The Gospel in Twenty Questions (18 page)

I heard a pastor of a large
church tell his congregation, “God hates you, God is sick of you, God is
frustrated with you, God is weary of you.” And why is God in such a dark mood?
Because of our sin and apathy. Jesus went through hell for us, but we can’t
even show up to church on time.

I wish
sermons like this were rare, but they are not. Religious manipulators love to
frighten those Christ died for because those who are afraid are easier to
control.

The truth is,
God loves you like crazy.
He
loves you when
you’re up and he loves you when you’re down. He loves you when you get it right
and he loves you when you get it wrong. Whether you’re preaching condemnation
from the pulpit or receiving it in the pew, he loves you.

“But Paul,
does he love me when I sin?” Aren’t you listening? Haven’t you seen the cross?

The proof of God’s amazing love is this: that it was
while we were sinners that Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8, Phillips)

You need to settle this in your
heart. God loves you. Period. Whether you’re in the zone or the gutter, the one
constant you can count on is your Father’s unwavering love for you.

1 Corinthians
13 gives one of the best descriptions of God’s love.

Love endures long and is patient and kind … it endures
everything [without weakening]. Love never fails [never fades out or becomes
obsolete or comes to an end]. (1 Corinthians 13:4,7–8, AMP) 

The love of men is frail and
weak but your Father’s love endures forever (Psalm 136). The real question is
not whether God will always love you but whether you know and enjoy his love. 

Every one of
us needs our Father’s hugs. Every one of us needs a home where we are loved for
who we are. If you have not found a home in your Father’s embrace, your
legitimate desire for love and acceptance will lead you to inferior sources,
like dead religion.

The strange
thing about that “God hates you” sermon was that it came packaged as a message
of love. “God loves you, but he hates you.” Why do people listen to such
nonsense? Because they hunger for love. If bearing God’s anger and hatred is
the price his love, they’ll pay it. It’s a tragedy. We need love, God has love,
but between us is the pimp of religion, prostituting the love of God and
charging us for what is already ours in Christ.

Don’t listen
to his diabolical sales talk. Don’t let him tell you that your sins are causing
God to withhold his love from you. Listen instead to the gospel of God’s grace
and acceptance:

Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a
wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not
hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not
backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in scripture. (Romans 8:35, MSG)

“If you keep sinning as a
Christian, you’re worse off than when you started,” says the religious fearmonger.
“Forget about repentance. The only thing you can expect is judgment and raging
fire. It’s all in Hebrews.”

I don’t want
to minimize the warnings of Hebrews, but they are not for Christians. Can you
lose your salvation if you keep sinning? Let me put it to you this way: Can you
win your salvation if you don’t? The answer to one is the answer to the other,
and that answer is no.

Just as your
righteous acts don’t qualify you, your unrighteous acts don’t disqualify you.
Jesus is your salvation, and the Holy Spirit within is your eternal guarantee
(2 Corinthians 1:22).

But this
question raises another. What is salvation? Religion defines salvation as
something to be experienced in the distant future. Do well now and you may be
saved later. The problem with this is it leaves us so obsessed with making
heaven and avoiding hell that we put life on hold. We mortgage our lives for an
uncertain future.

In contrast,
the gospel declares salvation is not there and then; it’s here and now. Today
is the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2). Life is not about avoiding sin and
hell any more than marriage is about avoiding adultery and divorce. Real life
is knowing God in the moment (John 17:3). It’s walking with him in the shared
adventure of life as he defines it. This is the message of the gospel—not that
you can experience heaven in the future, but that you can experience heaven on earth
today. It’s a whole new way of living.

What does this
have to do with sin? The cheap thrills of sin cannot hold a candle to the
deeper joys of the kingdom. Those who have tasted the goodness of God are no
longer satisfied by sin. Sin doesn’t attract because they have found something
better.

Because sin is stupid. It’s
like texting on the freeway or parking on the train track. Just because you can
doesn’t mean you should.

For he who sows to his own flesh (lower nature,
sensuality) will from the flesh reap decay and ruin and destruction, but he who
sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Galatians 6:8, AMP)

There are sheep and there are
goats, and there are sheep who act like goats. This scripture isn’t preaching
works-based salvation. It’s saying, “If you’re a sheep, don’t act like a goat.”
Walk in the new way of the spirit rather than the old way of the flesh.

If
you sow trouble you’ll reap trouble. You don’t even need to be religious to
know this. Everyone knows it’s dumb to drink and drive or cheat with another
man’s wife or lie to the tax man. I have written little about the dangers of
sin partly because the dangers are obvious. Sin is its own punishment.

It
would be a mistake to conclude that because God loves you he doesn’t care about
your sin. He cares deeply because sin hurts the object of his affection. God
cares about sin because he cares about you.

I don’t like to
discourage questions
—
I’m all for asking questions
—
but
this is an ignorant question. It’s like asking, “Since my beautiful wife loves
me no matter what, why can’t I run after other women?” Why would you want to?
You have been given a great feast, so why are you chasing French fries?

A lot of
preaching is motivated by the fear of sin. “We have to get sin out of the camp.
Gotta make sure it doesn’t spread.” But we don’t have a sin problem. We have an
ignorance problem. People sin because they don’t appreciate what Christ has
done. The remedy is to preach the gospel. The cure for sin is Jesus and his
finished work.

It’s really
very simple: Those who are grateful for the cross don’t want to sin. Those who
want to sin aren’t grateful.

Grace brings freedom, and that
includes the freedom to make poor choices. But if you use your freedom to
enslave yourself again, then what was the point? You have misused grace and are
no better off than when you started.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand
firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
(Galatians 5:1)

A Christian who
runs after sin is like a prisoner who has been released by a gracious king who
then uses his freedom to re-offend and do the things that got him imprisoned in
the first place. Now King Jesus is extremely gracious. He won’t send you back
to prison. But you may send yourself there.

The
Galatians used their freedom to enslave themselves to the old law of
circumcision. When Paul heard about it, he had a fit.
He said, “You’ve made Christ of no value. You’ve been alienated from Christ”
(see Gal 5:2, 4). It’s not that Christ had cut them off; they cut themselves
off. What kind of Christian cuts themselves off from Christ? Answer: a very
dumb Christian.

Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.
(Romans 5:20b, KJ21)

Don’t ever fall for the line
that says, “I can go on sinning so that grace may abound.” True, your sinning
won’t affect God’s love for you, but it will surely affect you. It will enslave
and destroy you. This is not God’s will for your life. What parent wants to see
their kids destroy themselves?

Jesus didn’t
lead you out of Egypt just so you could run back to Egypt. What would be the
point of that? Forget Egypt. There’s nothing for you there. You’ve got better
places to go. You’ve got a land flowing with milk and honey waiting for you,
and Jesus wants to take you there.

This is a question people have
been asking for as long as the gospel has been preached. It’s an ancient
question. Here is an ancient answer:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so
that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who died to sin; how can we
live in it any longer? (Romans 6:1–2)

If you’ve been liberated by
grace, why would you want to run back to that old tyrant of sin? It doesn’t
make sense.

So, since we’re out from under the old tyranny, does
that mean we can live any old way we want? Since we’re free in the freedom of
God, can we do anything that comes to mind? Hardly. You know well enough from
your own experience that there are some acts of so-called freedom that destroy
freedom. Offer yourselves to sin, for instance, and it’s your last free act.
(Romans 6:15–16a, MSG) 

Perhaps you’ve
heard stories of people who have taken grace as a license to sin. These stories
are sometimes circulated in a misguided attempt to discredit the gospel of
grace. While the stories may be awful, they actually have nothing to do with
the grace of God which …

… teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness
and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in
this present age … (Titus 2:12)

Grace that teaches
you to say yes to sin is not the grace of God.
It’s fake grace. It’s like those counterfeit medicines that don’t
actually do anything.

For the grace of God that brings salvation
has appeared to all men. (Titus 2:11, NKJV)

What is the grace
of God that has appeared to all men? It’s Jesus. Jesus is grace. To say grace
promotes licentiousness is to accuse Jesus of teaching us to sin. It’s
slanderous.

For certain individuals whose condemnation
was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly
people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny
Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. (Jude 1:4)

Those who interpret grace as a
license to sin are anti-Christ and anti-grace. Grace isn’t permission to sin;
it’s the power of God to sin no more.

Sinning follows unbelief.
Christians sin either because they are ignorant about their identity in Christ
or because they think they have no choice.

The gospel
declares you are one with the Lord and in him you are as righteous and holy as
he is. But if you don’t know you are righteous and holy, you won’t act
righteous and holy. Consequently, you will do unrighteous and unholy things.
Bad behavior follows bad believing.

When it comes
to resisting sin, rule-based
religion is as useless
as a fire hose
full of gasoline. It will tell you that if you straighten
up and fly right, you can become holy. But that’s a faithless flesh-trip. Don’t
fall for it. Instead, believe the gospel that declares you are a new creation.
The old has gone, the new has come, so be holy because that’s who you really
are.

Maybe you say,
“I can’t help doing bad things. I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to.” This is
not a wise thing to say. It’s a declaration of unbelief in the grace of God
that empowers us to say no.

Perhaps you
are enslaved to some addiction. You may be in a rut so deep you can’t see the
sun. But that doesn’t mean you are beyond hope and without help. Your Helper is
Almighty God. No one is beyond the reach of his transforming grace.

I’ve met many
people who have been healed, delivered, and radically changed by God’s grace.
When the gospel of grace is preached, this happens all the time. It’s normal.
But transformation rarely happens among those who don’t believe in grace.

If you are
bound up with some addiction or habit, stop speaking faithless lies over your
life and look instead to your mighty Savior. When you get up in the morning,
look at yourself in the mirror and declare, “I am the righteousness of God in
Christ Jesus. I am his dearly-loved child.” Don’t give expression to what the
world or religion says about you. Instead, agree with your Father. And when
you’re faced with temptation, say it again. When you’re about to click on a
link you shouldn’t click or when you’re reaching for something you shouldn’t
touch, remind yourself: “I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I am
his dearly loved child.” This is not the power of
positive
thinking. This is a frail human being declaring his faith in God’s mighty grace.

A
couple of months ago a man wrote to tell me how he had been struggling with
“multiple sins.” At the time he actually despised grace and relied on the guilt
of his sins to keep himself in line. When he messed up he would listen to a
hyper-holiness preacher so he “could feel miserable and come back to God.” But
it didn’t work. He found himself caught up in an endless cycle of sinning,
repenting, and sinning again. One day, in desperation, he cried out to God, and
the following scripture came to mind:

For sin shall not have dominion over you,
for you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:14, NKJV)

From that moment
the man quit trying to avoid sin and began trusting in God’s grace. He started
listening to messages on the unconditional love of the Father and now lives
free from the destructive habits of his old lifestyle.

If
you are
trying
to do the right
thing and
trying
to keep the rules and
trying
to avoid sin, then
you can expect to have problems. You’re living under self-imposed law. You’re
trusting in your own puny strength. But if you are
resting
in the grace
of God then you can expect to have a breakthrough. It is your God-given,
Christ-bought right.

Since
I started writing at Escape to Reality, I have heard from many people who have
been set free from sin by the grace of God. One man wrote to tell me how he had
been delivered from a pornography addiction. He said God opened his eyes to
grace using Romans 6 and 7 and “I haven’t fallen into the stuff since.”

Another
man told me how his son heard the gospel of grace and was delivered from heroin
addiction and hospital-grade depression. The son now spends his days telling
others about the grace of God that saved him.

Stories
like these are common in the land of grace for God’s grace truly is greater
than sin. In contrast, religion is useless in your battle against sin. It fails
because it puts the focus on you and relies on the flesh. Like medieval
blood-letting, religion sucks you dry making you even more vulnerable to sin.
But grace works because it releases the power of God into your situation.

The gospel of
grace declares sin
shall not
have dominion over you. It may be that sin
presently does have dominion over you, but by the grace of God that reality
will soon give way to the superior reality of the kingdom. So reckon yourself
dead to sin, acknowledge every good thing that is yours in Christ Jesus, and
get ready to receive your breakthrough. Let grace be your license to sing.