The Gospel Coalition

Years ago I heard my dad preach on his favorite verse of the Bible, Romans 15:13.  “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  I took these notes on a real estate agent’s stationery.

Dad started out referring to “hopelessness killing the spirits and the witness of Christians.  Long faces, sober.  But Christianity is incurably optimistic.”  Then dad proposed three points from the verse:

1.  Who God is – “the God of hope”

2.  What God does – “fills us with all joy and peace,” so that we “abound in hope”

3.  How God does it – “in believing” (our part), “by the power of the Holy Spirit” (his part)

Dad’s sermon pressed Romans 15:13 into my consciousness permanently.  This simple scrap of paper, with my jottings from a sermon long ago at an event I can’t recall, represents a landmark in my soul.  From that day on, I no longer had to face life without Romans 15:13.  I am grateful.

P.S.  The green background has no significance, by the way.  It’s the sofa I’m sitting on.

I was ordained into the ministry of the gospel by Lake Avenue Congregational Church, Pasadena, California, on September 14, 1975.  Three days before, Wilbur Smith wrote me this letter.  To some, it might be just a scrap.  To me, it is a treasure.

Wilbur Smith was one of the major Bible teachers in my grandparents’ generation, when liberalism had Bible-believers on the ropes.  Smith taught at Fuller in the early years.  Through Lake Avenue Church he took a liking to me and encouraged me along the way.  He was gruff in manner – famously so – but tender at heart.

I will not disclose the personally precious comments he makes on page two of the letter.  But in the second paragraph above he writes:

“I trust that in all the years that are ahead for you, it will be true for your audiences, as Paul said his ministry was true among the Thessalonians, how ‘they turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus who delivered us from the wrath to come.’”

Oh, that people might walk out of Immanuel Church every Sunday stirred in heart to say, “I want to live for God now!”

In my Bible, and in a file folder I have in my brief case, I keep some scraps of paper.  They have no value in themselves.  Bob Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” after seeing a piece of discarded paper being driven by the wind down a New York street.  It seemed to him a metaphor for truth in this world.  I’m not at Dylan’s level, but there are some scraps that mean a lot me.

Like this one.  I wrote this as a college student, though I don’t remember the occasion.  It says,

“I’m so full of myself, so full of frustration, so defeated, so discouraged, so sad – BUT – Christ is SUFFICIENT, Christ is VICTORIOUS, Christ is SOVEREIGN, Christ is CAPABLE, Christ is LOVING – AND – I’m FORGIVEN.  So PRESS ON!  AND DON’T LOOK BACK!!”

At this time in my life, I didn’t know the Bible in a formal way.  But, within a general biblical framework, I was being taught by the Spirit.

This little scrap of paper reminds me of God’s loving care for me earlier in my life.  I am grateful.

Jani and I are off to Orlando for an Acts 29 conference.  Looking forward to it.

Lighter blogging this week.  Thanks for checking in.

“In Kiev, where I found myself on a Sunday morning, on an impulse I turned into a church where a service was in progress.  It was packed tight, but I managed to squeeze myself against a pillar whence I could survey the congregation and look up at the altar.  Young and old, peasants and townsmen, parents and children, even a few in uniform – it was a variegated assembly. . . . Never before or since have I participated in such worship; the sense conveyed of turning to God in great affliction was overpowering.  Though I could not, of course, follow the service, I knew from Klavdia Lvovna little bits of it; for instance, where the congregation say there is no help for them save from God.  What intense feeling they put into these words!  In their minds, I knew, as in mine, was a picture of those desolate abandoned villages, the hunger and the hopelessness, the cattle trucks being loaded with humans in the dawn light.  Where were they to turn for help?  Not to the Kremlin . . ., nor to the forces of progress and democracy in the West. . . . Every possible human agency found wanting.  So, only God remained, and to God they turned with a passion, a dedication, a humility, impossible to convey.  They took me with them; I felt closer to God then than I ever had before, or am likely to again.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time: The Green Stick (New York, 1982), pages 258-259.

“If your religion doesn’t help you, it is no religion for you; you had better be without it.”

Mark Rutherford, The Revolution in Tanner’s Lane (New York, 1929), page 266.

Yes, there are times when nothing seems to work. We feel forsaken by God himself, and we don’t know how we got there or what it means or how to get back. There are such times. But they are meant to be seasons or episodes only. They are not meant to provide the narrative. Christ is better than that.

If we have been reaching out for his hand and not finding it, we might be reaching in the wrong direction. Reaching back toward the past, however desirable, is often wrong. Reaching forward into the future, however much we must let go of, is commonly where his strength awaits us.

He is our true help, and his hand will not fail.

It’s what everyone needs.  Everyone.  Gospel + safety + time.  A lot of gospel + a lot of safety + a lot of time.

Gospel: good news for bad people through the finished work of Christ on the cross and the present power of the Holy Spirit.  Multiple exposures.  Constant immersion.  Wave upon wave of grace and truth, according to the Bible.

Safety: a non-accusing environment.  No finger-pointing.  No embarrassing anyone.  No manipulation.  No oppression.  No condescension.  But respect and sympathy and understanding, where sinners can confess and unburden their souls.

Time: no pressure.  Not even self-imposed pressure.  No deadlines on growth.  No rush.  No hurry.  But a lot of space for complicated people to rethink their lives at a deep level.  If we relax, trusting in God’s patience, we actually get going.

This is what our churches must be: gentle environments of gospel + safety + time.  It’s the only way anyone can ever change.

Who doesn’t need that?

“The Beatles’ musical ideas progressed in a most tangible way with each album they recorded.  Geoff Emerick, the recording engineer who with George Martin formed the imaginative team which translated the Beatles’ requirements onto tape, once totted up the number of hours put into the making of Sgt. Pepper and came up with 700.  Please Please Me, the Beatles’ first album, was recorded in 585 minutes.”

Liner notes to Sgt. Pepper, CD version, Apple Records, 1987.

“The LXX was still close to the mark when it used eleos (mercy) as its preferred translation of hesed.  The modern preference for words like ‘duty,’ ‘obligation,’ ‘loyalty,’ ‘solidarity,’ has the picture completely out of focus.  Its worst effect has been to obscure the primal perpetual revelation of the Bible that God in his ultimate and eternal being is ‘gracious and sensitive, abundant in hesed‘ — ‘lovingkindness.’  The Old Testament is thus in perfect agreement with its New Testament consummation: ‘God is love’ (1 John 4:16).”

Francis I. Anderson, “Yahweh, The Kind and Sensitive God,” in God Who Is Rich In Mercy, edited by P. T. O’Brien and D. G. Peterson (Grand Rapids, 1986), page 82.

In a world of secrets, outward success is everyone’s goal.  If we can just succeed, we won’t have to face ourselves.  No wonder that doesn’t work.  It can’t work.  The reality of what we are will always topple this house-of-cards persona we so earnestly wish were true.

The gospel is not God’s way of giving us an even better self-improvement goal.  The gospel is God’s judgment on our better selves and his replacement of it all with Jesus.

Every one of us thinks, “If only I could do __________ or be __________, then I would arrive.”  So, what does “arrival” look like to you?  If it isn’t Jesus, the risen Lord himself, every arrival you achieve is only another set-back.

If you make financial security your arrival, you are already trapped in anxiety.  If you make a thin body your identity, you will hate yourself more.  If you make a porn-free life your okayness, you are doomed to compulsion.  God’s remedy for you is not more money or better looks or perfect control.  God’s gift to you is Jesus.  With Jesus, we are saved.  Everything is going to be okay.  Without Jesus, we are damned.  Nothing will go right.

Forsake all fraudulent success.  Make Jesus your goal, your arrival, your identity, your comfort, your okayness, and he’ll gladly give himself to you — and on terms of grace.  But reach for anything else, and it will turn into its opposite and betray you.

To paraphrase the apostle Paul, “I’ve lost everything, and I don’t even care, because now I get Jesus” (Philippians 3:8).