The Good News

By Gene Rogers

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     To ask the average American to briefly summarize what Christianity is all about would be, in all probability, to have him give emphasis to its great moral content and come up with something like this: "To become a Christian would mean for me to give up most everything that seems presently pleasureable to me and set out on an austere course of life wherein by sheer willpower and determination I do my best to live up to the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the Sermon on the Mount." What this amounts to, in simple terms, is "be good." He therefore reduces Christianity to nothing more than another moral or ethical code with
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little left in it to distinguish it from the moral aspect of the religions and philosophies of the day.

     Christianity viewed in this manner becomes a moral, stairstep approach to right relationship with God. It becomes a "do-it-yourself project" wherein one literally lifts himself up by his own bootstraps into the presence of God. To so confront a degenerate human nature with an unobtainable ideal without the offer of any help from God mocks man. in his weakness, and, rather than serving to bring man to God, such a confrontation can only turn him ultimately into hopeless despair.

     To think of Christianity in these terms is, in reality, to call upon one to believe in himself. For, after all, the whole process of gaining right relationship with God is one initiated and executed by man. God is seen to be waiting in a somewhat disinterested aloofness for man to ascend to his plane of fellowship. Those who consider Christianity from this standpoint are inevitably faced with the twofold question, "What do I have to give up?", as they think of parting with present pleasure and, "how can I ever possibly hope to achieve?", as they view the insurmountable moral goal before them. Unfortunately, the decision to exchange a life of pleasure for one of austerity, and, the status quo for an unobtainable ideal that could at best lead only to hypocrisy for one who might dare to venture, becomes too great a decision to make and the thought of seriously embracing Christianity is abandoned by most honest inquirers on the ground that it has no appeal.

     So goes the thinking of most of those outside the church, and, unfortunately, of too many of those who claim to be on the inside. But, as we shall see, this is not the message that God has sought to communicate to man through Jesus Christ--this is the religion of man in the guise of Christianity.

Revelation, not Religion
     As distinguished from the philosophies and religions of man, which have their origin in man, the Christian gospel is a revelation from God. That is, it is not the record of the religious aspirations of man in pursuit of God systematized into moral religion but, rather, God speaking to man that which he in his accumulated wisdom could never have devised. In His revelation we have God telling us how that He, in His love, grace and mercy, has made provision whereby He can reach down out of His heaven in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, envelop us in His love, and lift us unto Himself thereby giving us not what we deserve but what we do not deserve. This is the grace of God. It is God leaving us not to ourselves and to our predicament in sin to reap hell as the just and due reward for our sin and rebellion, but it is God giving us instead that which we could never earn, merit or deserve--His heaven.

The Gifts of Grace
     In the statement of a single verse of scripture we have the message of this grace of God set forth: "Then as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man's act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men." (Ro. 5:18). This passage appears in the midst of a contrast being made between Adam as the first representative of the human race and Jesus as the last. In it we read, first, that Adam, as a representative of the race, trespassed or crossed the boundary line set by God's limitation and thus exerted his selfhood plunging into a life of sin. As the first sinner he therefore introduced sin to the human race which resulted in all men following him by duplicating his experience. The result of this, of course, brought condemnation not only to Adam but to all of his posterity. This is the human predicament.

     In the second place this passage says that Jesus, as the second representative man, by some enactment of righteousness on his part, brought to man "acquittal and life," those two things that he must have if he is to be delivered from condemnation and share eternity with God. Man's greatest need in this life is, first,
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"acquittal" and then "life." He not only needs the first of these, but he must have the second, and, indeed, he cannot have the one without the other.

     Let us consider, first, the meaning of "acquittal" and the blessing that it brings. Acquittal is a legal term and is closely associated with the words "forgiveness" and "pardon," although it is certainly greater in its implication than both, as we shall see. In forgiveness there is the implication that one has been wrong in the first place but has been forgiven by the wronged. Nevertheless the wrong act is still on the record. In the case of pardon, one's conduct has become greatly improved since their wrong deed, sufficiently so as to overshadow the past. But, nevertheless, the record of the crime is still there to haunt. But in the case of acquittal, one is completely exonerated and cleared of the charge of any crime for which he may have been accused. In acquittal, one is pronounced "not guilty" and set free from accusation, obligation, or burden. Because of some great "act of righteousness" on the part of the Lord Jesus Christ, God is able to acquit us from the charge of sin and completely free us from its penalty and power. This is the first great need of man, and until he receives this he can neither stand before God or experience the abundant life that Jesus came to bring to all men.

     It is because of sin and its consequent resultant guilt that man has forfeited a life of freedom, joy and peace. Dr. Paul Tournier, internationally acclaimed psychiatrist, declares that the vast majority of those who come to him with deep-seated mental and emotional problems have as the root of their problems feelings of guilt resulting from the sin in their life. He offers as the only solution to their problem the acquittal offered by God through faith in Jesus Christ. If one can dare to believe that he can be acquitted from all of his foul past, it is easy to see that he can launch out into a life of freedom, joy and peace.

     The second great blessing that can be had as a result of Jesus' great "act of righteousness" is life. What kind of life? God's life; for Jesus is God. But what kind of life does God have? His life is characterized as being eternal and everlasting: eternal as to its nature, and everlasting as to its duration. The nature of God's life is eternal. That is, it is holy, righteous and pure. The duration of God's life is everlasting. This is the kind of life that is offered by God through faith in Jesus Christ. This life from God becomes the dynamic to empower us to live in the dimension to which God calls us and intends for us to live. God offers His very own life to be within us generating power for us to live as we never could, unaided and by ourselves. Everyone must have God's nature to enable them to live in the dimension to which God calls them, else they would be acquitted only to return to a life characterized by sin. But to be acquitted and receive the very Life and Nature of God would be to enter into life on a new plane wherein "all things become new" and wherein God begins to be "at work within us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure" (II Cor. 5:17; Phil. 2:13).

     These are the two great gifts that God offers to us by His grace. Both are made possible on the basis of Jesus' "act of righteousness." Let us now turn to consider what that great "act of righteousness" was that enabled God to bestow such gifts.

The Great Act of Righteousness
     What was that great act of righteousness performed by Jesus that enables God to acquit us and impart His life to us? It is that which goes together to make up what is called "the gospel." It is that which Jesus did which is of first importance and which is called "the gospel." As set forth by the Apostle Paul it is the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. He says in I Cor. 15:3, 4, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures." Let us consider the facts of Jesus' death, burial
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and resurrection, and how it is that through them we may obtain acquittal and life.

The Meaning of The Gospel
     The first fact of the gospel is that "Christ died for our sins." As the second representative man of the human race (Adam being the first) Jesus gave Himself to death on the cross to receive the due and just penalty for man's sin. If we may think of it this way, it was as though the whole human race, past, present, and future, was compressed into one single human being and that that single human being paid with his life the penalty of death called for by sin. Since every man was in him and represented by him, his death therefore was a death for every man. If, therefore, the debt or wage (Ro. 6:23) that every man owes or must receive for sin has already been paid, then we are cleared from the debt. That is to say, if each one of us owes a debt to sin, but Jesus pays that debt, then we are all freed from our debt to sin. We are not compelled, therefore, to pay ourselves because someone else has paid: "Jesus Paid It All!" Let me illustrate it this way: If you owe a $50 grocery bill at the local grocery store and I go down this afternoon and pay your debt, receiving your bill marked "paid in full" and then you go tomorrow morning and say to the grocer, "I want to pay my grocery bill," what will the grocer say? "You don't owe anything; someone else paid your bill yesterday afternoon." If Jesus has paid our debt to sin by His death on the cross, then we don't owe a debt to sin--we are free; we are acquitted. This is precisely the basis upon which God can grant us acquittal. He offers it on the basis that His Son Jesus Christ has paid in full the debt that we owed to sin, leaving us debt free and acquitted.

     The second fact of the gospel is that Jesus was buried and entered into death in our behalf. To understand this and its far reaching implication we must understand the meaning of the word "death." Death literally means "a separation." This can easily be seen in James 2:26 where James says, "As the body apart from the spirit is dead." Here James says that physical death takes place when the spirit separates from the body. This is one form of death--physical death. Now spiritual death is when the soul is separated from God. This is precisely what Jesus experienced when He entered into death in our behalf: He experienced separation from God in our behalf. What is separation from God? It is hell! Jesus endured hell for us and in return gave us His heaven (cf. Mt. 27:46; Acts 2:27, 31).

     The third fact of the gospel is that Jesus "was raised from the dead on the third day." There are many truths to be gathered from Jesus' resurrection from the dead, but let us consider two pertinent to this present study.

     The first truth that we would gather from Jesus' resurrection from the dead is that God declares that He has received the death of Christ as payment for man's sin and will on that basis grant all men acquittal. In a sense it is God stamping our debt to sin "paid in full."

     The second truth that we would gather from the resurrection, and the glorification that followed shortly thereafter, is that by it, Jesus was freed from the limitation of time and space to which he was bound as the man, Jesus of Nazareth, Galilee. Returning to the spirit world and becoming free from the limit of time and space, Jesus could then re-enter this world as spirit to take up residence within all those who would offer him an entry. Man could thereby be in possession not only of the human spirit but also the Divine Spirit or Nature. Peter speaks of this when he says that the Christian is one who has "become a partaker of the Divine nature" ((II Pet. 1:4). John speaks of it when he says that a Christian does not make a practice of sinning "for God's nature abides in him" (I Jn. 3:9). You see, the Life that God offers us is not some abstract commodity; it is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself become Spirit. Did not the Lord Jesus say prior to His cross, "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life?" Does not the Gospel of John
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begin by speaking of Jesus and saying of Him, "In Him was life and the life was the light of men"? (John 1:4). Does not John declare in his first epistle, "And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son, has life; he who has not the Son has not life." (I Jn. 5:11, 12). Life--eternal and everlasting life, the kind God imparts--is not a thing, it is a Person, and that Person is the Lord Jesus Christ. Yes, the third great truth of the gospel is that the life that God offers to us through His grace is none other than Jesus Christ come to dwell within the human heart to become "the immeasurable power in us who believe" enabling us to live as God so intends. Jesus then, as the last Adam, becomes to every believer "a life-giving spirit." (I Cor. 15:45) "Christ in us" becomes our "hope of glory" (Col. 1:27) as He becomes that everlasting life that will see us through into God's glory.

Faith's Choice
     Considering all that has been said thus far, man is seen as facing a decision of faith with regard to two alternatives: He can believe in himself, or he can believe in Jesus Christ. But as I hope we have been able to demonstrate, there really is no alternative for to believe in one's self is to end up in failure and under condemnation. Thus, in reality, there is left but one way to obtain acquittal and life, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ and in the facts of His gospel. This would seem to be the summary statement of the golden text of the Bible which says that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him (not in one's self or any other being or thing, but him --Jesus) should not perish but have everlasting or eternal life" (John 3:16). Man may either believe in himself and perish, or believe in Jesus Christ and receive eternal and everlasting life.

The Response of Faith
     Now we come to the question of what it means to believe in Jesus. First of all, it implies that you believe with all your heart that he is the Son of God, the very God Himself come in human flesh, and that on the basis of his death on the cross, his burial and his resurrection from the dead in your behalf, God is able to grant to you acquittal and Life.

     Second, it means that you must be quick and prompt to declare the faith that you claim to have in your heart with your lips, "Because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. For man believes with his heart and so is acquitted, and he confesses with his lips and so is saved." (Ro. 10:9,10).

     Third, it means that we must enter into union with Jesus by sharing the experience of His death, burial and resurrection. Almost immediately following Ro. 5:18, the basic passage that we have used in this study, there comes the declaration that one who would become a Christian and enter into "newness of life" is one who must be united with Jesus in his death, burial and resurrection. Such a union with Jesus in his resurrection becomes the means of entering into "resurrection" or "newness" of life. This union is that act which in scripture is called baptism. Baptism is the means whereby the believer, by an act of faith that involves his entire being, acknowledges his faith in, and becomes a part of, the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Bible sets forth no other way whereby union with Christ may be so effected. Romans 6:3-9 is the passage which declares that it is by baptism that we are united with Jesus in his death, burial and resurrection. It is in baptism that we acknowledge our faith in the gospel and personally become a recipient of its benefits and blessings. It is as we are united with Christ in baptism that we die and are freed from sin (Ro. 6:7); it is by baptism that we enter into union with Christ expressing the faith that we shall share with him in resurrection life. (Ro. 6:8, 9).

     We may thus conclude that we initially declare our faith in Jesus Christ by:
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(1) transferring our faith from ourself to Jesus and the facts of his gospel, (2) by receiving His death as our substitute and payment for sin, (3) by acknowledging this faith of our heart with the declaration of our lips, and (4) by entering into union with him and the facts of his gospel through Christian baptism. Did not Jesus himself say in Mark 16:16, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."

     (Editors Note. Gene Rogers labors with Gardena Church of Christ, 14521 South Normandie Avenue, Gardena, California, and may be addressed there.)

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