Faith Alone

Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved

- Sts. Paul and Silas (Acts 16:31a)

A classmate and I have been meeting with a group of unchurched kids from San Bernardino for Bible studies for almost two years now. It has been a challenging and rewarding ministry. Recently we discussed a passage from the Gospel of Luke which gives me much joy and hope. It is a passage that speaks strongly against those religious people who would add in various works or rituals or ceremonies as prerequisites for salvation in Jesus Christ.

The passage we talked about was Luke 23:39-43. This passage recounts the crucifixion of our Lord and it is here in Luke's gospel that we get some added details about Christ's interactions with those who were also crucified near Him.

As we've done this Bible study with these kids it has been our goal to preach the gospel every time we meet. We aren't trying to give them some kind of Sunday school style moralism where we just tell them they should obey their parents because the Bible says so or something like that. Of course we encourage them to be good people and to do the right thing but we also try constantly to convey the truth that we can never live up to God's standards and that we are all guilty sinners, deserving of hell, before His perfect holiness.

This is where we tried to start when we discussed this passage from Luke. We actually started in Isaiah, with the prophet's vision of God in Isaiah chapter 6. We read Isaiah 6:1-5 and tried to convey a sense of God's greatness and holiness. We were on a large hill, overlooking Loma Linda, Redlands and San Bernardino when we did our study so we asked these kids to imagine looking out at an enormous throne of God, larger than the San Gabriel Mountains to the north, with angels encircling it, shielding their faces from His glory. After talking about Isaiah's fear before the throne of God where he said, "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! (Isaiah 6:5)," we asked them to imagine standing alone before God's throne, being judged. We pointed out that Isaiah, who said, "Woe is me!," was a "good guy" when compared to most people. He was a prophet of God. He wrote a book of the Bible. We asked them, "if Isaiah (a "good" guy) was fearful before God's throne, what hope would a man who had been a criminal his whole life have before the throne of God?" I don't remember their answers but it was at this point that we had one of them read the passage from Luke 23.

After reading the passage, ending with verses 42 and 43, "And he said, 'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.' And he said to him, 'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise,'" we asked them, at this point what did the thief have to do to get to heaven? The obvious answer to this question was "nothing." We then asked, after this thief died and he was standing before God's throne, what would have been his hope of salvation? We asked specifically whether some good deed he had done in life would be his hope for salvation when he stood before God's throne. Their answer was that Jesus said he would be in paradise that day and because we have taught them that Jesus is God, obviously His word is trustworthy, therefore Christ's decree would be the thief's hope. We next asked whether the thief had to pay for his sins or be punished by God for his sins. It is true that he was being crucified for his crimes but I think they realized that if this thief was going to be in paradise that day then he was not going to pay for his sins or be punished by God. We then asked if someone else payed for the thief's sins or if someone else suffered in his place. I think no other place in Scripture illustrates more vividly the substitutionary atonement, "and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him (Isaiah 53:6b and 10a)." At this point we again shared the gospel with them.

In our study we did not forget that "we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Eph. 2:10)." I used our taking time weekly to lead a Bible study as an example of obedience to God. But I said that this obedience to God was only out of gratitude for the cross and His grace and had nothing to do with any hope of earning or contributing to my salvation. And I think the same is true for that thief on the cross who was saved by grace alone through faith alone. Had he somehow been taken off of that cross prior to his death but after putting his faith in Christ, I certainly believe he would have been baptized, he would have participated in the Lord's Supper and he would have led a life characterized by repentance. But it would have been clear that none of these works had earned his salvation. They would have been things done in love for God in response to his salvation and because he was a new creation in Christ.

The fact that some who claim to follow Christ debate about whether we are saved by grace alone through faith in Christ alone versus being saved by our works or some contribution of our works amazes me on the one hand but doesn't surprise me on the other. It amazes me because I think this truth, of salvation by grace alone through faith in Christ alone is essential to the gospel and is expressed so clearly by the apostle Paul, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Eph. 2:8-9)." It doesn't surprise me though, that this would be controversial, because the idea of salvation by grace alone through faith alone runs so contrary to the natural way of thinking according to our sin nature. I think this is evident in the fact that every other world religion, as far as I know, is some form of works-righteousness and this heart of the gospel is under constant attack even within Christendom and has been since Pentecost. This heart of the gospel which is, "the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes," that salvation is by God's grace alone through faith in Christ alone and purchased for us by His atoning death, has even been mostly lost at times in the history of the Church. This was the case prior to the Reformation, that great outpouring of God's grace which we celebrate today. And I think that today even in so-called Evangelicalism most churches assume that everyone already believes the gospel and consequently the true gospel is rarely preached. But I also think the simple heart of the gospel is such a tremendous and glorious truth which we are so prone to forget or underestimate that it is something we can never get past and must constantly hear preached.

When I first started thinking about this text from Luke as a defense of salvation by grace alone through faith alone I wanted to make sure that other Christians had seen the same thing in this passage. So it was a great joy to read commentaries on this passage by two men of God, both of whom I respect greatly. The first I read was by John Calvin. Calvin wrote:

And this confirms more fully what I formerly suggested, that if any man disdain to abide by the footsteps of the robber, and to follow his path, he deserves everlasting destruction, because by wicked pride he shuts against himself the gate of heaven. And, certainly, as Christ has given to all of us, in the person of the robber, a general pledge of obtaining forgiveness, so, on the other hand, he has bestowed on this wretched man such distinguished honor, in order that, laying aside our own glory, we may glory in nothing but the mercy of God alone.

Calvin calls us all to follow in the path of the robber and glory in nothing but the mercy of God alone. Calvin has many other wonderful things to say about this passage in his commentary and, Lord willing, I will quote some more of what he wrote in the coming week. The second commentator I ran into, which in some ways brought me even more joy than Calvin's writing, is a great Patristic voice, John Chrysostom who lived between 349 and 407 A.D. Chrysostom was the Archbishop of Constantinople and writes with great clarity on the subject of salvation through faith alone. Chrysostom in his Sermon 7 on Genesis writes:

Let us see, however, whether the brigand gave evidence of effort and upright deeds and a good yield. Far from his being able to claim even this, he made his way into paradise before the apostles with a mere word, on the basis of faith alone...

I'll also post a longer and more complete quote from Chrysostom in the coming week.

Happy Reformation Day!

Preaching the Cost

Over a year ago a classmate and I met some non-Christian kids from San Bernardino in a tutoring program through our medical school. Since that time we've been doing weekly Bible studies with them with the hope that God will use us to convey His gospel, "the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes." I've added a "Ministry" label where you can find all of the posts dealing with our ministry to these kids.

On Sunday we met again with the kids to whom one of my classmates and I are attempting to be faithful in preaching the gospel. This week my fellow worker in this ministry felt that we should talk about "counting the cost," from Jesus' admonition in Luke chapter 14. In this passage Jesus admonishes the crowds:

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

As we began to plan for our Bible study on Saturday night we realized that this is actually a difficult topic to teach on. The reason why it seemed difficult is because we are both determined not to fall into preaching some kind of moralism by which these kids might think they could please God or be justified. Unfortunately they could probably walk to any number of nearby mainline or "evangelical" churches and get that kind of moralism without the gospel. But we aspire to preach the gospel and as we've done our Bible studies we've talked a lot about sin and the wages of sin, death and hell. We've also talked about God's just wrath against sinners and how, out of His unfathomable love for sinners, Christ bore that wrath on the cross. But we had not talked specifically about repentance.

So I want to write about how we went about our talk. I don't assume that we did everything right but it is what we came to after looking at other parts of Scripture, and after much thought and prayer. Before we opened the Bible we just asked the kids the question, "Do you think a person's life looks the same both before and after they began following Christ?" We just told them to think about this and went on to have lunch. After lunch we played some games and I read the kids two short parables from Matthew chapter 13:44-46:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

After this we walked to a different location in the park we were in and got deeper into discussion we had planned. When we asked again whether or not the kids thought a person's life would change when they began following Christ they said "yes." We asked why and they weren't sure. I asked if they thought the change occurred because they needed to act better so they could get into heaven. I was very thankful that they said "no." We had just talked the Sunday before about the meaning of the word debt and how our debt had been canceled, studying Colossians 2:13-14, "And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." So we emphasized again that our debt - our deserving of hell because of sin - had been fully paid by Christ. Nothing could ever be added to the payment of this debt by anything we could do.

After this we talked about some examples of the changed lives of those who followed Christ. I reminded the kids of my own testimony which I had told them over a year ago when we first began meeting. We had been focusing on the stoning of Stephen and the conversion of Saul for much of the fall so we talked about how Saul had changed with his conversion, how he had gone from cheering on the martyrdom of Christians to sailing around the Roman Empire preaching the gospel and planting churches.

By this time the kids were starting to get antsy so we read the Scripture from Luke about counting the cost and tried to make sure they gained some understanding of what had just been read. Having just read, "any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple," we talked about what it meant to "renounce all." I pointed out that neither me nor my classmate, who are both followers of Christ, are destitute monks who go about begging for food. But what we did teach was that when someone becomes a disciple of Christ everything that the new disciple possesses belongs to God. All of a disciple's money, time and energy belong to God. And we taught that God is not going to leave all of those things the same as they were prior to conversion. We tried to stay away from specifics as the point of our teaching today was not so much to convict of sin but to say that there is a "cost" to becoming a disciple and that that cost is seen in the changed life of a believer.

Our last point was to bring the talk back to the parables we had read earlier. We told the kids that it was our hope that they would come to see that Christ is desirable above all else and we told them that only God could affect this change in their hearts. We told them that we desired for them to see Christ as the pearl of great price and the treasure in the field and that we were convinced of this truth. We made the point that while the life of a new disciple is a changed life and sometimes this repentance is painful, that the reason for this repentance is because Christ is known to be so much more desirable than anything we might leave behind. We made it clear that Christians are not perfect and that we both often struggle with trusting God with everything in our lives. We closed out our Bible study as always with prayer. It's always difficult to know how much, if any, effect our talk had on these kids but knowing that their salvation is in God's sovereign hands takes a burden off of us as we know that it's not up to us to save them. Lord willing, we will continue to meet these kids, seeking to be faithful preachers of the gospel. From time to time there may be more updates on this ministry.

Magic Words

Last year a classmate and I began meeting regularly with some kids whom we had met in a tutoring program through the medical school. These kids come from a pretty rough neighborhood in San Bernardino and are not Christians so it has been a great opportunity and privilege to become friends with them and to share the gospel with them. For the last year and a half we have done almost weekly Bible studies with them.

After a time living in Tijuana these kids returned recently and we met with them again for the first time in months. To our most recent Bible study one of the kids brought a friend whom we had never met. After we discussed the stoning of Stephen and the conversion of Saul we began talking about what it meant for Jesus to die on the cross. When we said that Jesus had taken upon Himself our sin and had suffered the wrath that we deserved this boy was excited to hear something he had never heard before. We were excited that one of these kids was showing such interest in what we were teaching. We talked some more about the cross and this boy seemed amazed by the idea that Jesus took upon Himself our sin and that it was because of this that he suffered and died. He said that he could never understand what was so important about Jesus dying on a cross as opposed to every other person who has been executed in various ways throughout history.

After the discussion we were walking back to the car and the boy who had been amazed by this "new teaching" said that he had been in a lot of churches with his family and that he had "accepted Christ" again and again but he was obviously unsatisfied and unconvinced that he had really "accepted" anything. We told him that he should think about what we said about Christ taking upon Himself our sin and suffering the wrath we deserved. We also shared 2nd Corinthians 5:21, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God," with him and tried to discuss that. He said he would come study the Bible with us again and I look forward to future conversations and, Lord willing, discipleship with this kid.

But the lack of satisfaction in this boy and the amazement he showed at the idea that Christ bore our sin reminded me of how concealed and forgotten the gospel is in most churches. This boy had been going up during alter calls and saying the "magic words" but he knew that nothing had happened. I think without an understanding of the atonement and a clear, scriptural teaching of it, the idea of "accepting Christ," the reality of conversion itself, is reduced to some "magic words." Perhaps this boy suffered some real conviction of sin - I believe he has - but no answer has ever been given him about what must be done about this sin - about what has already been done with his sin if he is to believe. This boy knew the "magic words," but he did not know what Christ had actually done. The words had no real content except that somehow he was maybe arbitrarily better off with God if he went up and "accepted Christ." But when "accepting Christ" is emptied of all theological content in regards to who Jesus is and what He has done then it is useless.

Here's what the great preacher A.W. Tozer had to say:

But accepting Christ has become the panacea all over the evangelical world and it has become fatal to millions! A whole attitude of accepting; the passive acceptance of Christ. This easy acceptance! A man will preach a tremendous sermon and then say "Now, what should you do? Accept Christ. Have you accepted Christ?" Or we go to the bedside of a dying man: "Have you accepted Christ?" And if he says he has, why, we pat his head and the next day or two we preach that he's in heaven twanging a harp. Well, now I'm awfully afraid that there are millions of people who are perishing because they are being told to accept Christ and they don't know what's meant by it...

...Somebody suggested that the cross of Christ should not inconvenience people. Well, it is the most inconvenient thing in the world, this cross of Christ! It took a man by the name of Jesus in the height of his healthy human life and took Him out on a hillside and killed Him there - now, that's an inconvenient thing for Him! And any cross is inconvenient; it's a most inconvenient thing, this accepting Christ, if we know what we mean by it. But the accepting Christ of popular theology has no inconvenience attached to it.

-A.W. Tozer, from his sermon, What It Means to Accept Christ

Teaching Exclusivity

I've mentioned in a previous post that I, along with a classmate here at Loma Linda, have begun leading a Bible study with some kids we met through a tutoring program. Usually we'll take them out to eat at a place like McDonald's and go through a short passage. We've tried to keep the messages fairly simple for these boys who haven't yet committed their lives to Christ and we've focused on some basics like the Creation, the Fall and its consequences and the nature of Christ, His mission, and our need for Him. These kids have short attention spans so the last couple of weeks we've just looked at one or two verses. This week our verse was John 14:6, "Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.'"

After reading the verse we asked them if they thought all religions were equally true or if they thought all religions might lead to God. I was surprised that their answers were strongly negative considering the post-modern world they're growing up in. Today it also struck me that this was one of the most counter-cultural messages we've given. Sure, evolutionists would probably disagree with the way we taught about Creation, materialists wouldn't like the way we've talked about the miracles of Christ and liberals would be angered by the penal substitution view of the atonement we continually present but this message could probably inspire the most vehement disagreement, even from those claiming to be Christians.

After they affirmed that not all religions were equally true and they don't all lead to God I asked them why it is that we should believe that. I didn't get a quick answer so I explained that the reason was because Christ himself taught that. When we affirm that other religions could be equally true or could give any merit before God in coming to salvation we dishonor Christ. His is the only merit in the universe by which man can be saved. Peter affirmed this truth before the rulers, elders and scribes in Jerusalem when he said, "This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved(Acts 4:11-12)."

...and for Him

A classmate and I recently started a Bible study for some kids we tutor in downtown San Bernardino. The first week we talked about why it is that we can trust the Bible to be the Word of God. This last Sunday we talked about the subject of creation. We started out by asking the kids how they thought it had all gotten here and then we dug into Genesis. We first read and discussed Genesis 1:1-5 and then showed a short video attempting to give some idea of the immensity of the universe. We then skipped ahead to Genesis 1:24-31 and talked about what it meant to be made in the "image of God" and what it meant for God to look at all He had made and say that it was "very good."

When we prepared the Bible study the night before we wanted to relate our talk to the Person of Christ and we considered looking at the beginning of the Gospel of John or the section on the Preeminence of Christ in the first chapter of Colossians. We ended up going with just one verse from Colossians, "For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities - all things were created through Him and for Him." Our goal is to preach the Gospel each week so we talked about what it meant that everything, including ourselves, were created for Christ. And one of the first things that one of the kids came up with was that we must do the will of the one for whom we were created. From here we went on to talk about the fact that all of us had failed in doing His will and therefore have a debt which must be paid, the debt that was paid on our behalf by Christ in His crucifixion.

But as so often happens with Bible study, meditating on that little section of the verse, "... and for Him," has affected me strongly the last few days. It puts sin in a much clearer light to be reminded that our entire purpose of existence is for Him. And we go against this purpose when we sin. These are all basic statements of truth for the Christian but meditating on this verse during the last few days has put sin in a clearer light for me.

Another thing I've thought about is that many have a very man-centered view of the universe even in the church. And this verse shows what a lie the "man-centered universe" is. This "man-centered" view came up recently when a method of sharing the gospel was presented which I think was deficient but is something many Christians fall into. In this method of sharing the gospel, a drawing is made with two cliffs with a chasm in between. One side is supposed to represent life without Christ and the other, life with Christ. The thing that bridges this chasm is the cross of Christ. So far so good, but in the presentation the presenter wrote a number of words on the side representing life without Christ, words like "hopelessness," "meaninglessness," etc. And on the side of the chasm, representing life with God, words like "peace," "love," and "direction," were written. I think the problem here is subtle but I think it is a real problem. If we want to get across that chasm to get to "peace, love and direction," then "peace, love and direction," have just become idols. "Peace, love and direction" have just become as evil as any other idol that Satan might set up to keep us from God. Ultimately we were made for God, not for "peace, love and direction." Notice that I said, "ultimately," so I'm not denying that salvation will often bring peace love and direction but at times it will not bring these things. Being in Christ will bring hatred, hatred of sin and it will earn the Christian the hatred of the world. Being in Christ should bring a deep inner peace with God, but superficially it may bring anything but peace with non-Christian family members and friends. And being in Christ may cause us to call into question those things that were once best at giving our lives direction. Things like ambition and competitiveness and the desire to have power over others. So crossing that chasm can just as easily destroy certain kinds of peace, love and direction as it will give us new and real peace, love and direction. The fact is that crossing the chasm from unbelief to being in Christ cannot ultimately be about any of those other things we desire. Ultimately it must be about desiring Him. Ultimately it must be about His glory. It must be ultimately about admitting that we were made, "for Him."