The Gospel in Twenty Questions (17 page)

“When you sin, you
offend a holy and righteous God. You incur his displeasure and anger. So
examine your heart and confess your trespasses to God so he can forgive you.”
Statements like these reveal a great confusion about the finished work of the
cross. They completely miss the heart of our Father, who loves us regardless of
our behavior.

Does
God care when we sin? Of course he does. What parent doesn’t? But he doesn’t
whip out his video camera and record your mistakes as evidence to be used
against you. Nor does he put a black mark next to your name. Love keeps no
record of wrongs
(1 Corinthians 13:5).
Our sins grieve the Holy Spirit
—
they make him sad
—
but he
doesn’t withdraw, condemn, or guilt-trip us in response. As the psalm-writer
said:

He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities. (Psalm 103:10)

We have heard that
God is good all the time, and he is. But the gospel goes further than that. The
gospel declares that God is good all the time
to
you
. Even when
you sin, he is still good. He does not treat you as your sins deserve but
continues to pour out his love upon you. Your sins have more chance of dimming
the sun than diminishing your Father’s great love for you.

I
know this may be hard for you to process. We have been raised to beware sin, to
resist sin, to run from sin, to overcome sin. With so much emphasis on sin,
guilt, and shame, is it any wonder so many of us are sin-conscious instead of
Christ-conscious? We need to be set free from this unhealthy obsession with
sin.

I’m
not minimizing the dangers of sin. Your mistakes and bad decisions can hurt you
and others. I’m saying God does not relate to us on the basis of our behavior.
Rather, he deals with us in love.

Those
confused by grace worry about what God thinks of them when they sin. “Does God
see my sin?” Of course he does. He sees everything. But in the new covenant a
better question is, “How does God deal with me when I go astray?” The answer
is: gently and with compassion (see Hebrews 5:2). When you stumble and make a
hash of your life, your Father doesn’t pull out a whip. He responds with
affirming love and transforming grace.

Picture your
life as a boat sailing across the trackless ocean. You are free to go any
direction you like. The problem is there are risks involved. You can’t predict
the weather, you can’t see over the horizon, and you don’t know where the
hidden reefs are. You need a guide.

Now at this
point you may be thinking, “Thank God for the Bible.” But the Bible is not your
guide book. Although it contains much that is helpful, it was not written to
help you navigate life. For that you need a Navigator. As someone once said,
“We are not following a manual; we are following Emmanuel.”

When he, the Spirit of truth, has come, he will guide
you into all truth. (John 16:13a, NKJV)

The Holy Spirit is the guide
who leads you into all truth. Since Jesus is the truth, the Holy Spirit will
always steer you towards Jesus. This is the primary way in which the Holy
Spirit keeps us safe from sin. Let me give you an everyday example of how he does
this.

As
a father of small children I am regularly stretched beyond my coping abilities.
I get tired and frustrated and sometimes
I become a bad dad. I grizzle and growl
and frighten my children. If you are a parent, you’ll know what I’m talking
about.

How
does the Holy Spirit respond when I act this way? Here’s what he doesn’t do. He
doesn’t come and say, “What a lousy father you were today. You are a bad dad.”
I already know that.

The
Holy Spirit doesn’t shame me but seeks to guide me to Jesus. And where’s Jesus?
He’s within me like a treasure inside a jar of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7).
Because he is in us and with us, we have a choice. We can choose to walk in
weary flesh, or we can allow Christ to reveal his grace through us.

How
does it happen? For some, grace manifests as an inspiring, mental picture of
themselves doing really well. Others may be reminded of a scripture that
imparts life into a stressful situation. But for me, the most common experience
is I find myself abounding in supernatural love.

This
doesn’t happen automatically. And it certainly doesn’t happen when I am leaning
on my own strength and understanding. But if I take a moment to ask my heavenly
Father for help, grace comes. A light goes on, and I begin to see my kids as my
Father sees me
—
as precious and dearly loved.

It’s
hard to explain, but everything changes. Suddenly their noise and energy no
longer bother me. I feel bigger. It’s like my shoulders grow wider. Instead of
being overwhelmed I find myself wanting to stoke the fires of their youthful
exuberance just to see what happens next. Do you understand? It’s a completely
different me. It is Christ revealing his kid-loving character through me, and
it’s miraculous. I am transformed from bad dad into the best dad in the world.

How
does the Holy Spirit deal with us when we fall to pieces? By revealing Jesus
and his supernatural grace. The jar of your life may be crumbling, but the
treasure within is still good. See the treasure.

Here’s a simple test to see if
you are getting this: What comes to mind when you hear the word
correction
?
Do you think of a mistake that needs to be punished? Do you think of the “rod
of correction” and naughty boys in need of a whipping? If you do, God bless you,
but your thinking is influenced by the old covenant (see Proverbs 22:15).

In the Old
Testament, God’s correction was thought to involve the application of the
proverbial rod to the seat of learning. It meant punishment and sickness sent
in response to sin. At least that’s how David understood it:

Remove your plague from me; I am consumed by the blow
of your hand. When with rebukes you correct man for iniquity, you make his
beauty melt away like a moth. Surely every man is vapor. (Psalm 39:10–11, NKJV)

Under the law-keeping covenant,
the chastisement of the Lord was sometimes fatal. If you sinned, you were
toast. Thank God for the new covenant of grace! Under grace your sins are
toast, not you. This means we need a new definition of correction.

When I hear
the word
correction
I think of a sailboat heading in a dangerous
direction. A course correction is needed. The sailboat isn’t necessarily
sinning or wrong. The sailboat’s sin is not the point. You can curse the map
and apply the rod of correction to the satnav box but that won’t accomplish
anything. Far better to just get back on course.

In the new
covenant the word for
correction
means “a straightening up again.”
[33]
Isn’t that wonderful? It implies all is not lost. You may have missed Jesus and
veered off course, but your life is not over. You may be heading towards the rocks
or you may have already sunk your boat, but the Holy Spirit can still
straighten you up again.

In my earlier
example I was a bad dad. From time to time I’m also a bad husband. (Don’t judge
me. I’m just being honest.) I am not always the shining knight Camilla married.
When I say or do something that wounds my wife, how does the Holy Spirit
correct me? Here’s what he doesn’t do: He doesn’t accuse me of wrongdoing or
condemn me as a sinner, he doesn’t dump a bucket of guilt all over me, and he
doesn’t chastise me with the blows of sickness to teach me a lesson.

Instead, he
gently lets me know that I am sowing death into my marriage. Like a lighthouse keeper,
he illuminates the dangerous rocks ahead of me. When realization dawns, it is
natural for me to feel like a jerk. “I am a terrible husband and chief of
sinners.” And when that happens the Holy Spirit is right there to remind me
that I am still the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus.

If you need
an example of Holy Spirit-correction from the Bible, consider the Galatians.

You were doing so well until someone made
you turn from the truth. (Galatians 5:7, CEV)

The Galatians had
started well then veered off course. They left the gospel of grace and took a
left turn back to the law. They needed to be straightened up again. How did the
Holy Spirit bring about a course correction? Did he send a plague? Did he make
them all sick? Of course not! Instead, he inspired Paul to write one of the
best books in the Bible, namely, the epistle to the Galatians.

In
the old covenant, godly correction was often terrifying. But in the new, it is
always beautiful. The Galatians were foolish, but God didn’t write them off.
Instead, he turned their folly into an opportunity to shine a bright light on
Jesus and bless us all by giving us a book that has been called the Magna Carta
of Christian liberty. That’s what God does. He turns our messes and mistakes
into redemptive launch pads for his grace and glory, leaving us speechless with
wonder and adoration.

In the walk of life, the Holy
Spirit will seek to guide us into all truth and bring about a course correction
when we begin to stray. But what happens if we don’t heed him? What happens if
we persist in a dangerous direction? In this case the Holy Spirit will
intensify his warning to the point of bringing a rebuke:

My son, do not despise the
chastening of the
Lord,
nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. (Hebrews 12:5b
NKJV)

Understand that the Lord
doesn’t rebuke you for your sin. He doesn’t scream, “Look at what you did!” God
is not a faultfinder. But he will warn you when your little sailboat is heading
towards trouble. “Look where you are heading. Watch out for those rocks!”

We can see
the threefold work of the Holy Spirit—his guiding, correcting, and rebuking—in
the Ephesian church. When Paul first went to Ephesus, he met twelve men who
identified themselves as followers of John. They were godly men but they hadn’t
heard about Jesus (see Acts 19:1–7). They weren’t walking in all truth. They
needed the Holy Spirit’s guidance and, through Paul, they got it. The result
was a new church.

Sometime
later Paul wrote a letter to the Ephesian Christians. Since this letter is
nicer than some of the letters he wrote to other churches, it’s tempting to
picture the Ephesians as model believers. Yet Paul’s letter is not without
urgings and gentle corrections. For
instance, Paul
told them he had been praying they would get a deeper revelation of Jesus
(Ephesians 1:17
–
23). And he was also praying
that they would know the fathomless love of God that surpasses knowledge
(Ephesians 3:14
–
19). Paul was saying, “You
guys are doing so well. Even so, my prayer is that you would know God’s love
more than you do.” What does that tell you? It tells you the Ephesians were in
danger of drifting from God’s love. And that’s exactly what happened.

Fast forward
to Revelation 2 and we find the Ephesians have well and truly wandered from the
love of God. They have gotten so busy doing religious stuff that they have
become loveless and graceless. This is a disaster, a catastrophe. They are now
well past the need for guidance and gentle correction. What they need is a
full-blown rebuke, and that’s exactly what Jesus gives them (Revelation 2:4–6).

Jesus says
they have forsaken their first love and need to remember the height from which
they have fallen. In other words, they need to turn their ship around and
return to the high place of God’s love and grace.

In
the old covenant, a godly rebuke was always terrifying, as it invariably
carried the threat of punishment. But in the new, a rebuke from the Lord is not
to be feared. It’s a sign that your
Father
loves you enough to get involved in the details of your life. Jesus doesn’t
threaten the Ephesians with divine punishment. Instead he warns them of what
lies ahead before reminding them of his promises to overcomers.

God’s
grace cannot be extinguished by your sins and mistakes. The good news declares
that if you do make a purple-crayon mess of your life, your heavenly Father
still loves you, he still cares for you, and he will never kick you out of his
family.

Jesus was a friend of sinners.
He ate in their homes and danced at their parties. He did this to show that God
loves us all, regardless of who we are. And he did it to demonstrate that God’s
grace is for sinners. It’s not for those who act holier than thou. Grace is for
losers. It’s for addicts, abusers, drunkards, embezzlers, gamblers, gossips,
gluttons, liars, crooks, swindlers, and spammers.
Grace
is for bad dads and
frazzled moms and wayward daughters and prodigal
sons. Grace is for those who need it.

Religion,
unlike Jesus, is no friend of sinners. Religion says God may love you if you
act right, talk right, and hang out with the right sort of people. Religion
will tell you that grace isn’t for sinners, but winners. It’s for those who
play by the rules, color inside the lines, and do what they’re told. In other
words, grace is for those who don’t need it.

If you are
struggling with sin, you probably know that religion is not your friend. But
you may not know that Jesus is the best friend you’ll ever have. He’s not
allergic to your sin and he won’t break out in hives when he hears what you’ve
done. Instead, he’ll probably say, “Let’s have dinner. I’ll bring the wine.”

Can you
imagine what it would’ve been like for those first-century sinners who had
Jesus around for a meal? Can you imagine the questions they would’ve asked him?
Possibly, they would’ve asked questions like those in this book. What is God
like? Can God heal me? How can I be free?

And maybe
they would have asked questions like these …