CHAPTER TWO

THE GOSPEL
MISUNDERSTOOD

THE GOSPEL THAT SAVES US FROM
WORK SAVES US TO WORK
.

If we want to see the people of God unleashed in the church, we need to start with the gospel of God in Christians. After all, putting everything in our lives on the table before God is the natural overflow of the gospel. Yet confusion abounds concerning the gospel in the church today.

Imagine a man I’ll call Andy. A few years ago Andy professed his faith in Christ. Since that day, Andy has always espoused salvation by grace alone through faith alone. According to Andy, his actions have nothing to do with his salvation, and unfortunately this is evident in his life. Sure, he goes to church and attends his small group, but Christ is not clear in his character or his care for others. Andy turns a blind eye to the lost, even those who have never heard of Christ, and he turns a deaf ear to the cries of the poor, even those who are among his family in Christ. Though he boldly claims belief in the gospel, there is no fruit of faith in his life beyond the religious routine of cultural Christianity.

Or imagine Ashley. All her life she has been in the church. In fact, she’s been baptized four times. She has listened to sermon after sermon and been in study after study where she has learned what she needs to do for God. She wants to please God, and she works hard at putting Christianity into action. Yet she never feels as if she has done enough, and she is never sure of her salvation. Trying to live out the gospel is wearing Ashley out.

Both Andy and Ashley attend Brook Hills, and I’m guessing they attend your church as well. Andy thinks work has nothing to do with salvation, and Ashley thinks work has everything to do with salvation. Both are confused. Both are wrong. And until they get a right understanding of the gospel, they will never be a part of accomplishing the purpose of God.

Unleashing radical people into the world requires the gospel as our foundation and our motivation. That’s why you and I must embrace a gospel that both saves us from work and saves us to work.

SAVED FROM WORK

I get frightened when I think about Radical in Ashley’s hands. Though in writing that book I tried to show the entirely undeserved grace of God toward us in the gospel, I know Ashley is prone to think, I need to do more for God. I need to sell this possession and make this pledge in order to be right before God. Guilt will motivate her obedience, and action will be her obligation.

If you are Ashley and you read Radical, I must tell you something: you will never be radical enough. No matter what you do—even if you sell all your possessions and move to the most dangerous country in the world for the sake of ministry—you cannot do enough to be accepted before God. And the beauty of the gospel is that you don’t have to. God so loved you that, despite your hopeless state of sin, he sent his Son—God in the flesh—to live the life you could not live. Jesus alone has kept the commands of God. He alone has been faithful enough, generous enough, and compassionate enough. Indeed, he alone has been radical enough.

Though Jesus was free from sin throughout his life, he bore the penalty of sin in his death. He took your place and your punishment, dying the death you deserved. Then he rose from the grave in victory over sin. And, Ashley, when you turn from yourself and trust in your Savior, he will cleanse you from all your rebellion and clothe you in his righteousness. The starting point of your radical life is your radical death—death to yourself and death to your every attempt to do enough before God.

The gospel has saved you from your work, and you are free from any effort to overcome your guilt before God. You can stop working and start believing. If you have never trusted in Christ like this, then I urge you to put down this book and place your faith in him. You don’t have to repeat a prayer, sign a card, or sell a thing. Based on nothing you have done and everything Jesus has done—by grace alone through faith alone—God will declare you right before him.

A large part of me wants to put a period on this discussion and close the chapter right here. In fact, many people probably think I should. “Yes, that is all,” they might declare. “Don’t say anything else.”

But the gospel says something else.

SAVED TO WORK

All through the Bible we encounter an important truth, namely that the gospel that saves us from work also saves us to work. Right after Paul identifies salvation by grace alone through faith alone, he says that we are “created in Christ Jesus to do good works.” Right after James talks about belief “in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ,” he says that faith without deeds is useless and dead. In John’s letter detailing the assurances we have in our salvation through faith in Christ, he describes how anyone who sees his brother in need but has no pity on him does not have the love of God in him.1

Now, it’s important to recognize what these passages (and others like them) mean by such terms as works, deeds, and acts of love. In fact, I was reminded recently of the importance of clarifying the meaning of words.

I was in Germany, and a new friend there asked me, “Do you want to join some of us guys for a pickup game of football?”

“Count me in,” I told him.

To my surprise, when I got down to the field, I did not find tall goalposts and a brown ball with pointy ends. Instead, I saw two goals with nets on them and a round black-and-white ball. That’s when I remembered: football in Europe (and most of the rest of the world) is a lot different from my understanding of football. I call their kind of football soccer.

Football. Same term, two meanings.

So when I say—and when the Bible teaches—that the gospel saves us to work, I need to clarify what is meant by work.

Often Scripture refers to work in a negative sense, as actions fueled by the flesh that do not honor God. This is the way Paul frequently talks about works, and it’s why he constantly condemns works as a means of salvation.2 We are not saved by our works or through our works, for nothing we do can merit righteousness before God.3 As mentioned earlier, the gospel saves us from this kind of work.

But there are also times when Scripture refers to work in a positive sense, as actions fueled by faith that bring great glory to God. Every time James refers to works or deeds or actions, he is talking about them positively. He is talking about love for the needy, mercy for the poor, and care for the suffering that flow from faith in Christ. Paul does the same thing when he talks about “work produced by faith,” “every act prompted by your faith,” and faith expressing itself through acts of love.4

So, if you are Andy, I want to tell you something important: so-called faith without acts prompted by that faith is a farce. Real faith always creates fruit.

Scripture is full of examples of faith producing work. Abraham’s belief in God led him to offer his son as a sacrifice before God. Rahab’s belief in God led her to risk her life for God. Paul “worked harder” than others because he believed in the grace of God. He labored and struggled for God out of the overflow of faith in Christ.5

The reality is that when you believe in Christ for salvation, you not only are declared right before God as Father, but you also begin to walk with God as friend. In addition to new birth, Jesus gives you new life: a life of joyful obedience and overflowing love.6 So when you hear Christ’s radical call to live sacrificially, you do not think, In the gospel I am free to flout his commands. Instead you think, In the gospel I am free to follow his commands. And the faith that God has graciously given to you begins to produce radical fruit from you.

True faith in Christ inevitably produces great work for Christ, not works fueled by the flesh in an attempt to earn our way to God, but works fueled by faith in a life that is abandoned to God. And all of it is by grace. The basis of our salvation—Christ—is a gracious gift from God. The means of our salvation—faith—is also a gracious gift from God. And the fruit of our salvation—work—is indeed a gracious gift from God. In this way the One who gives the grace ultimately gets the glory.7

The gospel saves us to work.

GUILT OR GOSPEL?

So how does the gospel unleash the church?

Because the gospel saves us from work, the gospel frees us from guilt. In Christ we have been declared not guilty before God. This is vitally important when the church is confronted with staggering realities in the world. We need to have our eyes opened to hundreds of millions of people in the world who are perishing without the gospel and starving without food or water. But if we are not careful, these statistics may only create a constant, low-grade sense of guilt for never doing enough. Guilt like this will be both an unbearable burden and an unsustainable motivator. We may change our ways for a short time based upon guilt, but true and lasting life change will happen only when we believe the gospel. For when we believe the gospel, we find ourselves constantly reminded that it is never about our doing enough. We can’t do enough. We can, though, trust in Christ, who has done enough.

And as we trust in Christ, he changes our hearts, minds, and lives. He transforms how we see, feel, and act. We begin to see the startling realities of the world through the eyes of a Savior who surrendered his life for the salvation of the nations. And as we grow in relational intimacy with Christ through the gospel, we gradually overflow in radical living for Christ. Any low-grade sense of guilt gets conquered by a high-grade sense of gospel that compels a willing, urgent, joyful, uncompromising, grace-saturated, God-glorifying obedience in us. We live sacrificially, not because we feel guilty, but because we have been loved greatly and now find satisfaction in sacrificial love for others. We live radically, not because we have to, but because we want to.

GOSPEL-DRIVEN ADOPTION

Let me illustrate.

A widespread adoptive culture had infused the church I pastor before I arrived. When Heather and I came to Brook Hills, we were already in the process of adopting our first son. But we didn’t know many people who had adopted, and we sometimes felt like an anomaly among our friends. So when we began to share with folks at Brook Hills that we were walking through the adoption process, we expected them to be surprised and intrigued. On the contrary, our journey seemed to be the norm at Brook Hills. We found out that families at Brook Hills adopted four or five children at a time!

This adoptive culture has only grown in recent years. Last year as we were studying the book of James (once again, be forewarned!), we were about to reach a text you may know well: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”8 In preparation for the sermon on that particular text, I called the Department of Human Resources (DHR) in our county to find out if they had any needs in orphan or foster care.

When I put my question to the DHR director, she laughed. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “We have tons of needs!”

Well, I wanted to know, how many families would DHR need in order to take care of all the foster and adoption needs in our county?

More laughter.

“No, really,” I said. “If a miracle were to take place, how many families would be sufficient to cover all the different needs you have?”

She collected herself for a minute. Then she gave me her answer. “It would be a miracle if we had 150 more families.”

Can you tell where this story is going?

The day came when I preached from James 1:27. At the close I gave our church an unusual invitation: “If Christ in you is compelling you to be a part of serving children in our county in this way, then please come to a meeting two weeks from today.”

By then the wonderful folks at DHR had given us all kinds of moving photographs and videos of needy children. But we wanted to be careful not to motivate God’s people through emotional manipulation. So we didn’t use any of it.

When the meeting time came, people from our faith family poured into our auditorium. Before the meeting began, one of the DHR workers pulled me aside and with tears in her eyes said, “What made you decide to do this? And how did you get all these people to participate?”

I smiled. “I didn’t decide to do this,” I said. “God decided this was important for his people. And he is the one who is compelling us to participate.”

That night more than 160 families signed up to help with foster care and adoption in our county. With the gospel as our foundation and motivation, our faith family said, “We want to do all we can to make sure that every child in our county has loving arms around him or her at night. We want to point every one of these children to the Father of the fatherless and the defender of the weak, who cares for them.”

As a result, our faith family is now filled with children from all over our city as well as from countries all around the world. The immense joy of foster and adoptive care has invaded our church, and our families will never be the same.

SACRIFICIAL LOVE

Yet I want to be clear about how the gospel is unleashing these families to care sacrificially for children in need. To be honest, children in the adoption and foster care systems can come with significant challenges. Some suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome and cannot sit still without acting out uncontrollably. Others have moms who were addicted to crack cocaine, and as a result their brains have been damaged in a way that will affect their behavior for the rest of their lives. Some adoptive families have new family members who are a physical threat to other children in the home.

Meet John and Karen. After having their first son, Jacob, they decided to adopt their second son, Michael, from overseas. As soon as the adoption was complete, Karen became pregnant and gave birth to a third son, Daniel, who has Down syndrome. In addition to the daily challenges of Down’s, Daniel suffers from constant seizures and requires growth hormone injections. “Six days a week,” John says, “I have to pin him down on the ground while Karen gives him the shot. It looks as though we will have to continue doing this until his sixteenth birthday.”

Meanwhile, their adopted son, Michael, has severe learning and behavioral disabilities that require constant attention and individual supervision. He has already been removed from more than one preschool. John told me that these years are challenging his marriage, his family, and his relationship with God in ways he and Karen never could have imagined.

John and Karen are not alone. They are joined by parents who are struggling to love children whose defense mechanisms resist that love at every turn. Some children cocoon themselves in isolation, while others lash out in aggression. Many children have been physically or sexually abused, and in some situations these children become abusive themselves. My aim is not to present a harsh picture of adoption, and certainly not all stories look like these, but I want to be clear about the realities of some children in need.

So what is going to sustain John, Karen, and a host of other parents in the midst of such circumstances? What is going to motivate them to keep going when they are at the end of themselves and don’t know what to do? Surely a low-grade sense of guilt would be gone by now. And any dream of having a cute family picture to send out with a Christmas card during the holiday season has been forgotten. The only thing that will sustain and strengthen these families to press on is a gospel that saves them from work and saves them to work.

John and Karen know they cannot do this on their own. They cannot provide and care for the needs of their family through their own resources alone. John recently e-mailed me and said, “Pastor, please pray that I will embrace with joy all the challenges and difficulties that come with being a father to these two. God has ordained it, and God is good.”

For parents like John and Karen, God-dependent faith is the only foundation for God-glorifying work.

Still, some might hear stories like this and think, Well, obviously these families never should have adopted. Or, If they were responsible people, they would have never gotten into these situations. But these parents see it differently. What strikes me most often in my interactions with them isn’t their struggles but their joy.

In a recent journal entry, Karen wrote about the delight she experienced when she and John celebrated Michael’s latest birthday:

We all went into his room this morning to tell him, “Happy birthday!” While I was dressing him, he was jumping up and down with the biggest smile. Then he said, “Thank you for giving me a birthday.”

I was quiet for a moment. I felt those words were not just from him but a gift from God.

He wouldn’t have had a “birthday” in the orphanage. He wouldn’t have had a T-shirt with his name on it or a family to make him a cake and sing to him. It’s not that these things in and of themselves are important, but they are the little things a family does for you and with you, things I take for granted. Having people there no matter what, having someone come when you cry, being able to make bad choices and still be loved.

Michael is a tough kid, and none of us will ever know what he experienced his first two years of life, but I know God has created him exactly how he wants him to be. Although there are many days when he can make me want to pull my hair out, I am so grateful that God made me his mommy.

Indeed, gospel-driven obedience produces gospel-filled joy.

The gospel is the key to—and the only sustainable motivation for—sacrificial living. The gospel reminds us that each of us was once a child of wrath, filled with evil desires and unable to control our sinfulness. Yet God sought us and saved us. In love he adopted us as his sons and daughters. And now when we see a child who is left alone or hard to love, we can gladly bring that child into our family. Why? Because we believe the gospel. For us that means sacrificial love is not just our duty but our delight.

THE GOSPEL Is THE REASON

The gospel is the reason for radical living. The gospel is the reason a family I talked with last week is moving with their infant child to live among one of the most dangerous unreached people groups in the world. The gospel is the reason a family sold their large house in the suburbs to move into a small home in a low-income inner-city community. The gospel is the reason business leaders are leveraging their assets to aid impoverished churches. The gospel is the reason college seniors are turning their backs on the American dream and senior adults are backing out of the American dream in order to pursue a higher goal. The gospel is the reason Christians are changing their routines, adjusting their budgets, adding to their families, augmenting their plans, altering their ideas, and sacrificing their lives to accomplish the global purpose of God. Indeed, when the gospel of God is clear in the church, Christians will work hard by the grace of God with great delight for the glory of God.

We must avoid becoming churches full of Ashleys who are continually working hard to earn the approval of God while ultimately wearing out in our assignment from God. Pastors and others in leadership must be particularly careful here. I am humbled when I consider some of my own choices and how I have at times pushed the people of God to work without shepherding them with grace. Yes, the gospel saves us to work, but we must be careful to plant every challenge, every declaration, every decision, every action, every question, every confession, and every exhortation solidly in the soil of gospel grace. Only people who are resting constantly in the righteousness of Christ will be able to risk it all wholeheartedly for the glory of Christ.

And we must also avoid becoming churches full of Andys who are constantly defending the gospel while rarely demonstrating it. Again, for pastors and other leaders, the caution here is clear. The people you and I lead in the church will never be what they cannot see. Therefore, it is our call not only to preach a gospel of radical grace but also to portray a life of radical goodness. Those who espouse sound doctrine in the church should embody selfless devotion in the world. Whatever our roles in our local body, you and I are fooling ourselves if our lives lack love for the lost or compassion for the poor.

Together, let us believe God as we beg him to produce the fruit of the gospel among us. Let’s show in the church a gospel that saves us from work and saves us to work.