I didn’t understand the gospel fully!

The truth is that for years I never understood the gospel properly. I was in the position that countless Christians are in; they are saved, they love Jesus, but they don’t fully understand the gospel and all of what Jesus has done for them. Let me tell you about my experience.

When I was 28 God spoke to me and told me to go to a Christian bookshop in Newcastle. The “God spoke to me” bit sounds really impressive doesn’t it? All it was, was a strong impression or thought that ‘this morning this is what I should do’. The strange thing is that it was a strong impression and I didn’t question it. You need to know that I was a pretty godless young man and a Christian bookshop is one of the last places on earth that I would want to be seen in! Long story short, I drove to Newcastle, sneaked into the shop, full of embarrassment bought the first book I saw and drove home – quickly.

The book was titled “Anything you ask” and was about God answering prayer….a new concept to me but it sounded good. Maybe I could use it to my advantage! Chapter 9 explained how Jesus died for me to deal with my sins and to make me right with God. I was done! I knew this was for me. I was on my knees and in that moment I found forgiveness as I gave my whole life to Jesus. In an instant my new life began. I was radically changed. My foul mouth and foul sense of humour left immediately. People at work noticed straight away. My old passion had been to please myself and indulge myself. Now my passion was to please God because of what I knew He had done for me. I wanted to know Him better, and I looked for Him wherever I could find Him – in the pages of the bible, in christian books and with other Christians (there weren’t many of them around in those days, but one wonderful lady took me under her wing and fed me with tapes, scripture and books).

I went to church in my hometown, and then in the Middle East where I spent 5 years. I returned to U.K. and joined church here. I was saved, I loved Jesus but there was part of the gospel that initially I never heard, and then when I did, I didn’t understand it. I knew I was ‘born again’ but I didn’t know just how radical that was. The first verse I ever learnt was Galatians 2 v 20 – but I didn’t understand it!

The gospel as I, and probably most of my fellow Christians understood it was something like this: Jesus died on the cross for me, to take the punishment due to me for my past sins. He forgave those sins when I accepted His death on my behalf and now I was ‘born again’ which meant that I was somehow different on the inside, and that is why I had a desire to follow Him now. When I die I will go to heaven but in the meantime I needed to live the Christian life (behave better, go to church, pray, read my Bible and tell others so that they would get to go to heaven too).

Not too much wrong with that, as far as it goes; but it doesn’t go far enough. There are some major gaps. On top of that church life had made a subtle shift from being in love with Jesus and passionate about Him and going wherever He took you next, to being about serving God and serving in the church, and building church. This in turn sometimes allowed achievement, performance and results to become too important. The other side of the achievement coin is lack of achievement. When the focus is on achievement, then risk (which might end in failure or lack of achievement) is to be avoided. But isn’t Faith spelt RISK?

As I said in last weeks blog Too good to be true…, God is prepared to work through our mess with us, because He is after our heart. Too often Pastoral Care had been about behaviour modification until it all looked neat and tidy on the outside. In many churches David would have been permanently stepped down, and probably advised to leave Bathsheba. Solomon would never have been born – but it would have tidied things up nicely.

To be fair, if your understanding of the gospel is that Jesus came to wipe our slate clean and from now on we have to learn to behave better, then behaviour modification is probably the only way to go. The problem has been that we have not fully understood the gospel and not appreciated all that Jesus has done.

The gospel is far more than a sorting out of our past and then handing down some guidelines to help us get from here to heaven. It is radical.

Jesus didn’t die for you, He died as you. When He died, you died. You and I are not just altered people, we are new people. You are a new man, or a new woman; a new creation.

Next week I want to look at what this means for us today and every day of our life. It is so important that we all understand the fullness of what Jesus has accomplished for us. It is radical, but then you wouldn’t expect God to do things by halves would you?