is giving you the breath with which you use to curse His name—you use His name as a curse word. It’s very serious to God, so serious that in the Old Testament it got the death penalty (Lev 24:16). So this sin is called blasphemy, and if you've done that, as I’m sure you have (as I have), you're a blasphemer. Let me ask you this: in the Bible, Jesus says that if someone looks at a woman with lust, he has committed adultery with her in his heart (Matt 5:27-28). So have you ever looked at someone with lust before? Probably you have. I have too. And so let's stop here and take account. By your own admission, you are a lying, thieving, blaspheming adulterer at heart. And these are four of God's ten commandments (Exod 20:1-17). If we were to go through all ten commandments, every one of us would be guilty at every single point. That is why we are condemned already. Because we have sinned.
And what does this mean in verse 18 where it says, “whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God”? So in one sense you can say you're condemned because you don't believe in Jesus, but in another sense you can say you're condemned already. Ok, so think of it like this. If you are in the water in the middle of the ocean and you don't know how to swim, you're drowning. You're drowning “already.” If somebody comes along with a boat and tosses you a lifesaver, and you don't grab onto the lifesaver, you're going to drown and you're going to die. And it could be said you died, you drowned, because you didn't grab onto the lifesaver. But it could also be said that you were drowning already, independent of the lifesaver. The boat could have never come along; you still would have been drowning. And that's what's going on here in this verse: you're condemned already, and you're condemned because you did not believe in Jesus. Romans 1 talks about this when it says that everyone is without excuse for their sin, because every single person, if you are alive, you know that God exists (Rom 1:18-23). God has revealed Himself to every single person such that they know God exists and when they sin, when they sin against their conscience, they know they're sinning against God. But they suppress this truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18); because they love their sin, they convince themselves that they don't know what they do know. And so they are condemned already.
The Nature of Condemnation
But what is what is the nature of this condemnation? Romans 6:23 says that “the wages of sin is death.” Ok, “wages.” When you go to work, you do the work and you get paid for it. In the same way, when you sin, you do the sin and you're going to get paid for it—except you're not going to get paid in money; you're going to get paid in death. And when the Bible talks about death, in this case it's not talking merely about physical death. It’s talking about eternal death, that is, eternal separation from the favor and pleasure of God, being tormented for your sins, receiving the full penalty for your sins in hell (Matt 13:41-42; 25:46; Mark 9:47-48; Luke 13:27-28; Rev 20:10-15). And think about it: it's not difficult to understand, because if you commit a crime on earth you're going to be brought before a judge, right? And that judge, if he's a good judge, will condemn you according to your crime, right? And our crime is a lot of sin. And God is a good judge (Ps 7:11). So, He will condemn us according to our crime. And we have in His Word clear indication that the payment for sin is this eternal death.
The Good News
But wait!—because in verse 17 it says that “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world.” So he came so that the world would not be condemned! That's exactly right. If you're in court and the judge has said that you are guilty, has pronounced you guilty, and you have to pay a fine that is so great that you could never afford it, imagine in that moment somebody walks in and pays the fine on your behalf. You can go free. You can walk out that day, and the judge can still have done what is just and right because he pronounced you guilty and the fine was paid, so you can go free. That is what Jesus did for us when He died on the cross. Jesus paid the fine. Our fine was death, eternal death, and Jesus took that full penalty on Himself on the cross (Isa 53:5; Heb 10:11-14; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18).
And so this is good news. But it's even more profound than that, because Jesus doesn't just pay the fine and then let you walk out with a guilty charge on your record. Jesus trades places with you, where He takes all of your sin on Himself as if it was His sin and then gives you all of His righteousness as if you did all the good things that He did (2 Cor 5:21). And so it's not merely that our record is wiped clean, but it's that Jesus gives us His righteousness.
So that is good news. But it doesn't stop there, the good news. Because Jesus didn't just pay the fine, die, and stay in the tomb. Three days later Jesus came back to life. And that resurrection affirms for us that we have new life in Him (1 Cor 15:17). And the Bible says the old is gone and the new has come (2 Cor 5:17). We are new people! We have been made capable of having this eternal life, this relationship with God that we were not capable of having because of our sin.
This is good news. But the good news doesn't stop there, because Romans 6 says that if we've been united with Christ in his death then you will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his (Rom 6:5). So we will, too, be physically resurrected with Him and will be united with Him, glorified together with Jesus Christ in the presence of God in the end (Rom 8:17; Eph 2:4-7; 1 John 3:2; Phil 3:20-21; Rev 21:3-4), and that will happen when Jesus comes down from heaven in the same way that He ascended (Acts 2:9-11) and He sets his foot on the Mount of Olives, the valley will tear in two, and He will walk into the old city of Jerusalem and take dominion over the earth and over all of His enemies once and for all (Zech 14:4, 9).
That is good news! And you know what, there's another part to it too, because it doesn't end there. There's another part to it that I forgot to mention, which is that right now, before that, we have the Holy Spirit, who has come to us. Jesus, before He ascended—rose up into heaven and out of sight—He said to His disciples that I would send you the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts 1:8), and that's what happened in Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit came and indwelled in the believers. And that's what happened every time a believer has believed in Jesus ever since. The Holy Spirit has come and dwelled in him (Rom 8:9). So not only will we be with Jesus, with God in the end. We are with God right now!
That is good news.
So what I’ve described for you this morning, this is what Christians call the gospel. It’s good news.
Not For Everyone
But listen, this good news is not for everyone. Here in our verses it says that it's only for “whoever believes in him” (John 3:16, 18). So if you're hearing this message this morning, you are in one of two camps. You either believe in Jesus, which means that you are a recipient of eternal life; you're a beneficiary of all these things I’ve just spoken about—or, if you're not believing in Jesus, you are an unbeliever, which means that you have nothing to do with this good news, and you are separated from God; God's wrath is on you and you are heading towards a future, an eternity in hell experiencing the penalty for that sin. So I have something to say to each of these two camps. But I’m going to start with the believers. Because this glorious news does something to us.
To Believers: The Impact of the Gospel
When you give your life to Christ, it changes everything. The gospel becomes the central fact of life, making the physical absolutely inseparable from the spiritual, because as you walk out your physical life you will be living out this spiritual truth. There is no separation in the Christian's life between sacred and secular. Alright? We just sang about this, right? We said, “Hallelujah. All I have is Christ. Jesus is my life.” That's what those words mean: it means that your life is consumed by the gospel. So your life purpose becomes to love God and to enjoy Him forever, and to love others, which includes telling others about this good news and helping one another live in light of it. So I want to talk about some examples of what that means, alright? How does it mean that the sacred and the secular are inseparable?
Well, we can start with what Jesus says in Matthew 28:18, when He says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” So, two things: number one, Jesus is the authority over everything. Alright? It says all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him, sacred and secular. Jesus is King over all of it. Jesus is Lord. Number two, the gift of eternal life comes to us with a responsibility to obey. Ok? It says, “Go, therefore, and make disciples, baptizing them…and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” So, we, being disciples of Jesus, we're called to obey. And it makes sense, because to be saved from sin is to be saved from sinning. Right? In Romans 6, Paul says, “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” We can’t. We must do all that Jesus commands, and that affects everything. The gospel impacts every sphere of life: family, work, social issues, politics, friendships, your interactions with strangers, entertainment, art, hobbies, science, logic, philosophy—everything about your life is impacted by the gospel!
Examples
Let's go through some examples. Family. Family is the basic building block of society. Alright? Every human being is produced when a man and a woman come together and a human being is created. God ordained that this relationship between this man and woman should be marriage, and He says that in Genesis 2:24 when He says, “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and they shall become one flesh.” But more than that, Apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that this marriage represents the gospel. The husband represents Christ and the wife represents the Church (Eph 5:22-33). And so marriage is and always has been a symbol of the gospel. So the gospel changes the way that you approach your marriage. And if it changes how you approach your marriage, it changes how you approach family, and if family, all of society.
Take the example of work. How does gospel impact our work? When we work, Colossians 3 tells us, we “are serving the Lord Christ” (Col 3:23-24). So you no longer serve mere man, but you're serving Jesus. So your boss has a boss, and that boss is Jesus. So you could have a terrible earthly boss—that's not my case; he might be watching, and he's great—but you might have a terrible earthly boss, but you have a heavenly boss who is amazing. And that affects how you go about your work.
How does the gospel impact social issues? Pick one. Pick a social issue, the gospel and the lordship of Jesus Christ has something to say about it. Race relations. Racial relations problems are solved in the gospel. Ephesians 2 says that Christ broke down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles (Eph 2:11-16), and if that's true between Jews and Gentiles then it is true between any people group. And Colossians 3 says, “Here is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:11). Do you think that you have a problem with a people group of another ethnicity? Not if you're in Christ, you don’t. Not in Christ. There is no whiteness or blackness or any such thing in Christ. Every ethnicity is represented in the worship of God in Revelation 7:9, and those distinctions are rendered distinctions without a difference in the worship of God.
Take another social issue: sexuality, LGBTQ issues. The gospel resolves all of the problems, because when Jesus is your Lord, you conform your sexual practice to His idea of sexuality. And His idea is of a man leaving his father and mother and be united to his wife so that the two would become one flesh (Gen 2:22). Also, your idea of gender is conformed to this as well, and gender roles (Gen 1:27). When Jesus is your Lord, it affects your sexuality.
Take another social issue: the issue of abortion. When Jesus is your Lord, you conform your definition of life to Jesus’ definition of life (Ps 139:13-16; Luke 1:34-45), and you do all that you can to preserve innocent life (Prov 24:11)—and yes, even adopt children, as you yourself have been adopted into the family of God (Rom 8:15; Eph 1:5).
Alright, how does the gospel impact politics? Well, the gospel is inherently political. The central proclamation of the gospel is “Jesus is Lord” (Phil 2:11), and that is a political title. Jesus is “lord of lords” and “king of kings” (Rev 17:14; 19:16). He's the authority over every authority. Do you believe that, Christians? If Jesus is the highest authority, then the highest law of any land is the law of Christ (Gal 6:2), and that means that if there is a man-made law that is compatible with the law of Christ, it is to be obeyed (Rom 13). And if there is a man-made law that is incompatible with the law of Christ, it is to be disobeyed (Acts 5:29). And think about it this way: I mean, laws have no effect; laws themselves are powerless (cf. Rom 8:3), right? Laws have no effect unless they are governing a people who are the kind of people who will obey laws. Right? And so what can make a person into the kind of person who will be obedient to righteous laws? Only the gospel can do that!
How does the gospel impact friendships? Well, as we see in the sweet fellowship of the believers in Acts 2, they “were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. …attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes…” (Acts 2:42-47). So the gospel puts you into blessed relationships with others.
How does the gospel impact your philosophy? Colossians 2:8 says, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.” So the gospel changes your philosophical outlook, and everything you believe is founded on Jesus Christ. So it's not founded on reason, it's not founded on logic—you learn that logic and reason are founded on Christ (Col 2:3). And nobody even knows that or accepts that as true apart from the gospel.
And so the list could go on, because the gospel impacts every sphere of life, but I’ll stop there.
When a progressive Christian activist tweets that he's interested in what Christians believe about Easter less than he's interested about how Christians act because of Easter, he's off base. Because he's made a false dichotomy, as though belief and actions can be so cleanly separated. No! Actions flow from belief. James 2:17 says, “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” And in verse 22 he says faith is active along with works and faith is completed by works. So, on the other hand, if we all place our focus on what Christians believe and neglect what Christians do, we likewise are missing the fullness of the gospel, because this gospel affects everything.
So, this—I mean, this is a high calling, believers. Because that's a lot. But don't despair about that, because you're not the one doing that in your own power. We sang about that this morning, too. It said “the strength to follow your commands could never come from me.” So we have been made capable of this because of the good news, because of the Holy Spirit in us. And the gospel calls us to the Christian life, launches us into the Christian life, and sustains us in the Christian life. We trust in Jesus alone, and He will never fail us.
That's my word to the believers. Now to the unbelievers.
To Unbelievers: Believe!
I urge you, unbeliever—I plead with you this morning to believe. You might think that “I'm good enough,” you know? “At the end of my life, if I stand before God, He's going to weigh my good and my bad, and my good will outweigh my bad. I'm good enough.” No you're not. The Bible has been very clear that you are completely corrupted, and the Bible says that even your good deeds are like filthy rags to God—worthless, because your sin has so corrupted you (Isa 64:6). And so stop trusting in yourself. Jesus, when he died on the cross, He said, “It is finished,” and then He died (John 19:30). That means that He accomplished everything that is necessary for salvation. There's nothing more you need to do. So stop trusting in yourself and trust in Jesus, and you will be saved. And if you're here with us this morning, and you are recognizing that that's you, then now is the time to give your life to Christ. And we're moving into what we call invitation time. It's an invitation for you. Pastors are going to be down here in front and you can come and speak to one of them, ask them questions, raise objections, anything you want to do that will help you figure this out, because this is what your life is about, and if you miss this, you miss everything. And believers as well, if you need help working this out, we're here. That's what we're here for. We're christians to help one another. So, let's pray.
Father, thank You for this message. Thank You for Your gospel. Lord, this gospel is such good news, it's even difficult for us to comprehend. It’s so holistic, it touches every part of our lives. But I pray, Father, that as we continue to think about this, Lord, You bring to mind all the ways in which we have yet to conform our lives to the gospel, and You by your Holy Spirit will empower us to do that. And I pray, Father, that if there is anyone here who does not know You, that they will be convicted in their hearts of their sin and they'll realize they have no hope apart from You, and that today they will call on You and they will truly enter into eternal life. Thank You, Father, for this. It's in Jesus’ name that we pray. Amen.
NOTES:
*Update 4/20/21: The author of the tweet I referenced has taken issue with how I characterized his statement in this sermon. He contends that he never said beliefs can be separated from actions, that he agrees actions flow from beliefs, and that he thinks beliefs are important. I still maintain that expressing a lesser interest in beliefs than in actions is problematic for a Christian, since less interest can naturally lead to less careful treatment. Furthermore, if the tweet was only expressing interest but not importance (i.e., if he wasn’t implying that anyone else should share his prioritization of interests), then I wonder what his reason might have been for tweeting that. You can read my interaction with him on Twitter here (this link is to the most recent tweet in the conversation as of 4/18/21 — a question to which he hasn’t responded).
**Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.